Maria M. Flocco, Ph.D.

Closing Keynote

Maria Flocco, Ph.D. is the Vice President, Global Head of Mechanistic and Structural Biology at AstraZeneca with more than 25 years in the pharmaceutical industry and drug discovery space. She received a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the City University of New York and completed her postdoctoral training in X-ray crystallography at the Fox Chase Cancer Center (USA) and the Uppsala Biomedical Centre (Sweden).

Previous to joining AstraZeneca, Flocco held various positions of increasing responsibility at Pfizer, including Senior Director and Head of External R&D Innovation Europe, Senior Director and Head of Internal Medicine Chemistry, Senior Director and Head of Lead Discovery and Director and Head of Structural Biology and Biophysics. Before joining Pfizer, she was the Head of Structural Chemistry at Pharmacia (United Kingdom). Prior to her career in the pharmaceutical industry, Flocco was a lecturer at the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) and a researcher at the Uppsala Biomedical Centre (Sweden).

Flocco is currently a member of the Structural Biology Advisory Panel of the Rosalind Franklin Institute (United Kingdom). During her career, she has been a member of the MRC Molecular and Cellular Medicine Board, the SAB of the Chemical Biology Institute of Imperial College London, the SAB of INSTRUCT EU and the SAB of INSERM Transfert Initiative, a seed funding body from INSERM in France. She is a co-founder and co-organiser of the Next Generation Biophysics Symposium, Cambridge UK.

Flocco has a track record of successfully embracing innovative approaches and expanding capabilities that make an impact on drug discovery.