Dr. Scott Hoyt is a Chemistry Group Leader at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He supervises a team of medicinal chemists working on a portfolio of oncology programs that span target validation, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization space. Prior to joining NCATS, Dr. Hoyt was a Principal Scientist in Discovery Chemistry at Merck Research Laboratories in Kenilworth, NJ. At Merck, he led successful hit-to-lead and target validation programs, HTS workups, and external licensing efforts, and was a key contributor to the clinical candidate MK-1052. Specialties: Hit-to-lead, lead optimization, clinical candidate delivery, target validation, HTS triage, structure based drug discovery, kinases, inflammatory, oncology, cardiovascular & neuroscience therapeutics, CNS targets, ion channels, allosteric modulators (PAMs / NAMs), supervision of external / CRO FTEs, multi-parameter optimization (MPO), automation, external partnering & licensing, recruiting, patent writing and analysis.