Lori Fitz, Ph.D. is the Director and Treasurer of Berkeley Pharma Tech Foundation.  She is a research scientist with over 35 years of experience advancing drug discovery and development in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. 

Dr. Fitz brought decades of dynamic leadership and expertise as a Research and Development Director at Pfizer, where she led multiple teams in pioneering research endeavors aimed at addressing unmet medical needs. With a keen focus on Precision Medicine, she orchestrated strategic initiatives to identify biomarkers in collaboration with geneticists, computational scientists, and clinicians, particularly targeting autoimmune diseases. Her innovative approach included leveraging advanced technologies like flow cytometry, mass spectrometry, and next-generation sequencing to optimize research outcomes while streamlining costs. Dr. Fitz's impactful contributions have advanced the field of medicine by providing crucial insights into treatment response prediction and personalized dosing strategies, ultimately enhancing patient care.

Among other contributions her expertise in protein biochemistry led to identification of ligands for PD-1 which was a keystone discovery in the field of immune-oncology (I/O) and the work was cited for the 2018 Nobel Prize awarded for I/O.  Another area of contribution is her development of people and teams to reach their potential by working together to tackle difficult problems in drug research. 

She is passionate about creating opportunities for people who are currently under-represented in science. Dr. Fitz. received her B.S. from Iowa State University, A.L.M. from Harvard University and Ph.D. from Boston University School of Medicine.  She is currently on the Board of Directors for the CADSTI-New England nonprofit organization.