Dr. Schwab is a bioorganic chemist who handles grants in the areas of synthetic organic chemistry, natural products chemistry, and high-throughput chemistry. As a program director at NIGMS, he oversees the NIGMS Centers of Excellence in Chemical Methodologies and Library Development and is the project team leader for Chemical Diversity Technology Development for the NIH Molecular Libraries Roadmap initiative.
Schwab is an active advocate for the chemistry community, especially with regard to training the next generation of chemists, as well as promoting chemistry in the context of interdisciplinary research. He has organized numerous scientific symposia, workshops, and meetings on topics such as synthetic organic chemistry, natural products chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and grantsmanship skills. He also organizes (together with chemistry professor Michael Doyle, University of Maryland) an annual mentoring workshop for beginning faculty in the areas of organic synthesis and chemical biology.
Before joining NIGMS as a program director, Schwab served for 2 years as a review chemist in the Division of Oncology Drug Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Prior to that, he spent 9 years as a professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy at Purdue University, and before that, he spent 7 years as a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Catholic University of America.
Schwab has authored more than 40 scientific papers and review articles.
