Margaret Phillips

Margaret Phillips, Ph.D., a widely respected researcher in biochemistry and drug discovery in parasitic protozoa, became Chair of the Department of Biochemistry in September 2016. Since joining UT Southwestern as an Assistant Professor in 1992, Dr. Phillips has emerged as one of the leading international authorities on drug development for the treatment of parasitic diseases, including malaria and African sleeping sickness. The potential impact of her work is widely recognized. She received the Medicines for Malaria Venture Project of the Year in 2011 for her work in structure-guided drug design in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She also has been supported by a National Institute of Health Merit Award and a Burroughs Wellcome Scholar Award in Molecular Parasitology. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry from the University of California, Davis in 1981 and her Ph.D. in pharmaceutical chemistry from the University of California, San Francisco in 1988, where she began her work on African sleeping sickness. Dr. Phillips was then a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF until 1992 when she moved to UT Southwestern.