Saadyah E. Averick, Ph.D.

Dr. Saadyah E. Averick is a polymer chemist and pharmaceutical scientist with deep expertise in drug delivery systems, biomaterials, and protein–polymer bioconjugates. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University under Prof. Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, a pioneer in Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP), and his B.S. in Chemistry (Honors, Cum Laude) and Biochemistry (Cum Laude) from the College of Staten Island, CUNY. With 92+ peer-reviewed publications and over 4,700 citations (h-index 38), his research spans nanomedicine, nucleic acid delivery, curcumin-based therapeutics, and fentanyl vaccine development. Dr. Averick served as Associate Professor and Lab Director of the Neuroscience Disruptive Research Lab at Allegheny Health Network’s Research Institute in Pittsburgh, where he led translational research on long-acting naloxone nanoparticles to combat opioid overdose and developed anti-fentanyl vaccine conjugates—work funded in part by an NIH STTR grant through Consegna Pharma, Inc. He subsequently served as Director of Biomaterials Chemistry at Colossal Biosciences in Dallas before joining Imagine Pharma as Senior Director of Oral Protein Delivery, where he leads development of oral delivery platforms for biologics including EPO, octreotide, and GLP-1 agonists. He holds multiple U.S. patents covering biomaterials for orthopedic devices, hydrophilic polymers, conductive thread technologies, and ATRP-based bioconjugation methods. His published work in journals including the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie, ACS Macro Letters, Macromolecules, and the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry places him among the most cited researchers in applied polymer science and bioconjugate chemistry.