Dr. Kevin Short has worked as a medicinal chemist for 10 years, and currently is in the Chemistry Department at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development in La Jolla, CA. Prior to that, he headed up the Combinatorial Chemistry group at Ontogen Corporation, Carlsbad, CA. This group worked intimately with Ontogen's Engineering group, who were pioneers in the development of software and hardware tools designed to assist synthetic chemists. Much of the synthetic chemistry that Dr. Short helped develop was based around the OntoBLOCK ™ platform, and heavy emphasis was placed upon multi-component (MCC) reactions such as the Ugi and Passerini reactions. Several articles emerged from Ontogen's Combinatorial Chemistry group that capitalized upon the power of MCC reactions, and a large part of Ontogen's chemical library was comprised of compounds utilizing this chemistry.

Dr. Short graduated with a B.Sc. in Chemistry from Imperial College, University of London, U.K., followed by an M.Phil. and Ph.D. from the University of Exeter, U.K., working in the laboratories of Prof. Stanley Roberts. Following this experience, Dr. Short joined Lederle Laboratories, Pearl River, N.Y., as a postdoctoral researcher. He worked with Dr. Carl Ziegler and his group, conducting novel chemistry for the preparation of carbapenem antibiotics. This was followed by an academic stint as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratories of Prof. James Rigby at Wayne State Unviersity, Detroit, MI. There Dr. Short was involved in the development and utilization of metal-mediated, higher-order cycloaddition chemistry such as [6+4]- and [6+2] triene-olefin reactions. This methodology work formed the groundwork of that group's efforts towards the synthesis of ingenanes, taxanes and the phorbol class of natural products.

Dr. Short has published 17 articles in the primary literature, as well as a number of posters, oral presentations and review articles.