Dr. Paras received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Harvard in 1998, beginning his training in organic synthesis under the supervision of Dr. David A. Evans. After a year with Axys Pharmaceuticals, he entered graduate school in chemistry working with Dr. David MacMillan, first at UC Berkeley and then Caltech. Dr. Paras performed early studies with chiral imidazolidinone catalysts and discovered new methods leveraging enantioselective organocatalysis to earn his PhD before embarking on a career as a medicinal chemist. In 2003, he accepted a position at Amgen where, over the course of a decade, he advanced drug discovery efforts in oncology, cardiovascular disease, and neuroscience. Most recently, Dr. Paras joined the IND from Onyx Pharmaceuticals where he served as a discovery project lead.

Dr. Paras has a range of interests in synthetic chemistry and modern techniques for drug discovery. The focus of his research program at the IND is on the design of small molecules for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease.