Faculty Spotlight: Russell Mumper, PhD — An Industry Perspective
Faculty Spotlight: Russell Mumper, PhD — An Industry Perspective
An Industry Perspective
Mumper’s plan for funding the CNDD is similar to the way he has built his own research funding portfolio, which has totaled more than $8 million (including $6 million as principal investigator) in grants and contracts since 1999. Mumper credits his success in part to his industry experience, which began as a drug development scientist at Burroughs Wellcome in Greenville, North Carolina, after his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington.
Eight years, three companies and three cross-country moves later, Mumper decided to look for something with more stability for his family when the company he was working for at the time, ViroTex Corporation in Texas, was sold. He had other industry opportunities, but when the University of Kentucky, where he earned his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees, came calling in 1999, Mumper went into academia, taking with him the industry perspective he had gained.
“I think it benefited me in that I was able to see real-world applications of technology in moving those toward commercial products,” he says. “I learned a lot about the FDA and commercializing products. That’s helped me because there is a growing emphasis on translational technology and moving it toward the clinic and having real potential for commercial application. I might not have that same awareness had I not been working in the industry for eight years and thinking about what it takes to translate a technology into a commercial product. So that’s helped me in applying technology to commercial products and writing competitive grants.”
He put that experience to good use at UK. From 1999 to 2007, he was the associate director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, an FDA-registered clinical trial manufacturing facility. The facility, one of only a handful of its kind in the country, works with universities, government, and industry to conduct clinical trial manufacturing. Mumper was the principal investigator on many of the center’s projects, leading the center’s efforts to complete seven full product developments that resulted in human clinical trials.
Along the way, he built a diverse funding portfolio that included twenty-four grants and contracts from federal or foundation sources and thirty-nine from industry.
“Getting funded in an academic environment has changed dramatically in the last five years; it’s getting much more difficult,” he says. “I’ve been fortunate to have a portfolio of funding from both industry and federal sources, and I attribute that to the fact that I understand and appreciate the needs of industrial companies. So I’m able to put together proposals and do work that’s very related to meeting their needs.”