Dr. Desjarlais oversees all aspects of discovery and research at the company including technology development, protein and antibody engineering and generation of drug candidates and has served as chief scientific officer since 2014. Prior to joining Xencor in 2001, Dr. Desjarlais was an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Penn State University, where he developed protein engineering methods. He then conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Desjarlais received a B.S. in physics from the University of Massachusetts and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley.