Michael J. Sofia, PhD is currently Distinguished Professor at the Baruch Blumberg Institute and Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is internationally recognized for his work on the discovery and development of drugs to treat and cure viral diseases including HCV and HBV. He was co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Arbutus Biopharma, Inc for over 12 years until his retirement in 2024. Over his 38 year career in drug discovery Dr. Sofia has held research and research management positions at Gilead Sciences, Pharmasset, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Transcell Technologies and Eli Lilly and Company. 

During his career Dr. Sofia has introduced numerous drugs into clinical development and was responsible for the discovery and early development of sofosbuvir (Sovaldiâ,). Sofosbuvir quickly became the most successful drug launched in history and was designated by the World Health Organization as an essential medicine.  Sofosbuvir became the backbone of HCV-cure combination therapies and is part of the fixed-dose combination regimens Harvoni®, Epclusa® and Vosevi®.  In addition, sofosbuvir has been used in combination with many other HCV targeted agents.  To date over 10 million individuals have been cured of HCV using sofosbuvir-based therapeutic regimens.

Dr. Sofia holds a BA in chemistry from Cornell University, a PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Michael has published extensively in the area of drug discovery and development and has authored over 135 publications, 17 book chapters, numerous abstracts and edited 3 books on drug discovery topics. He is also an inventor on more than 56 US patents and numerous patent applications. He has been an invited speaker at over 126 national and international conferences and universities. Dr. Sofia sits on several non-profit advisory boards and is a member of the Board of Trustees for St Joseph’s University, Philadelphia Pa. He is also on the advisory boards of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, and ChemMedChem   

For his work in drug discovery, Dr. Sofia has been the recipient of numerous awards. These include the 2014 Pennsylvania Bio Scientific Achievement Award, the 2015 Heroes of Chemistry Award of the American Chemical Society, Foreign Policy Magazine’s 2014 Global Thinkers Award, the Economist Magazine’s 2015 Innovation Award in Biosciences, the 2016 IUPAC-Richter Prize in Medicinal Chemistry, the 2016 Lasker-Debakey Award in Clinical Medical Research, the Gertrude Elion Award from the International Society for Antiviral Research, the 2017 University of Illinois LAS Alumni Achievement Award, the Science and Technology Medal from the New Jersey Research and Development Council, the 2018 International Society of Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids John Montgomery Award, the 2018 Humanitarian Award by the Sons of Italy in America and the 2019 Pennsylvania Drug Discovery Award from the PA Drug Discovery Institute. In 2020 he was awarded the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics from the University of Edinburgh. In 2019 he received an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Messina, Italy. He was inducted into the ACS Medicinal Chemistry Hall of Fame in 2017 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.