Al leads teams in early-stage discovery up through non-clinical development, identifying new drug candidates for advancement into clinical research. Al joined Sage as CSO in 2011, with more than 20 years of drug discovery experience focused primarily in the neuroscience arena. Most recently, he was Vice President of Chemistry and Pharmacokinetic Sciences at Lundbeck USA, where he was responsible for the drug discovery, analytical, computational and pharmacokinetics departments focused on synaptic transmission and neuroinflammation. Earlier, as Senior Director and Head of the Neuroscience Discovery Chemistry Department of Wyeth Research, Al led a group that successfully delivered more than 15 drug candidates into clinical development in a broad range of neuroscience indications. He has co-authored more than 125 manuscripts and abstracts, and is a co-inventor on 50 patents and patent applications.

Al holds a B.S. in chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Irvine and was an American Chemical Society postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University.