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About

Edward A. Fitzgerald is a multidisciplinary researcher whose work spans two remarkably distinct yet equally impactful domains: organ-on-chip bioengineering and structure-based drug discovery. His most celebrated contribution is his involvement in the development of robotic platforms for fluidically linked human organ chip systems, most notably the "Interrogator" instrument, which enables automated culture, perfusion, and real-time imaging of multiple vascularized organ chips simultaneously. This pioneering work, published in 2019 and 2020, has garnered over 400 citations, establishing Fitzgerald as a key figure in advancing body-on-chip technology toward realistic, multi-organ human physiological modeling — a breakthrough with profound implications for drug testing and personalized medicine. In parallel, Fitzgerald has made significant strides in fragment-based drug discovery, developing the Binding-Site Purification of Actives (B-SPA) methodology. By integrating multi-step array synthesis with high-throughput crystallography, this approach addresses one of medicinal chemistry's most persistent bottlenecks: efficiently progressing weakly binding fragment hits into potent lead compounds. His low-cost robotic workflows for crystallographic screening further democratize structure-guided drug design. Together, these contributions reflect a researcher driven by practical innovation, making sophisticated science more accessible and scalable across biomedical research.