Jessica K. Roberts, Ph.D., M.Sci.
Director, Pharmacometrics
Cognigen
About Jessica
Dr. Roberts is a Director, Pharmacometrics at Cognigen Corporation, a division of Simulations Plus. After completing her BS in biochemistry from Texas A&M University, Dr. Roberts attended the College of Pharmacy at the University of Utah to complete her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology. Her dissertation work focused on the metabolism of inhaled glucocorticoids in pediatric patients. During her work, she spent a lot of time in the NICU and PICU as part of her dissertation and decided to pursue a masters of clinical investigation at the College of Medicine at the University of Utah. This masters provided additional clinical training in the NICU and PICU that helped to define questions that needed to be addressed in the pharmaceutical treatment of neonates and pediatric patients. Following graduation, Dr. Roberts pursued a postdoctoral fellowship under the direction of Catherine Sherwin and Robert Ward in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, University of Utah to receive formal training in pharmacometrics. This expanded her experience in modeling and simulation, particularly in neonate patients. At the completion of her postdoc, Dr. Roberts went to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to assist in the development and evaluation of clinical trials of children with various malignancies, mainly brain tumors. During her tenure at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Dr. Roberts also participated in the development of gene therapy vectors that served as preclinical and clinical gene therapy delivery systems. Before joining Cognigen, Dr. Roberts gained experience applying her skills in a contract research setting at Metrum Research Group.
During her career, Dr. Roberts has published numerous research articles, invited editorials, invited reviews, and invited book chapters, and given many oral and poster presentations that have focused mainly on drug development in neonate and pediatric subjects. Dr. Roberts currently serves as adjunct volunteer faculty at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center where she gives PK/PD lectures and assists graduate students with their work.
