Timothy Coetzee, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Fast Forward, LLC, a venture philanthropy of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. In this capacity, Dr. Coetzee is responsible for the Society’s strategic funding of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies as well as partnerships with the financial and business communities. Prior to assuming his current position, Dr. Coetzee led the Society’s translational research initiatives on nervous system repair and protection in MS as well as the Society’s programs to recruit and train physicians and scientists in MS research. 

Dr. Coetzee received his PhD in molecular biology from Albany Medical College in 1993 and has since been involved in the field of multiple sclerosis research. He was a research fellow in the laboratory of Society grantee Dr. Brian Popko at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received an Advanced Postdoctoral Fellowship Award from the Society.  After completing his training with Dr. Popko, Dr. Coetzee joined the faculty of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, where he conducted research that applied new technologies to understand how myelin is formed in the nervous system. He is the author of a number of research publications on the structure and function of myelin. Dr. Coetzee joined the National MS Society’s Home Office staff in the fall of 2000.