Receiving the Merck Research Award from the Women Chemists’ Committee in 2017 was instrumental in exposing me to careers in the pharmaceutical industry and helped lead me to my current position at a biotech startup. Throughout the process of getting a Ph.D. and doing two separate postdoctoral research positions, I thought I was setting myself up to become a professor at a research university. Like many others, the COVID-19 pandemic made me reconsider where my true priorities lie and catalyzed my transition into an industrial career using computational chemistry for drug discovery. In this talk, I will discuss what my research has looked like over the years, what changed for me in terms of professional goals, and how the connections I made as a result of winning the Merck research award played into finding what I call my “dream job”, being a Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) scientist at Atomwise Inc. Though no longer an academic myself, a large component of my job at Atomwise is collaborating on projects with academics through our AIMS program, which still allows me the ideal amount of exposure to academic research from the private sector.

Transitioning from academia to industry: How the Merck research award guided me to my dream job

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.