Chemistry Overview

	B.S. - Chemistry, Ohio State University M.S. - Organic Chemistry, Ohio State University
	Associate Research Scientist

"I'm an organic chemist and I work in new drug discovery. Basically, what we do is when we come up with a biological target, and we come up with general chemical classes of what kind of things we think will work as drugs to do whatever we need to do on the target, my job is actually making those drug candidates, so that we can put them into testing. Once we've done an initial testing screen to get an idea of how they react, then I go back and look at how we can vary the chemicals slightly to give it enhanced properties that we need.

One of my favorite things about my job is the challenge. For me, in a lot of ways, it's like solving a puzzle, which is something I enjoy. As we look at different areas, we get back test results and run different experiments; it's almost like getting different hints and clues about what we're looking for.

Since I really enjoyed the research and the bench work, I decided to stop with my master's degree -- that gave me the opportunity. I learned enough that I really can work independently in the lab, and I really know what I'm doing.

While I enjoy the part of it the Ph.D. does as far as thinking through what do I want to make next and how am I doing to make it. I really enjoy being the one actually in the lab doing the experiments, so that, as I can run it, I can watch and see what it looks like, and I actually get to collect the data myself."