Discovery Biologics Virtual Career Day - September 11, 2025

Grace completed her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked on elucidating the structure-function relationship of ubiquitin-proteosome signaling pathways. Before joining Merck Discovery Biologics in 2017, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Novartis Institute of Functional Genomics in San Diego, CA and worked on developing conjugation and modality technologies for novel antibody drug conjugates. At Merck, she is a member of the protein engineering team and works on engineering and developing biotherapeutics for different disease areas.

Paulo received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Johns Hopkins University. As a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California at Berkeley, his research provided novel insights on the biochemistry and biophysics of hydrogen tunneling metalloenzymes. He joined the Protein characterization and developability group at Merck in 2022, where he now leads a small team supporting biophysical characterization of various drug candidates.

Yen-Pang completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Indiana University, where he studied bacterial cell wall biosynthesis and antibiotic development. He joined Merck & Co., Inc. in 2019, and has worked on antibody engineering, bioconjugation, and methods for biologics characterization. He currently serves on the Disruptive Technology team in Biologics, focusing on characterizing generative AI-designed proteins as new therapeutic modalities. He is passionate about mentoring early-career scientists and publishing scientific research.