Team Medicinal Chemistry wins Merck Innovation Cup
Ann-Sophie Paschke (D-CHAB, ETH Zurich), Marius Lutz (D-CHAB Alumnus / University Tokyo) and their teammates from the University of Oxford, Yale University, Imperial College London, and Springer Nature won the Merck Innovation Cup 2024. As team “Medicinal Chemistry”, they won the jury over with their innovative business model and were awarded 20,000 euros.
The annual Merck Innovation Cup was conceived to promote innovation and entrepreneurship among young people. This year, for the 14th time, postgraduate students from all over the world gathered to compete for recognition and prizes.
More than 40 participants were divided into seven project teams. Each team focused on one important area for Merck, namely Oncology, Neuroscience and Immunology, Medicinal Chemistry, Synthetic Biology, Digital Health, Smart Manufacturing, and Neuro-inspired AI Inference Acceleration. The task was to develop innovative ideas and business plans and pitch them to a jury. All teams were supported by an alumni coach and received professional input through lectures.
In the end, the “Medicinal Chemistry” team consisting of Ann-Sophie Paschke (D-CHAB, ETH Zurich), Daniel Crusius (University of Oxford), Gregory Kyro (Yale University), Janine Gray (Imperial College London), Ludwig Bauer (University of Oxford), Marius Lutz (University of Tokyo, Alumnus ETH Zurich) and alumni coach Stacey-Lynn Paiva (Springer Nature) succeded in the competition. They won the jury over with their innovative business model for reducing fluctuation in early drug discovery.
“As a team, we spent a week using our knowledge of organic synthetic chemistry, chemical biology, and machine learning, supported by Merck experts, to increase efficiency and diversity in drug discovery,” explains participant Ann-Sophie Paschke, doctoral student in the Morandi Group at D-CHAB. The team hopes that their innovative model will help to speed up drug development. Ann-Sophie found the competition to be enriching, both personally and professionally.
“I am incredibly proud of our success. It's great to see how one’s own knowledge and skills can contribute to an international, interdisciplinary team and help solve problems in an industrial context.”Ann-Sophie Paschke (doctoral student, D-CHAB ETH Zurich)
Indeed, many of the innovative ideas developed by project teams in recent years have become official Merck projects or have led to the publication of scientific articles or patent applications. Additionally, the competition provides the opportunity to join one of the Merck innovation teams.
But for now, the winning team of the Cup can look forward to the prize money: they will share €20,000.