Science
What do you do?
Neann Mathai
Job history 2021–Present Cheminformatics Data Scientist BenevolentAI 2018–2021 Research Fellow: Cheminformatics University of Bergen and University of Hamburg 2017–2018 Senior Programme Officer Management Sciences for Health 2015–2017 Programme Officer: Strategic Information Management Sciences for Health 2015 Business Data Analyst Mettler-Toledo International
Academic history 2018 – 2021 PhD in Cheminformatics University of Bergen 2013–2015 PhD student in Food Science (not awarded) Cornell University 2011–2013 MSc in Computer Science (Computational Chemistry) University of Cape Town 2009 BSc Honours in Computer Science University of Cape Town 2006 - 2008 BSc in Computer Science and Chemistry University of Cape Town
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I work as a cheminformatician/ computational chemist for a pharmaceutical tech company where my team uses computational techniques to drive the chemistry of drug development projects. This includes everything from pulling together data packages and analyses for the chemistry to running simulations which gives you more insight into how the chemicals of interest are behaving.
What pulled you towards chem informatics? I discovered computational chemistry in my first year at UCT and I went on to do a Masters (with the Department of Computer Science) at UCT in computational chemistry, thoroughly enjoying it along the way. I then pursued a PhD in a similar topic to my Masters but had to leave before completing this and started working in public health. During my public health work, I was using all sorts of statistical data analysis techniques to
understand and model public health scenarios to deliver better health services and outcomes to people around the world. I missed pharmaceutical/medicinal chemistry research though. I then went to pursue a PhD in Cheminformatics, so that I could use the techniques I was using from my public health work within basic medicinal chemistry research.
How do your degrees help you in your job? The theory from the Computer Science and Chemistry coursework I took at UCT directly relates to the work I am doing now. This is obviously not usually the case for most people (and it wasn’t the case for me for part of my career) and it is certainly not sufficient. Transferable skills and the logical thinking that these disciplines equip you with are very important, but they are usually only realised once you grasp the theory of a discipline. It is important to keep building on your skills and drawing connections from one set of skills to the next.
