Anae I. Bain, Ph.D., is a medicinal chemist at Eli Lilly and Company. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2022 with a doctorate in organic chemistry. She is also the 2022 winner of OU’s Three Minute Thesis competition which challenges participants to present their graduate research in three minutes or less, in ways that can connect with an audience that does not have prior knowledge of the subject area. Bain won for her presentation, “A Basic Building Block for Sustainable Drug Discovery.”
While in graduate school she was studying methodology development for small molecules that had potential applications for drug development. As a part of OU’s Institute for Natural Products and Research Technologies (INPART), she developed her foundational knowledge of synthetic organic chemistry that has helped prepare her for her professional research in medicinal chemistry.
“My colleagues in the chemistry department pushed each other to excel,” she said. “I think we were trained extremely well at OU, and because of that training, we're able to land competitive jobs and be successful in these roles. I was mentored so well at OU… and now I feel an obligation to give back even though I feel that I’m so new to my career. You don’t know how much of an inspiration you can be to other people.”
Watch Bain's winning 3MT presentation below.
