Director
Merck & Co., Inc.
Grace Okoh, Ph.D is an Principal Scientist in the Oral Formulation Sciences department of the Merck Research Laboratories. In her previous role in the Discovery Pharmaceutical Sciences department, Dr. Okoh was responsible for project representation on Merck Discovery and early development teams to provide input on selecting development candidates with good physicochemical and absorption properties to enable developable drug products. In her current role, she leads formulation design and strategy to enable formulation and manufacturing process robustness assessment of new chemical entities from first in human formulations through final market formulation definition. Dr. Okoh steered formulation development of Merck’s COVID-19 antiviral, molnupiravir. Dr. Okoh is an active member of AAPS; she served as the Drug Discovery & Development Interface section Focus Group liaison and webinar committee chair. Dr. Okoh has published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, is a co-inventor on patents, and co-author of book chapters on performance of amorphous solid dispersions. Her work and publications have provided important insights about how polymers inhibit the crystallization of crystals, and has been used to guide the development of new excipients with superior crystallization inhibitory properties. She completed her Ph.D. in Industrial and Physical Pharmacy at Purdue University, Indiana.