Emily Peterson, '00

Emily Peterson, ’00, B.S., chemistry, completed her first total synthesis in organic chemistry with Professor James Vyvyan looking over her shoulder.

Today, Peterson is a director of Medicinal Chemistry at Novartis, leading the multinational pharmaceutical company’s search for new drugs to treat arrhythmia.

Previously, Peterson was a scientist and executive at Biogen, working and leading teams to synthesize molecules to treat multiple sclerosis, lupus and other diseases of the nervous and immune systems. As a scientist at Amgen, in addition to her role as a medicinal chemist, she led sustainability efforts and worked to reduce the amount of toxic dichloromethane used in the lab.

“I’m proud to say a compound I worked on at Biogen just started a Phase 1 trial in human,” Peterson says. “The timescale of drug discovery is very slow. Many medicinal chemists go their entire career never having a compound they worked on go forward to the clinic.”

Peterson is not surprised to hear about Western’s high rate of alumni earning doctorates. She knows several from Vyvyan’s lab who are successful chemists, researchers or professors. (Western’s Chemistry Department is actually the best in the country among master’s granting institutions for chemistry doctorate-earning alumni.)

After graduating from Western, Peterson continued her work in organic chemistry at University of California, Irvine, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

“I’m really proud of having come from Western,” Peterson says. “I’m working in a space where I have what people would consider ‘humble beginnings.’ At Harvard I was surrounded by people who came up through the Ivies. I was able to secure a position at Harvard as a postdoc based on my Ph.D. research, a journey that started at WWU with undergraduate research in the Vyvyan lab.”

Next year, she’ll serve as chair of the prestigious Gordon Research Conference in Medicinal Chemistry, voted into leadership by her industry peers. And she expects to see some old classmates from Vyvyan’s lab among the chemists presenting potential breakthrough therapies.

“Western catapulted me forward,” Peterson says. “Neither of my parents are scientists. My mom was an elementary teacher, and my dad was a fireman. I’ve come a long way from Spokane, and the undergraduate research I did at Western laid a strong foundation for that success.”