Melinda G. Axel Received her B.S. in Chemistry from Pace University in New York City, after which, she took a job at Merck & Co., doing basic research. Her intention was to use her experience there to help her decide what area of chemistry to do graduate work in. However, what she saw happening in industry convinced her that the most important discipline in chemistry and the life sciences was currently information science.
"During my time at Merck, there were a number of innovations in the way science is done. These advances were causing an information-explosion problem. The scientific information systems in use at the time were in no way designed to handle the volume and complexity of data generated by combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening, and automated gene-sequencing. I decided that what I really wanted to do was help create the systems to meet these needs. That was going to require an inter-disciplinary background.
Melinda began graduate work in information systems at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. in 1994. Her paper: "Data Warehouse for Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery Research" won the American Society for Information Science 1997 "Pratt-Severn Best Student Research Paper Award", and was presented this year at the 8th International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications in Toulouse France. She received her M.S.I.S. in June, 1997, with a G.P.A. of 4.00/4.00
She is currently job-hunting.
The ASIS Excellence in Writing Award honors excellence in student research and writing in the field of Information Science and is open to all graduate and undergraduate students in Drexel's College of Information Science and Technology. ASIS hopes you will join us in congratulating Ms. Axel on her achievement and in wishing her continued success.
For additional information on the Drexel Writing award, select this link.