Researching pharmaceutical ingredients and teaching chemistry lessons to engineers were just a part of Mia Havasi’s internship this summer.

A chemistry major who also minors in mathematics and leadership, Havasi ’19 worked at Merck & Co. Inc. in Danville as a chemistry technical operations intern.

As an intern, she designed experiments on the crystallization step of an active pharmaceutical ingredient synthesized for an antibiotic used during extreme infections.

“I enjoyed the fact that I was able to work on a lifesaving antibiotic.” Havasi says.

She also was able to learn more about specific pharmaceutical processes and instrumentation, beyond what is available at 体育买球.

At the end of the internship, Havasi completed a presentation on her research, which led to the site changing a step in their 20-year-old established crystallization process.

Throughout the internship, Havasi also taught chemistry lessons to onsite engineers who worked on the same process she was researching.

Havasi is considering continuing a three-year leadership program at Merck.

“Everyone was undeniably friendly and welcoming to my presence on site for the duration of summer,” she says.

She still wants to continue doing medicinal chemistry research after graduating and then hopes to go to graduate school to become a professor in organic chemistry or get her doctorate in pharmacology.