Tim Cernak

Tim Cernak was born in Montreal, Canada in 1980. He obtained a B.Sc. in Chemistry from University of British Columbia Okanagan and there studied the aroma profile of Chardonnay wines. Following PhD training in total synthesis with Prof. Jim Gleason at McGill University, Cernak was a FQRNT Postdoctoral Fellow with Tristan Lambert at Columbia University. From 2009–2018, Cernak worked with the Medicinal Chemistry team at Merck Sharp & Dohme in Rahway and Boston. In 2018, Dr. Cernak joined the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as an Assistant Professor. The Cernak Lab is exploring an interface of chemical synthesis and AI for drug discovery. Cernak is developing research in conservation chemistry, where chemists engage in preventing species extinction. He has received fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan, Kavli Foundation, Anchor Point, Hypothesis Fund and Schmidt Futures Foundations. He has served on Scientific Advisory Boards for Scorpion Therapeutics, The Open Reaction Database, the Dundee Drug Discovery Unit, and the Acceleration Consortium Medicinal Chemistry Self-Driving Lab. Cernak is a coFounder of Iambic, Inc. He is a Research Fellow of Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.