Erika_Milczek

Erika Milczek

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Curie Co.

Erika Milczek, PhD is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Curie Co, an industrial biotech company that engineers enzymes to replace biocidal chemicals banned by retailers and regulatory bodies. Erika has over a decade of experience in developing enzymatic solutions to replace chemical technologies for pharmaceutical or industrial applications. Over her career, Erika has partnered with chemists, biologists, and engineers to deliver novel enzyme solutions to the marketplace, such as, biocatalytic platforms for selective therapeutic protein functionalization in early-stage drug discovery; chemocatalytic C-H hydroxylation platforms using catalysts and enzymes to generate late stage molecular diversity and API metabolites; and novel strategies for the directed evolution of enzymes requiring post-translational modifications. Before founding Curie Co, Erika was a Senior Process Chemist in the Biocatalysis Group at Merck & Co, where she replaced chemical manufacturing processes with enzymatic routes for commercial drug synthesis and early drug discovery. Erika completed her PhD at Emory University under the direction of Dale E. Edmondson and her postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University under the guidance of John T. Groves.

Erika has authored multiple book chapters, review articles, and papers in the field of organic chemistry and biocatalysis in addition to being an inventor on several granted patents. Erika’s work at Curie Co has been featured in Chemical and Engineering News Trailblazers’ Issue in 2020, and her work at Merck garnered Merck’s Special Achievement Award for Scientific Risk-Taking. Her service to the scientific community includes 3 terms, 2 terms as Chair, of Selection Committee for Alfred Bader Award in Bioinorganic and Bioorganic, American Chemical Society and service on the organizing committee of the Princeton ACS Organic Symposium.


Appearances