About

How I got here

I joined Merck in 2015 as a reaction engineer on doravirine and spent my first seven years in the lab, scaling processes for small-molecule programs. From there I moved into data-rich experimentation and process modeling, and I now lead a bioprocess modeling team for biologics.

The group works with biologics process development on cell culture models, bioreactor scale-up and scale-down, mechanistic chromatography, and filtration, and builds the day-to-day applications scientists use to make process decisions. I still write a lot of the code myself.

Download the resume
Kevin E. Stone
01 Career

A decade of changing technical roles

Click a chapter for the fuller story.

2026 - Director, Process Modeling & Analytics DSCS Digital
  • Managed the team's transition through a department reorganization, guiding 11 colleagues into new roles and welcoming 9 colleagues from elsewhere at Merck as the group refocused on bioprocess drug-substance development.
  • Supervising five chromatography mechanistic models now cutting wet-lab resource needs by up to 30% and widening operating ranges by up to 50%.
  • Applying GARNET in upstream process characterization with biologics process development, where model-guided study designs support more robust process design and a higher success rate in characterization studies.
  • Building predictive scale-up tools for upstream bioreactors (kLa, pCO2, mixing, mass transfer) to de-risk tech transfer. pCO2 predictions have been used to guide gassing strategy for two biologics scale-ups.
  • Building a full-service bioprocess modeling group by hiring and retraining, with new work in scale-down modeling and in depth and TFF filtration modeling.
2025 - 2026 Director, Data-Rich Experimentation PR&D
  • Led a 13-person cross-modality team spanning small-molecule catalysis, biologics high-throughput experimentation, and modeling-algorithm development.
  • Grew Bayesian optimization adoption past 100 active users and about 50 optimizations a year, across more than 20 program steps. It has since grown to about 200 a year.
  • Developed GARNET, a neural-ODE modeling approach for upstream cell culture and fermentation that produces accurate, data-efficient models from limited experiments.
  • Applied GARNET to a separate pipeline program, improving titer 15% and harvest-day viability 20% through model-guided design in a lab proof of concept.
  • Modeled pH control with GARNET so the team could simulate candidate control strategies and choose a right-first-time characterization approach: under 40 experiments on a new program, against more than 100 on the program used as the benchmark.
  • Deployed a hybrid-model digital shadow at a biologics manufacturing site, supporting deviation analysis, troubleshooting, and real-time plant decisions.
  • Received the 2025 ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable Data Science & Modeling for Green Chemistry award for applying APO to make laboratory experimentation and manufacturing processes more resource-efficient.
2022 - 2025 Associate Principal → Principal Scientist PR&D Data-Rich Experimentation
  • Founded Algorithmic Process Optimization, bringing closed-loop Bayesian optimization into Merck's pipeline, and published obsidian, the department's first open-source codebase.
  • Onboarded 57 active users through a department hackathon and office hours, across 9 campaigns in small-molecule and biologics programs, cutting wet-lab resource use 25 to 75% per campaign.
  • Brought Bayesian optimization to mRNA in-vitro transcription, more than doubling the combined yield-and-purity objective across 11 parameters in 42 reactions.
  • Developed GARNET, a neural-ODE model line that moved from enzyme kinetics into upstream bioreactor modeling.
  • Received a 2024 ACS Division of Organic Chemistry Technical Achievement award.
2019 - 2022 Senior Scientist, Reaction Engineering CERD
  • Redesigned the molnupiravir API-forming reaction in four weeks while COVID restrictions limited lab time, with a more than 5x stability window and an order-of-magnitude lower impurity burden.
  • Became Merck's first lead engineer for synthetic electrochemistry and scaled an electrochemical oxidation to kilograms, which OPRD named its 2022 Outstanding Publication of the Year.
  • Built nitrosamine risk-assessment tools for 12 commercial products, saving more than $1.5M in outside testing.
  • Self-taught data science and Python while starting a master's degree part time, then began teaching the department.
2015 - 2019 Associate Scientist → Scientist Chemical Engineering R&D
  • Technical lead across synthetic steps and separations for doravirine, now approved as Delstrigo and Pifeltro.
  • Delivered 600+ kg of clinical-supply API during a pre-validation campaign in Ballydine, Ireland, and authored 150 pages of the NDA process reports.
  • Won back-to-back CERD Technical Achievement Awards in 2015 and 2016.
02 Recognition & Service

Awards

  • ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable, Data Science & Modeling 2025
  • ACS Division of Organic Chemistry, Technical Achievements 2024
  • OPRD Outstanding Publication of the Year 2022
  • ACS & EPA Green Chemistry Awards (doravirine, gefapixant, molnupiravir) 2018-22
  • Merck MS&T Innovation Award, runner-up 2021
  • Merck CERD Technical Achievement Award 2015-16

Invited talks

  • Keynote, Industrial Applications in Computing & Systems Technology (CAST) 2026
  • GARNET bioreactor digital twin, Recovery Series Modeling Workshop 2025
  • Algorithmic Process Optimization, ACS GC&E and Kinetic Modeling Roundtable 2025
  • Mechanism & kinetics in the development pipeline, Mettler Toledo webinar 2023
  • Belzutifan transfer hydrogenation, Mettler Toledo webinar 2022

Service

  • Programming Chair, AIChE PD2M Forum 2026
  • Session Chair, AIChE Student Conference on Pharma Chemical Engineering 2026
  • Track Chair, Predictive Scale-Up/Scale-Down, AIChE PD2M Forum 2024-25
  • Scientific Advisory Board, Technobis ReactALL 2024
  • Steering Committee, Mettler Toledo Kinetic Modeling Roundtable 2021-25
03 Beyond the lab

Away from work, I spend nearly all of my time with my wife and two daughters. We play in the pool, go to the beach, and visit family. I've played piano my whole life, and have been playing more classical piano as an adult. Liszt has taken up a lot of that time. I also listen to science, technology, and history podcasts, and a lot of comedy.

(Speaking of piano: there's a short one hiding on the home page. Click my name.)

A few examples from the work.

Read the case studies