Senior Scientist

I’m a remote worker, so my work is primarily from home. My job is completely computer‑based. Before I joined my company, they sent me a laptop, external monitor, headphones, and everything I needed to work entirely from home.

Hi, my name is Anna Murphy, and I’m a Senior Scientist at Certara Predictive Technologies. My work involves developing computational models of the human body, specifically the body of a pregnant woman. We do this to help guide drug dosing and to predict the concentration of a drug in the body after a pregnant woman or child takes medication.

I no longer work in academia (i.e. university), but Certara Predictive Technologies is a very academic organisation. Much of my work involves reading research papers, collecting data, and then analysing this data in large studies we call meta‑analyses. The findings from these analyses are used to build computational models of pregnant women. For example, I lead a project related to pregnancy and lactation, where we develop models of pregnant and breastfeeding women. These groups typically don’t take part in clinical trials, which are normally what doctors and scientists rely on to guide drug dosing. Because they are excluded, it’s especially important to build computational models that represent their physiology and can be used to guide safe and effective dosing.

For my role, you would need a Bachelor of Science degree in a relevant subject such as biological sciences, pharmacology, pharmacy, mathematics, chemistry, or similar.

I’m contracted for 35 hours per week, but there is a lot of flexibility. As a remote worker, I’m trusted to manage my own hours. For example, no one minds if I need to pick up my children from school, because there’s an understanding that I’ll make up the work later. That said, there is an implicit expectation that around key deadlines, you may need to work more than 35 hours to get everything done.

Although I work from home, there’s a strong emphasis on teamwork, enabled by software such as Microsoft Teams. The teams I work with are based all over the world, so we have to be mindful when scheduling meetings. I have colleagues in Australia and on the West Coast of America, which means coordinating across very different time zones.