Monica Berrondo, Ph.D., is an entrepreneur, scientist, and software engineer. Her expertise lies in antibody structure-prediction and analysis, protein functional analysis, protein mutational analysis, and computational approaches to complex scientific problems. She is the founder and CEO of Macromoltek, a software company assisting biotech companies in improving research outcomes and reducing the cost associated with drug discovery through computational modeling. Dr. Berrondo began working on the drug discovery process in high school, when she used computational modeling to predict biological processes. She completed her undergraduate studies at RPI and a doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University, where she received the NIH’s prestigious Ruth L. Kirschstein fellowship to conduct her doctoral research studying the effects of mutations on protein structure and function. Dr. Berrondo has authored over 10 peer-reviewed scientific articles in journal such as Proteins, JMB, and PLoS One. Since moving to Austin, TX, she has already made her mark, being voted Austin Magazine’s Woman of the Year in 2013, winning Austin Startup Week’s Founder of the Year in 2015, pitching as a semi-finalist in the Circular Board pitch competition in Houston (April 2016), and being featured in a recent article in Inc. magazine (2016). In 2015 she helped expand the national Women In Bio organization to Central Texas by forming a chapter in Austin. She is now the chair of the Austin chapter and leads the group to cater monthly events to the local biotech community.
