Jeff Smith is an Associate Principal Scientist in the Vaccine Drug Product Development department at Merck based out of West Point, PA. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia and master’s degree in Biological Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University. He has spent most of his career working with siRNA or mRNA lipid nanoparticle drug delivery technologies. He has worked on clinical scale mixing and fill/finish LNP unit operations including Tee-mixing, ultrafiltration, sterile filtration, and vial filling. He also has experience screening a variety of lipids, lipid compositions and mRNA constructs for preclinical studies to investigate mRNA efficacy and the structure-function relationship of LNPs. Characterization of LNPs is also a passion of his, and he is always looking for better LNP biophysical characterization methods.