Merck Group

What can ruin a wafer worth millions? A single particle of dust. In chip manufacturing, there’s simply no room for error. At such a microscopic scale, even the tiniest contaminant can mean millions in losses. That’s why chip factories require extreme cleanliness, precise temperature and humidity control, and highly controlled environments, far beyond what you’d find in a typical factory. In our latest Mythbusting tech episode, Holger and Romy take us inside the unique world of chip manufacturing and explain what makes these factories so different. Merck Electronics

We had fun putting Ultimus single-use bags to the test - so you don’t have to!

"Merck’s Fertility Benefit is so unique, so personal, and it's life-changing. We just feel like our family's complete now." — Ceri Ceri New has been working for Merck in the UK for more than 15 years. She and her wife Lily dreamed of growing their family, alongside Ceri's son, now 14, whom she adopted years ago. That dream felt out of reach. Then our fertility benefit changed everything. "It took the financial pressure off of us and gave us the support we needed to go through that very, very difficult journey." It took four transfers before Lily got a positive pregnancy test... and it landed on Ceri's birthday! And in May 2026, Florence and Matilda arrived. Our fertility benefit is available to all employees building a family, on their own terms, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or family structure. Welcome to the world, Florence and Matilda. Merck Healthcare Merck Life Science

You know that feeling when you’ve been stuck on a problem for way too long, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it just clicks? Our colleague Alexander V. Hopp knows this too well. He works as a Senior AI Research Scientist, where he and his colleagues use Bayesian Optimization and our Bayesian Back End “BayBE”, an internally developed, open source tool for solving and optimizing problems in the lab. BayBE is available to researchers and developers worldwide, enabling them to explore, use, and contribute to the technology beyond our own labs. It’s a good reminder that even when the final solution looks simple, getting there rarely is. A lot of thinking happens before you get to that moment when you finally say: “Ah. That was the problem.”

The most rewarding part of Sara Nogueira’s job? Working on something incredibly small that has the potential to create a massive impact for patients in the future. Sara took a moment to sit down with us and share what her team's research is all about: creating the right carriers to transport medicines where they're needed in your body.

Confession time: not every prompt works. Not every protein behaves as expected. And not every experiment leads to the result we hoped for. And in science, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A failed experiment, an unexpected result or a protein that simply doesn’t do what we hoped it would can be the starting point for something new. Stephanie Linker , Scientist in (Gen)AI for Proteins, works in the field of protein design and knows this well. Together with her colleagues, she explores the intersection of science, computation and creativity, designing molecular machines to cure patients and advance cutting-edge research. But great science isn’t about getting everything right the first time. It’s about asking the right questions, learning from what doesn’t work and trying again. And even with powerful AI tools, it still takes people to evaluate the results, challenge them and decide what comes next. Because behind every successful protein design, there are often many attempts that didn’t work. And that’s okay. That’s science.