Shelley Ann des Etages
Senior Principal Scientist

Pfizer Global Research and Development, Groton, CT

It isn't too often that you hear about someone who fell in love with her job while working on a Department of Sanitation-sponsored research project on how to use bacteria to more efficiently degrade garbage at a Staten Island landfill.

That's how Senior Pfizer Principal Scientist Shelley Ann des Etages found her passion for research-at a part-time job during her undergraduate years at Pace University. Today, her research is a bit less odiferous-as she works to identify biomarkers and targets to diagnose and treat disease in the Translational Biomarkers and Mechanistic Biology department.

Growing up, Shelley attended St. Joseph's Convent, an all-girls Catholic school in her native Trinidad and Tobago. She credits her early interest in science to teachers who made learning fun by doing things like creating crossword puzzles with science terms. Though it was a broken arm-and a kind orthopedic nurse-that led to her decision to go into medicine. She was four years old at the time, so while becoming a nurse translated to earning a PhD in microbiology and molecular genetics as an adult, it's clear that health and science were always part of her plan.

"Science is about being two or three years old again-and you keep asking 'why?' to try to find out more about your world," says Shelley.

The desire to question and to step out of preconceived notions and objectively analyze a situation are keys, she notes, to being a good scientist. Shelley's work in the lab has been acknowledged with three Pfizer Discovery Recognition Awards. In 2004, she won the Pfizer Global Research and Development Achievement Award. She was also invited to be a Visiting Scientist in the Connecticut BioBus Educational Program for fourth through 12th graders.