Yvonne Connolly Martin

Yvonne Connolly Martin (born September 13, 1936) is an American cheminformatics and computer-aided drug design expert who rose to the rank of Senior Volwiler Research Fellow at Abbott Laboratories (now AbbVie). Trained in chemistry at Northwestern University, she became a leader in collaborative science aimed at discovering and developing bioactive molecules as therapeutic agents, with her contributions proceeding from application of methods to understand how descriptors of molecular shapes and physicochemical properties relate to their biological activity. She is the author of a seminal volume in cheminformatics, Quantitative Drug Design (2nd Ed., 2010), and has been the recipient of numerous awards in her field, including being named as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (2000), and receiving the Herman Skolnik Award (2009) from the American Chemical Society.

Early life and education

Yvonne Connolly was born to Irene and Elvert Connolly in 1936.

Martin received a bachelor's degree in 1958 from Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. She was the only woman to be a chemistry/zoology major in her year. From 1958 to 1960 she worked as a pharmacology assistant at Abbott Labs. She was awarded a predoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation for the years 1960–1963, attending Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. using computers to develop both 2D and 3D models capturing the chemical and biological properties of molecules. As an early proponent of computational chemistry and its use in drug design, she developed combinatorial chemistry and molecular graphics techniques and was involved in the development of software packages for pharmacophore analysis such as DISCO and ALADDIN. Her work has directly affected modern day drug discovery and supported the computer design of novel compounds. Editorially, she has worked on Perspectives in Drug Design and Discovery, QSAR: Annual Reports in Computational Chemistry, Journal of Computer-Aided Drug Design and QSAR & Combinatorial Science.

Awards and honors 2024, Alfred Burger Award in Medicinal Chemistry from the American Chemical Society 2017, Award for Computers in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research from the American Chemical Society 2005, Society for Biomolecular Screening Accomplishment Award American Crystallographic Association (ACA)

Personal life

Martin is married to William Brady Martin, a professor of chemistry at Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois, and has two children.