By Erwin Boschmann
She radiates what she believes, she is passionate, she gets along with everyone, and she enjoys sharing her passions with others. With her superb work ethic, you would think she would strive for the corner office, yet she is happy and fulfilled as a bench chemist for now in her career as a synthetic chemist at Corteva Agriscience, where she already has many accolades to her name. She not only is a good chemist, but, with energy to spare, is a professional handbell ringer, a church handbell choir director, former collegiate tennis player, a great communicator, studied Spanish and attended a mission trip to Guatemala, is married with two children, and when I send her an email she answers within minutes. She tries to make everyone she interacts with feel important and valued.
“…she is fantastic.”
“…accomplished both in and out of the lab.”
“…best-ever.”
“…she brings her A-game to the task.”
Lindsey grew up in Southern Indiana and received a scholarship to the University of Indianapolis where, according to Professor Katherine Stickney, she “received our top academic award each year of her attendance – the CRC Award for top freshman in Chemistry, the Claud Brooker Award for top sophomore in Chemistry, and the Robert M. Brooker Award for top junior in the entire math/sciences division of the university.” The short quotes at the top of this page are from persons speaking of her drive and accomplishments.
In 2010 Lindsey received her MS degree from IUPUI under the direction of Professors Marty O’Donnell and Bill Scott. Professor O’Donnell states “her research and development of new synthetic procedures and methodologies helped set the stage for the further development of IUPUI’s Distributed Drug Discovery (D3)* program.”
Geno Samaritoni, a fellow student with Lindsey at IUPUI, says “I was always impressed with her ability to multi-task and to do the various jobs extremely well. Whether it was performing in the classroom or the laboratory, in a professional bell choir, or competing at a collegiate level of tennis.”
Dr. William Scott, a D3* innovator, says of her graduate work at IUPUI: “she developed new combinatorial, solid-phase based methodology to synthesize multiple enzyme inhibitor candidates. Her work was always well thought out, and her experiments conducted with the precision and discipline original research requires. As a consequence, she was very productive and unexpected results were almost never due to flaws in experimental design or execution. They served as a launching pad for her R&D career that requires deeper analysis, new hypotheses, and subsequent experiments to lead to original discoveries.”
Research says that teaching itself does not make much difference in student outcome, but teachers do. Her high school organic chemistry teacher, Bob Rollings, was such a person who motivated her to continue in organic chemistry through his innovative high school curriculum that taught chemistry concepts of organic chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, plastics, and forensic chemistry. Lindsey’s academic strength helped her get a scholarship at the University of Indianapolis. She is a strong advocate for her alma mater, and, as a token of appreciation, developed a short D3 course from IUPUI and taught it at UIndy during her last year of graduate studies at IUPUI.
She has a couple of scholarly research papers, many oral and poster presentations throughout her career, but most of her intellectual work is represented in well over two dozen patents (standard procedure in industry) that captures her impact and discoveries at Corteva Agriscience.
Her advice to current students?
- Go after your passions and find enjoyment in them.
- Network with professors and industry colleagues. Set up interviews and job shadow them. It is so beneficial to make connections early as a student to help you find long-term success in a career.
- Have a strong work ethic and the achievements will come.
- Don’t worry too much about finding a job or knowing what career you will end up doing. Enjoy the ride and opportunities will come your way!
If you want to hitch your wagon to the stars, get to know Lindsey Horty.
* D3 trains global students in three areas of drug discovery (synthesis, computational analysis, and biological screening) while collectively they address the important challenge of discovering drug leads for neglected and current diseases (e.g., Cystic Fibrosis and Covid-19).