In 1668, the aspiring pharmacist Friedrich Jacob Merck acquired a pharmacy in Darmstadt, Germany. He laid the foundation for what today is a vibrant science and technology company with more than 50,000 employees in 66 countries. In 2018, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, celebrates its 350th anniversary. “Always Curious – Imagine the Next 350 Years” will be the anniversary

motto. “We are celebrating 350 years of curiosity,” says Stefan Oschmann, Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO. “This is the power that drives human progress. And curiosity challenges us to imagine the next 350 years.” The company holds the rights to the name and the trademark “Merck” internationally except for the United States and Canada, where it operates in the biopharma market as EMD Serono, in life science as MilliporeSigma, and in the specialty chemicals and high-tech materials business area as EMD Performance Materials.

Throughout its history, the company, which has been majority family-owned for 13 generations, has helped to advance science as we know it. In the 19th century, Emanuel Merck played a leading role in transforming pharmaceutics from a manual craft into a science. Today, the company offers high-quality, specialized technologies in the fields of Healthcare, Life Science, and Performance Materials. Its over 6,000 researchers are dedicated to discovering pioneering health solutions and new technologies. Total spending on research and development amounted to about €2 billion (US$2.4 billion) in 2016 alone.

The company’s Healthcare business sector works to improve and prolong patients’ lives. It is devoted to medicines that treat an array of illnesses and conditions, such as cancer, infertility, and neurological, immunologic, cardiovascular, and metabolic diseases. R&D investments focus on cutting-edge areas such as immuno-oncology—harnessing the immune system to attack tumors—which has the potential to revolutionize the way cancer is treated and help more patients in the future. It also aims to address unmet or under-supported needs in healthcare—for example, the company has

devoted significant resources to better understanding and treating multiple sclerosis. In 2016, it invested around

€1.5 billion (US$1.8 billion) in healthcare R&D, and its teams of over 2,500 experts work at research hubs in Darmstadt, Boston, Beijing, and Tokyo,

collaborating closely with biotech companies and universities.

The Life Science business sector is dedicated to collaborating with the global scientific community to solve the toughest problems in life science. Overall, the business sector offers more than 300,000 products to more than 1.5 million customers. As a global market leader in bioprocessing and equipment, the company is also one of the leading suppliers of laboratory chemicals, lab water instruments, and chromatography products. Biopharmaceutical manufacturers benefit from the company’s solutions to optimize virus filtration with low filter costs and fast processing times. Food manufacturers appreciate its products and services that continuously monitor the quality and safety of their goods. Individual scientists and institutions enjoy access to industry-leading ecommerce platform and supply chain capability (www.sigma-aldrich.com). The company is one of the leading suppliers of CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technology, which many believe will play a significant role in the treatment of disease and development of new drugs in the future.

The ideas and solutions of the company’s Perfor-mance Materials business sector are being used almost everywhere. The business sector develops innovative high-tech chemicals for sophisticated ap-plications. These include liquid crystals and OLEDs for displays, effect pigments for coatings and cosmetic products, specialty chemicals for the semiconductor industry, and functional materials for solar panels.

The company’s Performance Materials sector is the global market and technology leader in liquid crystals and the global market leader in effect pigments. Its teams are currently developing materials to make printable, flexible, and more energy-efficient displays. The business sector’s integrated circuit materials

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Boldly imagining the next 350 years

The company has more than 50,000 curious employees in 66 countries.

enable the development of smaller, more compact, and highly efficient microchips for the next generation of technical devices. And Performance Materials offers pigments and functional materials for coatings, plastics, foods, or cosmetics as well as functional materials for specialist applications. Furthermore, it is offering materials for organic photovoltaics (OPVs), which can complement conventional solar cells made of silicon. OPV materials are printed in extremely thin layers with “inks” on transparent plastic film cells. These cells are lightweight and flexible. They generate energy regardless of what angle of sunlight falls on their surface. And they can be glued onto a curved surface—which opens entirely new applications.

No matter the division, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, has made it a point to weave corporate responsibility and sustainability throughout the fabric of its business. Since 2007, it has partnered with the World Health Organization to help eliminate schistosomiasis. This neglected tropical disease affects more than 200 million people and claims an estimated 280,000 lives every year. To fight the disease, the company produces and donates praziquantel tablets. So far, it has donated 700 million tablets, which allowed for 120 million patients being treated, most of them school age children. This dedication has been recognized. In 2016, the Access to Medicine Foundation evaluated the company’s efforts to provide access to health and ranked the company fourth in its 2016 ATM Index. “I am very proud that we achieved a superb ranking in the ATM Index. Our long history has taught us that sustainable business success is always the result of responsible conduct.” says Oschmann, who joined the company as a member of the Executive Board in 2011 and was named Chairman and CEO in 2016.

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The company has more than 50,000 curious employees in 66 countries.

The values of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, GermanySince its founding in a storefront in 1668, the company’s organization has changed from a small pharmacy to a vibrant science and technology firm with more than 50,000 em-ployees in 66 countries. Today, it is ranked as a Top Employer by Science magazine. While the size of the company has changed, it has always tried to remain true to its core success factors, which today are represented in the six company values:

• Courage, which opens the door to the future

• Achievement, which makes entrepreneurial success possible

• Responsibility, which determines entrepreneurial actions

• Respect, which is the foundation of any partnership

• Integrity, which ensures credibility, and• Transparency, which makes mutual trust

possible.

So far, 120 million patients have been treated against schistosomiasis.

Over 6,000 company researchers are working on breakthrough technologies.

A compelling combination of curiosity and innovation

In its anniversary year, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, aims to further put curiosity to work for hu-man progress. The company’s business sectors are tackling tomorrow’s challenges today. That includes using sophisticated data analysis to fight diseases such as cancer, providing biotech companies and sci-entists with fully digital and fully connected devices, and developing the materials for tomorrow’s technolo-gies. At the same time, the company drives the devel-opment of new technologies between and beyond its current business sectors.

An example of the company’s commitment to being a technology leader is the Innovation Center. A modu-lar version was opened in April 2015 as a prototype to the Innovation Center, which is currently taking shape at the heart of the company’s corporate headquarters. Its opening will take place in spring 2018. The Innova-tion Center aims to develop entirely new businesses and technologies beyond the company’s current scope, bringing together people, technologies, and skills from different areas under one roof. So far, inter-nal collaborations have led to such diverse innovations as the development of a new, advanced lens that can be inserted into the eye after cataract surgery or to a project with a focus on indoor farming.

Multiple programs have been established at the Innovation Center to foster employee-driven ideation across business sectors and to spin in external ideas with the objective to build a strong innovation project portfolio. The Accelerator program supports early-stage startups with exceptional ideas and business models that have the potential to disrupt entire industries. Through the Accelerator, the company’s

scientists have the chance to get connected to these startups, learn from them and partner for innovation projects. The Innovation Think Tank enables technical professionals and experts from other functions to collaborate across business sectors. It serves as a launchpad to analyze future trends and technologies together with internal and external experts, research institutes, and companies. Based on their findings, the Think Tank teams are keen to develop new project ideas that will help the company succeed in the future. The global bottom-up initiative, Innospire, successfully crowd-sources innovative ideas from the company’s employees. Several thousand employees have participated over the past years, which has led to the development of new products.

A flagship program of the Healthcare business sec-tor is the Biopharma Innovation Cup, which offers a unique chance for top postgraduate students from all over the world to learn about R&D in the pharmaceuti-cal industry during a one-week summer camp. It has already won a series of innovation awards, such as the German Industry Innovation Award in 2015.

As the CEO of a science and technology company, Oschmann is an unwavering supporter of the scientific method. “Thanks to science, we are wealthier and healthier than ever before in human history yet at the same time we are facing countless challenges for which we need scientific solutions,” says Oschmann. “The importance of science must not be underestimated, especially today. It is a powerful tool to distinguish facts from misbeliefs, superstition, and pure nonsense—and is essential to achieve human progress.”

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The Performance Materials business sector is a leading supplier of display materials.In 2016, the company invested about €2 billion in research and development.

Looking forward: Curious2018In July 2018, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany,

will gather some of the world’s brightest scientists and most accomplished entrepreneurs for the Curious2018 – Future Insight Conference (http:// curious2018.com). These thought leaders will con- vene in Darmstadt to present their work and to ex-plore the future of science and technology, taking up humanity’s grand challenges associated with five themes: healthy lives, life reimagined (exploring the power of synthetic biology), materials and solutions, vibrant digital (looking at the power of in silico), and bright future (illuminating novel ways of collaborating). Participants will discuss opportunities to push the fron-tiers of knowledge even further, with game-changing technologies and imminent breakthroughs that will make significant impacts on the future of humanity. The conference will also include roundtable discus-sions organized in collaboration with Science/AAAS and with Springer Nature.

Curious2018 will also be the birthplace of the Future Insight Prize. The prize aims to encourage visionary thinking for the development of products of global importance for humankind and to trigger curiosity and creativity on how to make this a reality. The prize will be awarded annually from 2019 to honor people whose work has enabled significant progress toward bringing a theoretical concept to reality, either through groundbreaking science or developing key enabling technologies. Details will be revealed at the Curious2018 conference.

But that’s not all. Immediately following Curious2018, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, will conduct a special large-scale Anniversary Edition of its Innovation Cup, broadening its reach to include materials and solutions, life science/synthetic biology,

healthcare/drug discovery, and also special teams on digitalization and new ways of working together. Now in its eighth year, the program supports postdocs and students pursuing STEM Ph.D.s or MBA degrees with biotech backgrounds in a remarkable experience designed to enhance their professional development. The 2018 Innovation Cup will host 75 top talents who are chosen via a highly selective application process and brought to the company’s headquarters to participate in the week-long “Innovation Summer Camp.” Collaborating in small teams, the participants gain insights into essential aspects of the pharmaceutical and chemical industry including R&D, the product development process, business and technical concerns, and career options and pathways. A highlight of the Innovation Cup is an exercise in which teams of early career researchers write business plans for products or services in fields such as therapies and diagnostics, synthetic biology, and material science, and present them to a jury consisting of the company’s executives, external experts, and investors for a chance to win a €20,000 (US$24,000) first prize.

Finally, in partnership with Curious2018, AAAS and Science will present a webinar featuring a roundtable of leaders from across industry and academia, ad-dressing critical technology breakthroughs past and present, with a perspective of what new technological advances we can expect in the not-so-distant future.

Apply for Innovation Cup 2018In 2018, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, will celebrate its 350th anniversary. On this occasion, the company will conduct a special anniversary edition of its Innovation Cup, covering the fields of healthcare, synthetic biology, mate-rial solutions, and digitalization as well as new ways of collaboration. The Innovation Cup offers a great opportunity for postdocs and postgraduate students to learn more about the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. Teams will work to advance a novel idea into a convincing business plan during a one-week summer camp, with coaching from experienced professionals. The winning team receives a shared prize of €20,000 (US$24,000), and top teams in each category receive €5,000 (US$5800). The Innovation Cup 2018 will take place near Frankfurt, Germany (July 16–24, 2018). Travel, accommodation, and food expenses will be covered.

APPLY NOW: Worldwide (excl. USA and Canada): innovationcup.merckgroup.comUSA and Canada: innovationcup.emdgroup.com

All Innovation Cup participants will also attend the Curious2018 – Future Insight Conference (curious2018.com).

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