Nina C. Gonnella, Ph.D. is a Senior Associate Director at Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) where she heads a molecular structure and solid form informatics group, encompassing NMR Spectroscopy, Mass Spectrometry, Single Crystal X-ray and Computational Chemistry. She has extensive experience leading Pharmaceutical Research and Development groups spanning structural characterization /ligand screening and in-vitro and in-vivo biological studies. Nina received her Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at California Institute of Technology and Columbia University.

Prior to joining BI, Nina was group leader / manager at Novartis where she established and led an NMR group in areas that included, small molecule characterization, protein-ligand structure elucidation and in-vivo drug metabolism. She has advanced discovery research through application of structure based drug design and ligand based screening technologies to identify and optimize new lead series in both kinase and protease programs. Nina also held a position as adjunct professor at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of NJ (UMDNJ) (Graduate Program). She subsequently joined AbbVie as Group Leader of an NMR-LC-MS group with focus on protein-ligand binding studies. At BI, Nina has advanced BI projects through the development of innovative solutions. She championed solid state NMR as a company-wide Center of Expertise and initiated the acquisition of small molecule single crystal X-ray for global R&D. She introduced "state of the art" performance in integrating LC-NMR and micro-cryo probe NMR technology to enable elucidation of micro-scale degradation products and impurities. Nina initiated and led an international team in the development of powerful commercial ready in-silico structure elucidation programs that use quantum chemistry, density functional theory and probability theory to solve challenging chemical structures.

Nina co-founded, organized and chaired a new Gordon Research Conference in "Molecular Structure Elucidation." She has served on scientific review boards, published over 95 peer review journal articles, authored book chapters, taught courses and presented numerous national and international lectures.