Job Description
The Future Talent Program features internships that last up to 12 weeks and will include one or more projects. These opportunities in our Research and Development Division can provide you with great development and a chance to see if we are the right company for your long-term goals.
Our Company's Nonclinical Drug Safety (NDS) helps advance high quality drug candidates into development by defining the non-clinical safety and selectivity of lead compounds. NDS employees evaluate the preclinical toxicity of drug development candidates, provide mechanistic understanding of drug-induced toxicity, and assess implications for human safety.
Our Computational Toxicology group integrates toxicological expertise, data science, and AI/ML, including emerging Large Language Model (LLM) applications, to improve the safety assessment of drug candidates, accelerate decision-making, and reduce reliance on animal testing. We have multiple openings for highly motivated summer interns to join our Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) Computational Toxicology team. The successful candidate will work on innovative projects applying machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and LLMs to multimodal toxicology datasets, spanning genomics, metabolomics, chemistry and structured in vivo and in vitro data as well as unstructured biomedical literature.
Responsibilities:
Build and evaluate predictive models for toxicity risk and mechanistic hypotheses generation using multimodal pharmaceutical data.
Develop NLP/LLM pipelines (prompting, fine-tuning, RAG) to mine unstructured reports and literature.
Prepare dashboards (e.g., Streamlit) and present results to scientists and leadership.
Education
Pursuing BS/MS/PhD in Computational Science, Data Science, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology/Chemistry, Computational Linguistics, or related field.
Required Experience and Skills
Must be proficient in Python; solid with statistics/ML and data wrangling (pandas/SQL).
Must have hands-on with scikit-learn and at least one deep learning framework (PyTorch or TensorFlow).
Must be comfortable with Git/GitHub and reproducible workflows.
Must have experience with NLP and LLM tools (e.g., Hugging Face, spaCy, NLTK) and techniques such as prompt design, fine-tuning, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
Must be available for a period of 12 weeks, beginning June 2026.
Location: West Point, PA
Please note that this position may be closed before the posted end date or may remain open longer, at the discretion of the company.
Under New York City, Colorado State, Washington State, and California State law, the Company is required to provide a reasonable estimate of the salary range for this job. Final determinations with respect to salary will take into account a number of factors, which may include, but not be limited to the primary work location and the chosen candidate's relevant skills, experience, and education.
Salary range:
The salary range for this role is $39,600.00-$105,500.00 USD
FTP2026
RL2026
Current Employees apply HERE (https://wd5.myworkday.com/msd/d/task/1422$6687.htmld)
Current Contingent Workers apply HERE (https://wd5.myworkday.com/msd/d/task/1422$4020.htmld)
US and Puerto Rico Residents Only:
Our company is committed to inclusion, ensuring that candidates can engage in a hiring process that exhibits their true capabilities. Please click here (https://survey.sogosurvey.com/r/aCdfqL) if you need an accommodation during the application or hiring process.
As an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, we provide equal opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. As a federal contractor, we comply with all affirmative action requirements for protected veterans and individuals with disabilities. For more information about personal rights under the U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment laws, visit:
EEOC Know Your Rights (https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/22-088\EEOC\KnowYourRights\10\20.pdf)
EEOC GINA Supplement?
We are proud to be a company that embraces the value of bringing together, talented, and committed people with diverse experiences, perspectives, skills and backgrounds. The fastest way to breakthrough innovation is when people with diverse ideas, broad experiences, backgrounds, and skills come together in an inclusive environment. We encourage our colleagues to respectfully challenge one another's thinking and approach problems collectively.
Learn more about your rights, including under California, Colorado and other US State Acts (https://www.msdprivacy.com/us/en/CCPA-notice/)
U.S. Hybrid Work Model
Effective September 5, 2023, employees in office-based positions in the U.S. will be working a Hybrid work consisting of three total days on-site per week, Monday - Thursday, although the specific days may vary by site or organization, with Friday designated as a remote-working day, unless business critical tasks require an on-site presence.This Hybrid work model does not apply to, and daily in-person attendance is required for, field-based positions; facility-based, manufacturing-based, or research-based positions where the work to be performed is located at a Company site; positions covered by a collective-bargaining agreement (unless the agreement provides for hybrid work); or any other position for which the Company has determined the job requirements cannot be reasonably met working remotely. Please note, this Hybrid work model guidance also does not apply to roles that have been designated as "remote".
San Francisco Residents Only: We will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment in compliance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance
Los Angeles Residents Only: We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles' Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance
Search Firm Representatives Please Read Carefully
Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC, Rahway, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.
Employee Status:
Intern/Co-op (Fixed Term)
Relocation:
No relocation
VISA Sponsorship:
No
Travel Requirements:
No Travel Required
Flexible Work Arrangements:
Not Applicable
Shift:
Not Indicated
Valid Driving License:
No
Hazardous Material(s):
N/A
Required Skills:
Biological Sciences, Biological Sciences, Clinical Research, Cloud Data Catalog, Communication, Computational Linguistics, Computational Sciences, Computer Science, Data Analysis, Database Management, Data Science, Data Security, Data Visualization, Data Wrangling, Decision Making, Detail-Oriented, Environmental Toxicology, Event Planning, Immunochemistry, Innovation, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), Metabolomics, Metagenomics, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Pandas (Software) {+ 5 more}
Preferred Skills:
Job Posting End Date:
11/3/2025
*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.
Requisition ID: R362134
