Karen M. Overbye received her Ph.D. from NYU Medical School in 1982.  
Her thesis was on the effects of topoisomerase I on gene expression 
and mutagenesis in Salmonella tyhphimurium.  As a NIH postdoctoral fellow
she continued her training at MIT in the laboratory of David Botstein 1982-1985.  
Her main focus of study was on gene expression, site directed mutagenesis 
and recombinational gene mapping in Sacharromyces cerevisiae.  
From 1985-1988 she joined a start-up Biotech company as a  Senior Research 
Scientist at  Biotechnica International, Cambridge, MA.  At Biotechnica 
her main focus was heterologous protein expression in Gram positive organisms.   
From 1988 to present Dr. Overbye has been a Research Fellow at Merck Research 
Laboratories.   Her focus has been on the discovery on novel antibacterial 
agents from both natural products and chemical libraries.