Manuel Alves Falcão
Ph.D. Pharmaceutical & Materials Scientist
I've never stayed in one lane. Give me a hard problem — chemistry, process, code — and I'll find a way through it.
I design analytical methods and the laboratory workflows around them — chromatography-led (HPLC, UPLC, GC-MS), built for accuracy, throughput, and compliance. I lead by solving the problem at the bench first, then building the process so a team can run it without me.
Today I work on analytical strategy and method development for drug substances and products, and bring in AI-assisted in silico tools where they genuinely speed up risk assessment — without turning the chemistry into a black box.
Currently, I'm the founder and principal scientist of MolWard, a cheminformatics company where I develop in silico tools for degradation-pathway prediction and ICH M7 hazard assessment, and provide method-development and validation consulting to pharmaceutical and CRO partners.
Before that, I worked across industry, academia, and innovation — leading analytical R&D and stability programs in pharma, auditing research units and CROs for a national innovation agency, and developing drug-delivery systems as a visiting researcher at UCLA. My background runs from natural-products and essential-oil analysis, through nanoparticle drug delivery, to pharmaceutical method development.
I like talking with teams developing methods for volatile and non-volatile analysis, impurity profiling, and stability — especially ones building or scaling an analytical lab. If that's you, I'd enjoy the conversation even if there's no immediate project in it.
Working languages: English & Portuguese (native/bilingual), Spanish (limited working).
Founded a cheminformatics company delivering in silico degradation prediction and ICH M7 toxicological screening, validated against a large empirical Ames dataset. Provide analytical method development and validation consulting to pharmaceutical and CRO partners — guiding validation master plans, forced-degradation studies, and impurity profiling to ICH standards, and advising client teams on drug substance and product method development.
Audited external research units, CDMOs, and CROs across drug discovery, clinical trials, and vaccine development — verifying quality-management systems and data integrity to inform accreditation and funding decisions, and performing technical due diligence across a broad project portfolio.
Designed in vitro and ex vivo ophthalmic drug-product performance models — resulting in patent filings — and developed and validated bioanalytical methods for drug quantification in complex biological matrices, collaborating across a cross-functional research team.
Led analytical method validations and stability programs under full Validation Master Plan compliance — securing regulatory approval of new products. Directed a stability program spanning accelerated, long-term, photostability, and in-use studies, resolving OOS/OOT investigations and CAPA, and served as R&D's data-integrity focal point.
Designed and characterized hybrid glycopolymer–PLGA nanoparticles for targeted vinblastine delivery, synthesizing glycopolymers via ATRP and RAFT and contributing analytical characterization for melanoma-treatment research.
Developed and validated supercritical-fluid separation methods for alkaloid purification and natural-products analysis, sustained a multi-year research program through grant writing, mentored graduate researchers, and published across collaborative projects.
Developed and scaled analytical methods and high-throughput assays for molecule selection in Montevideo, Uruguay, accelerating product-development screening and contributing to peer-reviewed research on volatile-compound bioactivity.
Performed quality control of active pharmaceutical ingredients and raw materials across solid, semi-solid, and homeopathic formulation labs, and managed stock integrity within a compounding-pharmacy QC laboratory — the hands-on start of a career spent making sure a method, or a batch, can be trusted.
Developed separation and purification methods for essential-oil terpenes — work that helped launch commercially available body-care products.
MolWard — Founder & Principal Scientist
An enterprise cheminformatics platform that unifies deterministic forced-degradation profiling with mathematically validated, dual-methodology ICH M7 toxicological scoring — plus hands-on method development and validation consulting for pharmaceutical and CRO teams.
- In silico degradation pathways & MS fragmentation profiles
- ICH M7 hazard assessment — Expert Rule + Statistical QSAR
- FDA CPCA nitrosamine scoring & NDSRI screening
- Transparent chemistry — no black-box predictions
I like talking with teams building or scaling an analytical lab — on method development, validation strategy, stability programs, or where in silico tools genuinely help. If that's you, send a note.