Lyndon Mitnaul remembers falling in love. "Around tenth grade I took my first chemistry class," he says, "and I fell in love with science."

Mitnaul is the youngest of seven children, the son of an African-American father and a Japanese mother. After his high school romance with chemistry, he studied the subject at Benedict College, a historically black school in Columbia, SC, and went on to earn a PhD in biological chemistry from Pennsylvania State University. Today he is a research fellow in the division of cardiovascular diseases at Merck Research Laboratories.

Though his path through academia and into industry sounds relatively straightforward, his approach to doing science is less regimented. "I think science is a very creative field," he says. "If you have a wild imagination you can go far in science."

Carl Sparrow, Mitnaul's supervisor and the director of lipid biochemistry at Merck Research Labs, says Mitnaul is especially good at taking the creative approach. He has a habit of "adapting existing technologies to something brand new," Sparrow says. "He'll suggest something, and I'll think it sounds crazy at first. Then he goes and does it and it works."

Mitnaul's current work involves identifying new targets for treating atherosclerosis, using silencing RNA as an "ultrahigh throughput" search tool. Mitnaul is focusing on potential targets in the liver. "We think as an industry we have a pretty good handle on knocking down LDL," he says. "Now we're looking for ways of boosting HDL." One possible strategy: a pill that could make a person's liver secrete apolipoprotein A1.

It's impossible to miss the enthusiasm in Mitnaul's voice as he discusses his work, although he's just as excited about his work outside the lab. Since joining Merck nine years ago, he's gotten involved with the Merck/United Negro College Fund Science Initiative, a program that provides scholarships to undergrad, graduate, and postgrad students every year. He also helps to recruit and mentor minority scientists. "He's really good at mentoring because he's so personable and very unselfish," Sparrow notes. "He just does it because the world will be a better place for it."

"I wish more people would get involved," says Mitnaul. "Science is very broad and very dynamic, and we really need a lot of different talents. If we can get more diverse thoughts into a laboratory, we'll advance science and improve everyday life."