Candy is the Interim Project Manager for The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation and a Blavatnik Fellow. Trained as a medicinal chemist and former educator, in her role she is focusing on advancing technologies developed by Yale faculty and supporting the growth of the bioscience ecosystem in Connecticut. Prior to Yale, she was an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Southern Connecticut State University. As a tenured professor, Candy managed a research team focused on designing small molecule inhibitors to disrupt quorum sensing and biofilm formation in bacteria. She was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Scripps Research Institute studying preclinical vaccines against drugs of abuse, particularly targeting heroin, fentanyl, andoxycodone, and gaining expertise in vivo pharmacology. Candy received an NSF Fellowship during her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Southern California on the synthesis and characterization of fluorinated oligonucleotides. She earned a B.A. in Chemistry and B.S. in Biology from Pepperdine University. She has published 22 peer-reviewed journal articles and reviews