myCHOICE BSD Alumni Career Forum & 10th Anniversary Celebration
Friday, November 15th, 2024
The myCHOICE-BSD Alumni Career Forum is an annual event sponsored by myCHOICE, UChicagoGRAD, and the University of Chicago Medical & Biological Sciences Alumni Association. The Career Forum provides the opportunity for graduate students and postdoctoral scientists to engage with alumni from a broad range of careers to share their perspectives and advice through panel discussions, themed round table discussions, and informational interviews. Following the Forum, join us for the 10th Anniversary Celebration with food, drinks, and networking.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Panel Discussion: How to Beat the Bots
1:00 p.m. − 2:00 p.m.
Alumni share their perspectives on navigating a job search, networking, the interview process in their field, how they leveraged their first job to turn into their second, and what are the next steps of their professional evolution.
Ask-an-Alum Round Table Discussion
2:15 p.m. − 3:15 p.m.
Alumni mentors will host conversations related to breaking into their career field. You’ll have the opportunity to join two consecutive 30′ roundtable discussions. Be ready with questions!
One-on-One Informational Interviews
3:30 p.m. − 5 p.m.
Meet with up to three alumni mentors for 25′ one-on-one conversations (advanced registration required).
After completing your registration, you will be sent a link to sign up for one-on-ones.
Sign up will be open October 21st through November 6th, 11:59 p.m, or until interview spots are all full.
The Forum provides a great opportunity for us to learn from and network with alumni who are really willing to help PhD students with career development. -Attendee 2023
myCHOICE 10th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
6:00 p.m. − 8:00 p.m.
Join us after the Forum to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of myCHOICE with an evening of food, drinks, and networking with alumni and local professionals. We’re looking forwarded to celebrating with you!
Meet Our Career Forum Alumni Mentors
All alumni will host round-table discussions and offer one-on-one meetings during the latter half of the afternoon.
Finance &
Business Development
Industry
Research
Panel Discussion: How to Beat the Bots
Friday, November 15th, 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Panelists
Mike Burrows
Burrows Consulting
PhD’15, Immunology
After completing his PhD in immunology at the University of Chicago in 2015, Dr. Burrows joined Aspire Capital where he held the position of Vice President, Public Equity Life Sciences. Dr. Burrows has recently transitioned to independent consulting for investment funds and biotechnology companies to focus on earlier stage technologies, company formation and financing. Prior to UChicago he was in R&D at several early stage startups which helped expose him to the wide variety of career paths that are open for scientists. At UChicago this exploration involved several programs including: myCHOICE, the UChicago Biotech Association, the Chicago Innovation Mentors fellows program, and the Innovation Fund Associate program.
Anna Chen
Associate Director of Strategic Planning @ Abbott Laboratories
SM’16, PhD’18 Molecular Metabolism & Nutrition
Dr. Chen is a seasoned leader who is passionate about working at the intersection of biomedical innovation and commercial execution. Anna currently serves as associate director of strategic planning at Abbott Laboratories where she drives investment decisions, long-range planning, and cross-functional strategic initiatives across a $5 billion Diabetes portfolio. Previously, she held roles in new product introduction and business development at Guardant Health, where she drove the product launch of a novel oncology diagnostic platform and secured high-value partnerships. She started her career at McKinsey & Company, executing healthcare due diligences for BioPharma, MedTech, and Payor clients. Chen holds a PhD. from the University of Chicago in Molecular Metabolism. In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering, hiking, and learning how to garden.
Karyl Kopaskie
Principal @ Sg2
BA’07 Physics, PhD’14 Microbiology
Dr. Kopaskie is a principal at Sg2, a Vizient company, and leads a team of service line and health equity strategy experts. She and her team develop future focused healthcare strategy for hospitals and healthcare organizations across the country, with a focus on women’s health and pediatrics. As a thought leader helping health systems advance health equity and anticipate the future of care delivery, Kopaskie challenges Sg2’s clients to develop evidence-based and data-driven strategy. She also co-leads innovative forecasting for healthcare utilization, focusing on capturing market level impacts of social determinants. In 2021, she was accepted into the Disparities Leadership Program, offered through the Disparities Solutions Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, for her work on health equity perspectives for Vizient and its members. Kopaskie earned her doctorate studying Yersinia species under the mentorship of Dr. Olaf Schneewind at the University of Chicago.
Dan Leventhal
Director, Head of Immunogenicity @ Xaira
SM’13, PhD’16 Cancer Biology
Dr. Leventhal is currently working as Director, Head of Immunogenicity at Xaira Therapeutics, a startup based in the San Francisco Bay area. At Xaira, Leventhal is helping to create new methodologies and approaches to developing protein-based therapeutics using computational modeling and artificial intelligence. Prior to Xaira, Leventhal worked at Generate Biomedicines where he also focused on computational approaches to protein design and Synlogic where he created and evaluated immune-modulating and engineered strains of bacteria to treat cancer and autoimmunity. Leventhal has degrees in translational sciences and cancer biology from the University of Chicago where he worked in the laboratory of Peter Savage, PhD, studying the development and antigenic specificities of tumor associated regulatory T-cells. During his time at the University of Chicago, Leventhal was heavily involved in the University of Chicago Biotechnology Association, Chicago Innovation Mentors, and myCHOICE.
Ali Yesilkanal
Senior Scientist, Computational Biology @ Bristol Myers Squibb
AB’12, SM’16, SM’19, PhD’19, Cancer Biology
Dr. Yesilkanal started his scientific career as an experimental cancer researcher at the University of Chicago where he investigated how cancer cells metastasize and developed anti-metastatic treatment strategies for breast cancer patients. During his PhD training, he not only honed his skills in bench science but also focused on building a bioinformatics skill set to leverage high-throughput cancer data. After receiving his PhD in Cancer Biology, he decided to pursue a completely computational career path and joined a cancer genomics laboratory to study large-scale chromosomal aberrations in cancers. Upon completing his post-doctoral training in 2022, he made the transition into industry and joined the pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). He currently works as a computational biologist in target ideation teams and contributes to early discovery efforts at BMS along with bench scientists, statisticians, medical scientists, and programmers.
Aparna Vasanthakumar
Senior Principal Scientist @ AbbVie
Postdoc’15, Medicine
Dr. Vasanthakumar is a senior principal research scientist in the Genomics Research Center at AbbVie where she directs pharmacogenomic and exploratory genomic studies in the Neuroscience, Specialty Medicine, and Virology spaces. She was the 2019 chair of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) Private Partners Scientific Board (PPSB), which brings together for-profit and non-profit institutions that provide advice from the industry scientific perspective on the ADNI consortium. She continues to lead the ADNI methylation working group, overseeing the planning and analysis of DNA methylation data from ADNI subjects. She also served as the programing chair in the International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment (ISTAART) Alliance of Women Researchers (AWARE) Professional Interest Area from 2020-2022. Before joining AbbVie in 2015, Vasanthakumar was a research assistant professor at The University of Chicago where she studied the impact of epigenetics in hematopoietic stem cell development.
Additional Alumni Offering One-on-One Informational Interviews
Friday, November 15th, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. (25-minute intervals, by advance registration only)
All alumni will be available for one-on-one informational interviews.
Register for the Forum to receive an invitation to sign up for meetings with specific individuals.
Careers in Finance & Business Development
Thelma Tennant
Assistant Vice President, Corporate Engagement @ UChicago
PhD’03, Cancer Biology
Thelma works with University stakeholders and companies to build partnerships to support and enhance the University’s missions in research and education, and to accelerate the translation of new discoveries. Prior to her current role, she directed business development and licensing for the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, where she managed intellectual property transactions, including licensing new university technologies to commercial partners, and enabled research collaborations with companies. Thelma has been with the University’s technology transfer office for over 14 years, and has worked with many researchers and companies to help translate innovations from the lab to the marketplace, and to build productive research relationships. Thelma holds a PhD in Cancer Biology from The University of Chicago, and received her BA in Biology and English from the University of Virginia.
Dr. Minter joined William Blair in October 2017 and is a senior analyst covering biotechnology companies, specializing in the neurosciences and genetic medicines. He completed a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Chicago in the department of neurobiology working on the impact of the microbiome on Alzheimer’s disease. He earned both a PhD—specializing in neuropharmacology—and a bachelor’s of biomedical science degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Gail Farfel
Biotech Consultant @ G. Meredith Consulting
PhD’93, Neuropsychopharmacology
Dr. Farfel is a consultant to investors and life science companies for development of products for neurological disorders and rare diseases. She previously served as CEO of ProMIS Neurosciences, a company developing antibodies to treat neurodegenerative disorders resulting from protein misfolding, and has held executive positions at Zogenix, Marinus Pharmaceuticals, and Novartis Pharmceuticals. She is currently a director on the boards of Durect Corporation, the Dravet Syndrome Foundation, and the American Society for Experimental Neurotherapeutics. Farfel began her career in pharmaceutical drug development at Pfizer Inc., directing programs through all stages of clinical development and regulatory submissions. She holds a PhD in Neuropsychopharmacology from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Virginia.
Lari de Wet
Manager @ Blue Matter Consulting
SM’20, PhD’20, Cancer Biology
Dr. de Wet has been in life science consulting for almost 5 years, with expertise across diverse therapeutic areas and a focus on commercial and medical strategy, as well as launch readiness / go-to-market planning. Prior to consulting, she graduated with her PhD in the Cancer Biology program, where her research focused on mechanisms of drug resistance and metastasis in castration-resistant prostate cancer.
Jeff Goodenbour
Principal @ LifeSci Consulting
PhD’09, Human Genetics
Dr. Goodenbour has nearly a decade of experience in biopharma consulting, utilizing analytical rigor, creative analysis, and strategic insight to help clients advance commercial strategy in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Goodenbour was a founding consultant at Corsica Life Sciences, which in January 2022 merged to become LifeSci Consulting, where he is currently a principal. He leverages experience across therapeutic areas and the product lifecycle and focuses on early commercial strategy for clients in the rare disease and gene therapy spaces.
Ashley Sample
Director @ ThinkGen
SM’16, PhD’17, Cancer Biology
Dr. Sample has more than six years of experience generating custom research solutions for clients in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Her broad experience spans qualitative and quantitative primary and secondary market research, competitive intelligence, communications, and strategic brand planning. She has worked across many therapeutic categories, with a particular focus on oncology and autoimmune diseases. She has also worked extensively in dermatology, infectious disease, neuroscience, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, companion diagnostics, medical devices, and cell therapies. Based in Chicago, Sample holds a PhD in Cancer Biology from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from Michigan State University.
Careers in Communications
Patrick Cullinan
Vice President @ Bluebird Bio
PhD’04, Pathology
Dr. Cullinan is an experienced Regulatory and Clinical Trial professional with over 20 years of experience leading medical writing, clinical trial transparency and regulatory submission teams across a range of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Most recently, he has have been VP of regulatory science at Bluebird Bio, supporting and leading teams that successfully achieved the approval of three gene therapy products in the both the US and EU. Previously, he worked for 14 years at Takeda in several roles including leadership roles in Science Advocacy, Clinical Trial Transparency (including data sharing), Medical Writing, and Digital Innovation. Cullinan has worked extensively with consortia and think-tanks and non-profits on a range of projects, including the development of large data sharing platforms and white papers on diversity, inclusion, and equity in clinical trials and improved sharing of clinical trial results with participants. He received his bachelor’s in cell biology and molecular genetics from University College Dublin and was proud to receive a PhD in Pathology from the University of Chicago with a focus on Immunology.
Malcolm Nason
Chief Commercial Officer @ Buckle Therapeutics
PhD’04, Neurobiology
Dr. Nason is an innovative leader, developing the commercial marketing, medical affairs, and market access programs for the leaders in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, including products in the MAT, migraine, and immune spaces. He received his PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Chicago and his MBA from Penn State.
Mohana Ray
Scientific Director @ HDMZ
Postdoc’19, Cancer Biology
Dr. Ray is Scientific Director at HDMZ, a communications agency with expertise in life sciences and healthcare. She received her PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ray went on to become a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago where she led genomic studies for the Chicago Pancreatic Cancer Initiative. During her time at the University of Chicago, Ray was co-chair of the BSD Postdoctoral Association Seminar Committee. Ray is also a member of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Natasha Wadlington
Manager of Quality and Training @ SB Pharma Solutions
PhD’13 Neurobiology
Dr. Wadlington is the manager of quality and training at SB Pharma Solutions. Her services include writing scientific and regulatory documents such as grants, journal articles, standard response letters, AMCP dossiers, and continuing education materials. Wadlington also provides quality control for SB Pharma assets and ensures SB Pharma produces high quality deliverables. Prior to joining the SB Pharma Solutions team, she used pharmaceutical client assets to create scripts for online content online and e-mail newsletters for healthcare professionals. She trained to perform internal, brand, and MLR-level edits to those scripts while liaising with other departments (production, editorial, account management, etc.) to ensure the quality of the client deliverables.
Careers in Policy & Regulatory Affairs
Jennifer McPartland
Vice President of Mission @ G2G Ventures, PBC d/b/a Beautycounter
PhD’08, Microbiology
Dr. McPartland is the vice president of mission for Beautycounter, a beauty and personal care brand whose mission is to get safer products into the hands of everyone. Prior to joining Beautycounter, McPartland advanced policy, market, and science solutions to protect human health and the environment from harmful chemical exposures at the Environmental Defense Fund. She serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Environmental Health Matters Initiative and the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Board of Scientific Counselors. She was a congressional science policy fellow in the office of Congresswoman Diana DeGette. McPartland earned her PhD at the University of Chicago in Dr. Rothman-Denes’s lab, and her bachelor of science in biochemistry from the University of Virginia.
Sapana Vora
Senior Professional Staff Member @ United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security
SM’13, PhD’14, Cancer Biology
Dr. Vora is a senior professional staff member on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (Majority). Previously, she served in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) as a AAAS science and technology policy fellow and deputy team chief from September 2015–August 2021. From August 2021–May 2023, Vora worked for the U.S. Department of Defense where she continued to cover CTR and WMD nonproliferation issues as a senior bio analyst. Dr. Vora is an active myCHOICE volunteer and is passionate about mentoring BSD trainees and post-docs throughout their career exploration process.
Ketrija Touw
Senior Regulatory Affairs Specialist @ Abbott
Postdoc’16 Medicine
Dr. Touw is a regulatory affairs manager at Abbott where she develops and implements regulatory strategies for in vitro diagnostics products. She has worked on global submissions for infectious diseases as well as precision medicine to match therapies for patients based on specific oncologic biomarkers. In her role she has navigated complex regulatory landscape in US, EU and globally, ensuring that diagnostic products meet safety and efficacy standards to serve the needs of patients. Prior to regulatory role she held a senior scientist position at Abbott where she supported molecular diagnostics product development. She earned her PhD at Indiana University and did her postdoctoral research at University of Chicago where she studied host-microbe interactions and their implications for treating gastrointestinal diseases.
Careers in Biopharma Industry Research
Jennifer Allocco
Scientist I @ Adimab
PhD’23 Immunology
Jen is an alumna of the Alegre Lab and UChicago Committee on Immunology, 2023. Her thesis work focused on the roles of memory and antigen persistence in transplantation tolerance. Since graduating, she’s moved to New Hampshire, where she works at Adimab, LLC, a leader in the discovery of therapeutic antibodies. In addition to science, Jen can usually be found hiking, at the gym, sampling local breweries, or watching Survivor.
Jack Degner
Principal Research Scientist II @ AbbVie
PhD ’12 Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology
Dr. Degner is the Head of Genomics Data Science at AbbVie, working within the Pharmacogenetics and Pharmacogenomics division where he applies his academic training in bioinformatics, statistics, and genetics to understanding the genetic basis of disease and inter-individual variation in drug response across a wide range of therapeutic areas. He completed his Ph.D. in 2012 in the Committee on Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology under Dr. Jonathan Pritchard where his research focused on identifying regulatory regions in the human genome and on understanding the molecular mechanisms that link DNA-level variation to heritable variation in gene expression. He spent 2 years as a postdoc in Eileen Furlong’s group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany and returned to Chicago for one more year to finish research as a postdoc in Matthew Stephens’ lab. His postdoctoral work used D. melanogaster to better understand how pluripotent embryonic cells become specified into distinct cell types and to illuminate the mechanisms through which natural DNA variation leads to subtle differences between individuals in this developmental progression.
Colles Price
Scientific Associate Director @ Takeda
PhD ’15 Cancer Biology
Dr. Price is a scientist with over ten years experience in cancer biology and oncology. As a scientist Dr. Price has been using functional genomics as a tool for cancer target discovery leading to novel drug therapies. He is skilled in multiple in vitro and in vivo molecular approaches and assays and has extensive knowledge in oncogenic signaling pathways, epigenetics, genomics, immunology and computational analysis.
Peter Yang
Senior Scientist @ ReAx Biotechnologies
SM’22, PhD’22, Cancer Biology
Dr. Yang specializes in bioinformatics and molecular biology. His current work includes analyzing multi-omics data and supporting drug discovery projects. He earned his PhD in Cancer Biology from The University of Chicago, where he also contributed to SARS-CoV-2 research. He has experience across several collaborative research projects and is committed to advancing scientific discovery.
Courtney Stepien
Analytics Manager @ Enova International
SM’12, PhD’16 Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Stepien has worked in data science at a small business and consumer lending fintech company for roughly six years. She is a part of a group of eleven data scientists (five of those direct reports on her team) that supports machine learning and data science projects for partners in the finance, accounting, capital markets, and contact center/collections departments. She has supported projects that forecast how much money their loan portfolio will make or lose (complementary “glass half full” vs “glass half empty” approaches), projects that determine which customers their contact center should reach out to, and projects that modernize legacy modeling frameworks to eliminate “technical debt” that was accrued to meet a deadline. At this point in her career she is most interested in (1) generating buy-in from stakeholders to rely on data science approaches, (2) mentoring reports to be successful data scientists at Enova and beyond, and (3) supporting pro-bono volunteer analytics engagements between Enova and local non-profits.
Government & Non-profit Research
Pharma Strategy and Marketing
Dr. Boughter is a postdoctoral fellow in the intramural research program at the National Institutes of Health, where he is wrapping up an independent research project focused on characterizing the mechanisms of antigen recognition by T cell receptors. Prior to this postdoctoral fellowship, he earned his PhD from the Graduate Program in Biophysical Sciences, where a dual-mentored thesis project provided training in both experimental and computational research. Currently, he is entering the early stages of building a biotechnology start-up based in part on the research completed at the University of Chicago and the National Institutes of Health.
Clinical Molecular and Genomics Unit Supervisor @ Illinois Department of Public Health
Postdoc’18 Human Genetics
Dr. Dhiman supervises the testing of various newborn screening genetic disorders, which include severe combined immunodeficiency, spinal muscular atrophy, and cystic fibrosis. In addition, he oversees the Illinois Department of Public Health’s sequencing operations, sequencing organisms to aid in state and nation-wide epidemiological surveillance of foodborne outbreak pathogens, SARS-CoV-2, and other infectious diseases. Dhiman’s laboratory interests revolve around working with next-generation technologies to better understand the human genome as it relates to public health and disease. Outside of the laboratory, He enjoys time with his family, watching sports, and diving into epic book series.
Byron is currently the Executive Director, Head of Oncology Field Medical at Gilead Sciences. In this role, Byron partners with Global Medical Affairs, Clinical Development, and US Strategy leads to develop and deploy field tactics that support the Gilead Oncology Portfolio specifically and the Oncology Leadership Vision more generally. Prior to this role, Byron spent four years as a Senior Director, leading the central region Breast Medical Science Liaison (MSL) team at Gilead as well as the central region Lung/GU/Derm MSL Team at Genentech. Byron started his career in pharma as a MSL and spent 2 years at Eli Lilly and 5 years at Genentech prior joining the leadership team.
Join us after the Forum for the myCHOICE 10th Anniversary Celebration!
There was a time when myCHOICE didn’t exist!
Way back in Autumn 2014, myCHOICE was born through an NIH award, the Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training grant. The program’s events and opportunities quickly gained traction in the STEM divisions, now having hosted 525+ mentors and 7,500 event attendees.
Network with visiting and local alumni mentors, and meet the incoming directors of myCHOICE in its new home, UChicagoGRAD, where we can’t wait to see what happens in the next 10 years!