Career Possibilities: Research & Development - Biotech, Pharma, Medical

 
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11/7: Career Possibilities: Research & Development/Applications - AI, Digital Health, Devices

12/5: Career Possibilities: Business Development/Alliance Management/Innovation/Licensing

Alicja Januszewicz has 15+ years of experience in Talent Management/Human Resources. Before joining Allena Pharmaceutical as a Head of People and Culture, she consulted with small biotechs in Cambridge within the areas of talent management like employee development, organizational development, succession management, high potentials, and workforce planning. Before starting her own consulting services, Alicja served as the Head of Talent Management at Baxalta (former Baxter BioScience), Cambridge office where she supported R&D until the Shire acquisition. Before joining Baxalta in 2015, Alicja was the Head of Talent Management at Epizyme, an R&D organization that specializes in personalized therapeutics for patients with genetically defined cancers. Alicja also led Talent Management at Haemonetics, a leading provider of premium blood management solutions in the medical devices area. Additionally, from 2007 to 2013, Alicja served as a Talent Development lead at Boston Scientific HQ, rolling out global development initiatives. Prior to Boston Scientific, she was responsible for organizational development of the Genzyme global manufacturing group. Alicja holds a PhD in Sociology from the Polish Academy of Science and the Copenhagen Business School. She is also a member of the faculty at Boston University School of Management, where she teaches Organizational Behavior.

Eleanor Howe is the Founder and CEO of Diamond Age Data Science, a boutique bioinformatics consultancy based in Boston, MA. She sets the vision for Diamond Age and ensures that its clients are working closely with consultants to tackle their most important challenges. Prior to founding Diamond Age, Howe served as the go-to bioinformatician in the Center for the Development of Therapeutics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she helped drive drug discovery projects in cancer, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease, among others. She also worked at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she led mid- and late-stage development of the Multiexperiment Viewer – a powerful software tool for mining large genomic datasets – and at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland. Trained as a computational biologist, Howe founded Diamond Age based on her expertise in transcriptional profiling — a field in which she has worked since it was dominated by small-scale microarray analysis — and her deep knowledge of drug discovery and development. Howe earned a Ph.D. bioinformatics from Oxford University under Christopher Holmes and John Quackenbush, and holds a master’s degree in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor’s degree in cellular and molecular biology from the University of Michigan.

Audrey Molina, Team Leader and Consulting Safety Officer of Safety Partners, Inc., works collaboratively with team members and biotech companies to provide on-site environmental, health, and safety (EHS) oversight; this can involve labs to be operational from start up, developing and/or improving current safety programs, or assist in specialized projects that need additional resources and guidance. Previously to working at Safety Partners, Audrey worked at various pharmaceutical companies as a synthetic chemist, synthesizing small molecules for target therapies ranging from inflammation to oncology at discovery level as well as processing small molecules at pilot to support ongoing clinical trials. These industries included, Merck (Research & Process Development), Wyeth, and AstraZeneca (Oncology). After 25 years in chemistry, Audrey shifted her career and transitioned into the EHS world helping and impacting the safety footprint in an ever growing and challenging industry.

Jackie Schumacher is currently the VP of Regulatory and Quality at Lyndra Therapeutics. At Lyndra, Jackie is responsible for the regulatory strategy and operations across the portfolio along with Quality Assurance oversight for the company. Prior to Lyndra, Jackie spent most of her 30+ year career within Pfizer; starting as an analytical chemist followed by a long tenure within the CMC Regulatory organization in roles of increasing responsibility. She has led teams to develop successful global registration strategies for new small molecules, product enhancements, inhalation and injectable products. Jackie also held several business-facing/commercial roles, including the creation of a satellite Pharmaceutical Sciences team in Brazil supporting Latin American product and business development; regulatory leadership within the nascent Established Products Sterile Injectables organization and later as Portfolio Optimization and Strategy Leader; facilitating a matrixed team of Pfizer colleagues tasked with radically optimizing the value of the 600+ molecule portfolio. In addition to her Pfizer-based experiences, she has served as a board member and chaired an industry consortium, IPAC-RS, focused on strategic pharmaceutical and regulatory development objectives for orally inhaled and nasal drug products. Jackie has co-founded a recently launched non-profit organization, Optimists without Borders, USA, with one of her former Pfizer colleagues and serves as one of the Directors. Jackie earned her B.A. degrees in Chemistry and Classical Studies from Hamilton College.

Dr. Gloria Vigliani is pharmaceutical executive with more than 25 years international clinical development experience in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. After 14 years in senior management positions in the Boston-area pharmaceutical and biotech community, Dr. Vigliani established Vigliani Consulting, LLC to provide clinical and regulatory drug development consulting services. Dr. Vigliani has extensive experience building and managing Clinical Development and Medical Affairs organizations and has an outstanding track record for successful new product registrations in the US and Europe. She has also developed a clinical development training course which she has used to train more than 100 physicians transitioning from academia to clinical development. Dr. Vigliani was a member of Cubist’s executive team from 2003-2007 where she held the positions of Vice President, Medical Strategy and Vice President, Clinical Development. From 1996 to 2002, Dr. Vigliani held a variety of positions at Biogen Corporation, including Vice President, Medical Research, Director of Clinical Information Management and Surveillance, and Director of Drug Safety and Medical Information. From 1993-1996, Dr. Vigliani served as Associate Director of Product Safety at Astra USA. Prior to industry, Dr. Vigliani held the position of Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School from 1984-1993. Dr. Vigliani received board certification in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics. She received a BS in Biology from Tufts University and received her MD degree from the Medical College of Pennsylvania.

Jo Viney, Ph.D., is Co-Founder, President and CSO of Pandion Therapeutics, a start-up biotech company focused on drug discovery in autoimmunity, inflammation and transplant. Previously Jo worked at Biogen where she began as VP, Immunology Research and was responsible for building the company’s immunology portfolio before moving on to become SVP, Drug Discovery. Before moving to the East Coast, Jo worked at Genentech, Immunex and Amgen, but she originally hails from the UK where she received her PhD from the University of London. Throughout her career, Jo has been passionate about workplace inclusiveness, promoting the careers of women and under-represented minorities in science. She is involved with several groups driving this mission, and joined the Board of WEST in 2015. Jo is also a member of the Board of Directors for CaroGen Corp, and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Vaxart Inc.