Postdoc Perspective in Industry Research, Part 2
Friday, June 26th, 10 – 11 AM CST
Many graduate students and postdocs are curious about postdoctoral positions in industry research. In this two-part series, we will hear from postdocs in the biological and physical sciences about their experience in industrial postdoctoral positions, their decision-making process in choosing an industrial postdoc, and their recommendations for how and why others might consider similar paths.
Pre-register for this seminar HERE
Tara Condos, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, Novartis
Dr. Tara Condos graduated from the University of Ottawa with a BSc in Biochemistry and a minor in Business. I went on to graduate from the University of Western Ontario (now known as Western University) with a PhD in Biochemistry where I studied protein structure/function and protein-protein interactions using NMR and crystallography. I played varsity (college) soccer during both degrees. I’m currently an Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow at Novartis in Cambridge, MA applying my expertise in structural biology to the drug discovery process.
Frank Olechnowicz, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, Behr Paint Company
Dr. Frank Olechnowicz received a BS in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University, where he performed bio-inorganic research in the Achim group on binding affinities of peptide nucleic acid with transition metal complexes. He then continued to the University of Chicago for a PhD in Chemistry program. His doctoral research was conducted in the Hillhouse and Jordan labs, with a focus on the synthesis, characterization, and reactivity exploration of low-valent Nickel compounds for catalysis and hydrodesulfurization processes. After graduation Frank joined Behr Paint Company in 2017 as a Postdoc Chemist, and was promoted to Senior Chemist in 2018. Frank’s role in the Applied Research department has been to develop polymers for use in paints, to improve or develop novel coatings properties, and to maintain the high quality paints and coatings that Behr is known for.
Vigneshwari Subramanian, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, AstraZeneca
Dr. Vigneshwari Subramanian received her Bachelor’s degree in Bioinformatics from SASTRA Deemed University, India in 2008. Then, she moved to Finland to earn a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics at the University of Helsinki. After graduating in 2012, she pursued a PhD in Computational Drug Discovery at the same university. Her doctoral thesis work at Henri Xhaard’s group was conducted jointly in collaboration with Orion pharma, where she focused on the development and application of visually interpretable proteochemometric models based on protein fields derived from the 3D structures of kinases and serine proteases. Following her graduation in 2016, she joined as a postdoc at the Joint Research centre for Computational Biomedicine in Aachen (Germany), under the mentorship of Prof. Saez-Rodriguez. Her research focus was on applying network-based approaches to drug screenings and on building multitasking models suitable for drug response predictions in cell lines. Later in 2018, she started her current role as a postdoc in AstraZeneca, where she employs deep learning approaches to improve permeability predictions of new modalities.
Michael Secinaro, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, AstraZeneca
Dr. Michael Secinaro received his Ph.D. in Cellular, Molecular, and Biomedical Science from the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine in Burlington, VT, USA in the fall of 2018. He specialized in immunology under the mentorship of Dr. Ralph C. Budd and studied the metabolic regulation of caspase activity and cell death in T cells. During his doctoral research he became interested in the mechanisms that regulate immune cell activity, particularly in the context of cancer. Michael joined AstraZeneca in 2018 and has been studying the role of metabolite signaling in NK cells within the tumor microenvironment. During his postdoc at AstraZeneca, he hopes to contribute to the understanding of how the immune response is regulated in the tumor and gain experience working in an industry environment.
Salil Srivastava, PhD
Postdoctoral Scientist, Novartis
Dr. Salil Srivastava graduated from Queen Mary University of London, with a BSc in Biochemistry. He then went on to do a PhD at the Cardiovascular Division in King’s College London where he studied the effect of oxidative stress the neurovascular unit and examined how sulforaphane, a dietary isothiocyanate, can be utilized to activate Nrf2 regulated antioxidant signaling to protect the brain from stroke-associated damage. Salil stayed on at King’s to undertake a postdoc, building on his interests in oxidative stress, to design PET tracers that could be used to identify oxidative stress in patients, but also to decipher the mechanism of action of Cu(II)ATSM to protect the cardiovascular system against Angiotensin II mediated hypertension. Salil is currently a Discovery Postdoc at NIBR in Cambridge, MA, where he is looking into mitochondrial dysfunction in chronic lung diseases and targets related to the mitochondria maybe used for drug discovery.