Contact Propel Careers for event and ticket information.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009 from 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM (ET)
Career Opportunities in Life Sciences Panel
Date: December 2nd, 2009
Location: Cooley Godward Kronish LLP
500 Boylston Street, 14th Floor, Boston, MA 02116
Time: 5:30pm – 8:00pm
(Registration starts at 5:30pm, panel starts as 6:15pm)
Event Details: Propel Careers’ career night will feature biotechnology representatives from a variety of life sciences companies to discuss career options and paths for students considering careers in life sciences companies. Companies from the following areas will be represented: Therapeutics, Diagnostics, Medical Device, IT, Finance, and Consulting.
Join us for a night of networking among companies and fellow students to build your connections in the life sciences. Refreshments and light fare will be provided.
The panel will include speakers from the following companies:
Iya Khalil Founder, Gene Network Sciences Kevin T. Sprott, Ph.D., Manager, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Laurie Halloran, President, Halloran Consulting Group Bob Lorette, Esq, Managing Director, Transform Ventures Bernadette Michaud, Life Sciences Team, Silicon Valley Bank Corey Braastad, Ph.D., Manager of Operations, Athena Diagnostics
Speaker Bios:
Kevin T. Sprott, Ph.D., Manager, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals
Kevin has 7 years of experience in the drug discovery industry in which he and his teams have successfully delivered multiple novel drug candidates into human clinical development. He currently holds various leadership roles in medicinal chemistry and program management departments at Ironwood where he focuses on the discovery and development of small molecule pharmaceuticals. Prior to joining Ironwood, Kevin spent several years as a medicinal chemist at Millennium Pharmaceuticals. His experience and current work span many therapeutic areas with emphasis on inflammatory disease and immunoregulation. Kevin was awarded ‘University Most Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation’ for his Ph.D. thesis in organic chemistry at the University of Kansas and was an NIH post-doctoral fellow under Nobel Laureate E.J. Corey at Harvard University. He is an inventor on over a dozen patents and patent applications for the discovery of novel, disease-modifying, small molecules.
Laurie Halloran, President, Halloran Consulting Group
Ms. Halloran is the President of Halloran Consulting Group (HCG), founded in 1998 with the vision of improving the clinical stage trial development planning and execution process at biopharmaceutical companies. With 23 years in clinical affairs management including both senior clinical management positions in a CRO (PAREXEL) as well as in biotechnology (Oxigene and Antigenics), Ms Halloran has become recognized as an industry expert - speaking, publishing and training throughout the world on best practices. Ms. Halloran is a frequent speaker at global industry meetings and has been invited to speak frequently internationally on strategic planning and clinical research management. She is an adjunct professor of Boston University Medical School and George Washington University.
Bob Lorette, Esq, Managing Director, Transform Ventures
In addition to his role as President and CEO of Boston Life Science Advisors, Bob is the Managing Director of Transform Ventures LLC, a firm bringing capital, executive leadership and engineering and manufacturing resources to medical device and “green” technologies to advance those technologies to a significant value inflection point. Prior to founding Boston Life Science Advisors and Transform Ventures in 2009, Bob served as Chief Business Officer and Senior Vice President of Dynogen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical-stage drug development company focusing on gastrointestinal and genitourinary disorders. From 1999 to 2002, Bob was Senior Vice President of Corporate Development for Boston Healthcare Associates, Inc., a firm providing management consulting and business advisory services to companies in the life sciences industry. From 1996 to 1999, he was Vice President of Corporate Development for UroMed Corporation, a manufacturer of urological medical devices. Before joining UroMed, Bob held several legal and general management positions with Bausch & Lomb Incorporated, a global eye care company. Prior to Bausch & Lomb, he practiced corporate law at a private firm. Bob received his bachelor’s degree in economics from the College of the Holy Cross, his law degree from Syracuse University College of Law and his Masters in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He also attended the Program for Management Development at the Harvard Business School. Bob is admitted to practice law in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York.
Iya Khalil Founder, Gene Network Sciences
Iya Khalil oversees the application of the company's disease and drug simulation technology in alliances with pharmaceutical and biotech companies. A frequent speaker at industry events and conferences, she has extensive experience in reverse engineering and forward simulations of large-scale genetic and biochemical networks. Dr. Khalil is an inventor on a number of pending patents and has published multiple articles on in silico technologies applied to drug discovery and development. Prior to joining GNS, she worked at Cornell University, University of Washington and Abbott Labs. Dr. Khalil holds a B.S. in physics from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University.
Bernadette Michaud, Life Sciences Team, Silicon Valley Bank
Bernadette has been at Silicon Valley Bank since late 2003. She is currently on the Life Science team, working biotechnology, medical device, and other healthcare companies. Prior to joining this team, Bernadette worked on the Venture Capital and Private Equity Services team. From 2001 to 2003, she worked in the International Finance Division at Continental Airlines. Other prior experience includes commercial banking on the Middle Market team at Fleet Bank (now Bank of America). Bernadette received a BA from the College of the Holy Cross, and an MBA from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
Corey Braastad, Ph.D., Manager of Operations, Athena Diagnostics
Mr. Braastad is currently Manager of Operations at Athena Diagnostics in Worcester, MA. Athena Diagnostics is a molecular genetics diagnostics company specializing in the diagnosis of rare neurological, renal and endocrine disorders. At Athena he has led teams that (1) develop and launch new diagnostic assays, (2) routinely run diagnostic tests on patient samples, and (3) improve the quality of diagnostic tests by improving result interpretation. He also is leading an effort to implement a quality improvement program at Athena called Practical Process Improvement (PPI). Mr. Braastad received his undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. As a graduate student at Brown University, he was in the Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry (MC&B) Department working on defining a DNA-damage inducible gene promoter. He then worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the Department of Cell Biology to define the cell-cycle regulated histone H4 regulatory elements.
Company Overviews:
About Ironwood Pharmaceuticals: Ironwood Pharmaceuticals is an entrepreneurial pharmaceutical company dedicated to the art and science of great drugmaking. Linaclotide, the Company’s first-in-class compound, is being evaluated in a confirmatory Phase 3 program for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C) and chronic constipation. Ironwood also has a growing pipeline of additional drug candidates in earlier stages of development. Ironwood has raised $306 million in private equity financing and is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
About Halloran Consulting Group: Halloran Consulting Group is a life sciences consulting firm that specializes in enhancing the clinical development process for biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Our deep expertise is applied directly within your company for maximum impact. Through strategic regulatory planning, the development of the clinical operations infrastructure, process optimization and training, quality systems development and organizational improvement, Halloran improves the development organization’s contributions to the company’s strategic priorities. Halloran's consultants bring decades of experience that enable us to build capital efficient clinical programs tailored to fit the client's corporate development strategies. Halloran's proven strategy results in smarter approaches to development. Our consultants work in partnership with the client, as part of the team, in both emerging and established companies to fill gaps in expertise so that programs are planned and executed with maximum quality and efficiency. Our team's experience with hundreds of clinical trials brings the wisdom that ensures high quality, effective product development and successful outcomes with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies worldwide.
About Transform Ventures: Transform Ventures LLC (“Transform”) is dedicated to rapidly turning medical device technologies into marketable products in a highly capital efficient manner resulting in a significant value step-up and a timely exit. For each promising technology we establish a product-focused venture with: (1) skilled executive leadership; (2) capital from a network of investors; (3) engineering, manufacturing, clinical, regulatory and other functions as needed and (4) early involvement of commercial partners. We align the interests of all parties in a straightforward financial arrangement to maximize the return to all stakeholders.
About Gene Network Sciences: Gene Network Sciences (GNS) is a privately held biotechnology firm based in Cambridge MA, at the leading edge of today's convergence of breakthroughs in genomics and supercomputing. We were founded in 2000 to put the power of modern mathematics and computation at the center of the drug discovery and development process. Our company, is a uniquely collaborative team of computational physicists, mathematicians, chemists, molecular biologists, bioinformaticians, and software engineers. Through our own discovery efforts and in partnership with many leading innovator health care companies, we are building the future of medicine by revealing the molecular basis of health and disease through the critical biological relationships among genes and proteins, disease progression, and drug efficacy and toxicity. And we are doing this faster than ever thought possible.
About Silicon Valley Bank: SVB Financial Group provides diversified financial services to emerging, growth and established technology companies and the life science, venture capital and premium wine markets. Through its focus on specialized markets and extensive knowledge of the people and business issues driving them, SVB Financial Group provides a level of service and partnership that measurably impacts its clients' success. Headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., the company offers its clients commercial, investment, merchant and private banking, as well as value-added services using its knowledge and networks. Founded in 1983, SVB Financial Group serves nearly 11,000 clients around the world through 27 domestic offices, and international subsidiaries in the U.K., Israel, India and China, and an extensive network of relationships with venture capitalists in Asia, Australia, Europe, India, and Israel.
About Athena Diagnostics: Athena Diagnostics is a reference laboratory dedicated to the development and commercialization of diagnostic testing for neurological disorders. Using innovative technologies, Athena provides neurologists and other physicians with diagnostic answers that can improve the quality of health care for patients in a cost effective manner. Athena is a leading provider of advanced neurological diagnostic assays. Our expertise includes diagnosis in the areas of: peripheral nerve disorders, neurogenetic disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, paraneoplastic syndromes, movement disorders, neuromuscular disorders, and ataxia. Our technologies are licensed predominantly from the academic research environment and represent our commitment to cutting-edge technology and our close relationships with world-renowned experts in neurology and genetics. The technical staff at Athena Diagnostics performs over 200 assays for neurological diseases using a variety of sophisticated laboratory methods. Assays are performed in our laboratory located in Worcester, Massachusetts, and are available only to physicians. Athena Diagnostics began its services to neurologists as Genica Pharmaceuticals Corporation in 1989 by offering a service to diagnose Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. In 1995, Genica was acquired by Athena Neurosciences, Inc., a research-based pharmaceutical company committed to the field of neurology. In 1996 Athena Neurosciences, together with Athena Diagnostics, was acquired by Elan Corporation, plc. In 2002, Athena was purchased by Behrman Capital, a private equity investment firm with a long history of successful investments in the clinical laboratory sector. In March 2006, Athena was acquired by Fisher Scientific International, which itself merged with Thermo Electron Corporation in November 2006 to form Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science with instruments, equipment, reagents, consumables, software and services.
The mission of Propel Careers is to cultivate talent to produce the next generation of successful leaders and entrepreneurs. This will be done through connecting students with companies for value added internships and through mentoring.
Propel Careers is connecting tomorrow's entrepreneurs with today's leaders
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