The Antibody Society is proud to present Career Shorts.
In this series, we talk to scientists and individuals working within the world of antibodies about the experiences that have shaped their careers and have got them to where they are today. By sharing their experiences and advice we aim to empower the next generation of scientists and leaders working in this field and beyond to make confident and empowered decisions in the next steps in their careers.
We broach topics that range from their journey so far in science to understanding the role they play in their organisation to action that those undertaking a PhD or a post-doc can take now to make smooth their transitions into their next position in whatever shape that may take.
We hope this series will be insightful, interesting, and valuable to those seeking reassurance and understanding about the various career options available to them after their degrees or helping them to make transitions from an early career position. Most importantly, to see how there are many different paths to various career options and to feel empowered in their journey.
Your host
Raquel Barroso Ferro
Raquel Barroso Ferro is the creator and host of Career Shorts. She is a volunteer for the Education and Career Sub-Committee, and a PhD student at the University of Aberdeen, UK, currently working to develop a novel scFv-based immunotherapy against ovarian cancer.
Curious about the possibilities after a PhD and what they entail, with the help of Janice Reichert (Executive Director, The Antibody Society), reached out to the Antibody Society community to speak to them about their career trajectories so far and what advice they can give to students and people starting out in their careers. This series hopes to make some steps forward in demystifying the exciting possibilities available and give confidence that each person can find an opportunity that caters to their strengths and desires.
This work couldn’t have been done without the support and help of the rest of the Antibody Society communications committee: Dr Janice Reichert, Dr Nick Hutchinson, Dr Alicia Chenowith, Dr Silvia Screscioli, Dr Simone Richardson, and Dr. Vaishali Kapoor.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/raquel-ferro
Our interviewees
Ep 1: Dr. Li Zhou
LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/li-zhou-8a179a55
Career Shorts Ep 1 – Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9xtGRLQaSM
Ep 2: Dr. Nimish Gera
Nimish is an accomplished leader with over a decade of experience in the biotech industry and broad expertise across various modalities (monoclonal antibodies, bispecific antibodies, protein-fusions, and antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs)) and therapeutic areas (oncology, immuno-oncology, autoimmune and rare diseases). Nimish has extensive experience building, and leading high performing discovery and development teams and managing external collaborations in matrixed industry settings. He has a successful track record of several peer-reviewed publications, patents and chairing national and international meetings on antibody discovery and engineering. In October 2017, Nimish joined Mythic Therapeutics as the Scientific Co-Founder and Director of Research and Development and now serves as the Head of Biologics where he leads a team involved in antibody discovery, engineering and optimization and cell-based screening technologies.
Prior to Mythic, Nimish was a Research Scientist at Alexion Pharmaceuticals where he led and managed diverse cross-functional project teams of 10+ scientists to lead two antibody discovery programs into development. Prior to Alexion, Nimish helped set up the Discovery Sciences function at Oncobiologics (now Outlook Therapeutics) and identified multiple lead candidates for the company’s platform. Nimish earned a PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from North Carolina State University with a minor in Biotechnology. He also serves as an Assistant Editor for the mAbs journal and has reviewed 50+ high impact articles in antibody discovery and engineering. Nimish is extremely passionate about people management, mentoring and process optimization to accelerate drug development and has a keen interest in teaching, coaching, and mentoring young scientists.
Career Shorts Ep 2 – Full episode: [https://youtu.be/kOpuBxNdS5A]
Ep 3: Professor Charlotte Deane
Professor Charlotte Deane (http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~deane/) leads the Oxford Protein Informatics group, a research group of over 25 people working on diverse problems across protein structure, immunoinformatics, interaction networks and small molecule drug discovery. She is also Deputy Executive Chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences and Council and the Covid-19 Response Director for UK Research and Innovation.
Twitter: @OPIGlets
Group website: OPIG (ox.ac.uk)
Career Shorts Ep 3 – Full episode: [Release date 25th October 2021]
Ep 4: Dr Feng Yang
Feng received her Ph.D. and postdoctoral training in two prominent biological mass spectrometry and proteomics labs, led by Prof. Donald F. Hunt at University of Virginia and Dr. Richard D. Smith at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), respectively. Feng received US HUPO Career Development Award in Technologies, San Francisco, CA, March 2012. and Great Manager Award, Leading through Change‚ in 2018 at PTD US, Genentech. She has in-depth knowledge and technical expertise in mass spectrometry and related methods for proteomics and antibody characterization (LC-MS, CE-MS, etc.), author of 58 (first author of 17) peer-reviewed publications and 1 book chapter (first author), corresponding author of PNAS and Anal. Chem. publications. Currently she is the assistant editor for mAbs journal.
Feng is currently both a technical and a people leader, and principal scientist at Genentech. She enjoys developing and advocating for talents she has interacted with. She has lean agility mindset through many roles as technical expert, analytical team leader, leading the MS functional excellence core, building a global MS community across Pharma Technical Development (PTD) at Roche, coach and as leadership team member at Protein Analytical Chemistry department, Genentech.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feng-yang-2871b316/
