Moving to Industry

1.    Matthew Sammons Matthew Sammons is a recruiter for Qiagen and heads up all recruitment activities for Qiagen Americas which include offices in Maryland, California, Ontario, Mexico, and Brazil.  He started with the company in June of 2008 and has helped implement major changes to the recruitment function of the Human Resources division.  Previously he helped build the Scientific Division for Tech USA, a nationwide staffing company, and led recruitment functions for various Biotechnology companies in the Mid-Atlantic region for almost 3 years.  He graduated from Loyola College with a Bachelors of Science in Business Management and a minor in Chemistry.

2. Dr. Rima Adler

Dr. Rima Adler earned her PhD (’07) in Genetics from the George Washington University as part of the NIH joint partnerships program. Dr. Adler conducted her dissertation research at the NIH-NHLBI tracking CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells in the Rhesus Macaque model. Dr. Adler helped form the Graduate Student Association at the NIH, served on committees in professional societies (ASH & ISSCR), and taught Genetics and Stem Cell Research to members of the community (OASIS). Dr. Adler completed a Science Policy Fellowship at the National Academies of Science where she worked on the 2007 revision to the NAS Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research before returning to a traditional post-doctoral research position at the NIH-NCI. Dr. Adler accepted her current position with Miltenyi Biotec, Inc. in December 2008. In her role as Technical Sales Consultant, she also serves on the company’s Stem Cell Team. Dr. Adler enjoys working with customers to help design studies and trouble shoot experiments because she is exposed to broad scientific topics and plays an active role in helping researchers move their science forward.

3. Andy Lepisto, PhDDr. Lepisto received his B.A. in Biology from Washington and Jefferson College in 1999 and did his Ph.D. work in the lab of Robert Hendricks at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine from 1999-2005. As a graduate student, Dr. Lepisto studied the immunological response to herpes simplex infection of the cornea using a mouse model, focusing on the role of T cell subsets in viral control and immunopathology. He subsequently did a post doc for two years with Olja Finn in the Department of Immunology at The University of Pittsburgh where he worked on a pre-clinical mouse model of pancreatic cancer as well as analysis of samples from a completed Phase I/II trial. This clinical trial tested a dendritic cell-based vaccine in patients with resectable pancreatic cancer and he analyzed humoral and cellular immune responses in patients before and after vaccine administration. In June 2007, Dr. Lepisto was offered a position as a medical science liaison (MSL) with Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he currently is. Some of his current responsibilities as a MSL involve interacting with key thought leaders, clinical trial support, promotional program speaker and sales team support.

21^st Century Careers

 1.             Dan Poux, MSDan Poux is associate director for outreach, operations and leadership development for the S&T Policy Fellowships. He directs communications, recruitment and outreach efforts and alumni engagement; oversees events and operational functions, including the efficiency of the application, selection and placement processes; conceptualizes, plans, and supervises implementation of the year-long professional development program for more than 160 Congressional and Executive Branch Fellows including orientation, monthly events, career sessions, and skill-building workshops; and directs the overall monitoring and evaluation functions of the AAAS Fellowships Department.

He received a bachelor's degree in political psychology and a master's degree in natural resource policy and behavior from the University of Michigan, and conducted his master's thesis research on volunteerism and mentoring. Prior to joining AAAS in 2005, Dan was a program manager at the National Tree Trust, awarding $500,000 in grants each year to Urban & Community Forestry organizations around the country. Prior to his time at NTT, Dan was the Director of International Programs and Watershed Education Manager at Earth Force, a national non-profit organization that engages youth in their communities through monitoring and protecting their local rivers and streams.

2.             Jonathan Jacobs, PhDJonathan Jacobs is no stranger to change. After spending several years working in the telecommunications industry in the mid-90's, he received a BS in Plant Biology from the University of Arizona in 1999. In 2003, he received a biomedical informatics fellowship from the National Library of Medicine for his graduate research on bioinformatics approaches to studying translational frameshifting in eukaryotes. In 2006, he received a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of Maryland. That same year, Dr. Jacobs joined the NCI as a postdoctoral fellow to study molecular epigenetics in the Laboratory of Receptor Biology & Gene Expression. He later received the 2007 NCI Directors Innovation Award for his research on BRCA1 autoregulation. For service beyond the bench, he received the 2009 NCI Technology Transfer Award for serving as Chair of the NCI Fellows & Young Investigators Association Training Conference. Dr. Jacobs has also worked as an associate editor for the NCI Fellows Editorial Board and as an manuscript editor for Building Biotechnology, an internationally distributed textbook for undergraduate biotechnology courses. He also created Working the Bench, a daily science blog focused on protocol development and laboratory culture in the life sciences. In 2009, Dr. Jacobs joined MedImmune, Inc. as a staff scientist where he continues to conduct research in protein translation and RNA biology with a focus on biotechnology applications.