Interested in pursuing a career in computational chemistry or cheminformatics? Join us for a panel discussion by young career scientists in industry, ranging from big pharma to startups. Learn tips and tricks for successful interviewing, networking, and job hunting. Hear what it's like making the transition from academia to industry and what it's like working in the field. A BAGIM networking event at Cambridge Brewing Company will follow the panel discussion at 7:15pm.
· 5:30-6pm -- Drinks and food
· 6-7pm -- Career panel aimed at graduate students and postdocs considering careers in comp chem
o Panelists include
§ Dr. Rebecca Swett (Vertex)
Dr. Swett graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit, where she applied molecular dynamics to the development and optimization of covalent inhibitors of the Clostridium Difficile toxins, and developed methods to apply interference in protein-protein recognition as a mechanism of inhibition, leading to her first patent. Additionally, she developed software connect genotypes to phenotypes by gene region of interest, in a hypothesis-driven manner and validated the results with simulations and in vitro experiments. She then completed a postdoc at Novartis with an academic mentor at Stanford. Here she worked on applying ultra-fine print molecular dynamics to the use of solvation in lead optimization, application of Markov State Modeling to the identification of targetable metastable protein states for the development of flu treatments, and developed predictive models to discriminate between ligand effects on correlated protein motions in high throughput MD. She currently is at Vertex Pharmaceuticals where she uses an array of ligand and structure based methods, as well as predictive modeling and molecular dynamics, to pursue treatments for Cystic Fibrosis and other targets.
§ Dr. Levi Pierce (Relay Therapeutics)
Levi is a computer engineer who has worked in several startups spanning the fields of genomics and pharmaceutical drug design. The combination of these two fields will usher in personalized medicine. While at Schrodinger Inc, he was a key developer of a computational tool (Free Energy Perturbation, FEP) used to accurately predicting binding affinity of drugs in lead optimization. He then worked at Human Longevity Inc using a variant of FEP to study drug sensitivity observed in cancer mutations obtained from next generation sequencing. Currently he is at Relay Therapeutics where he is leveraging computational tools to develop drugs for mutations observed in patient populations.
§ Dr. Christine Hajdin (Novartis)
Currently, Christine is an investigator in the CADD (Computer Assisted Drug Discovery) group at Novartis. Here she utilizes a mix of machine learning, informatics, programming and structure-based design to identify potential target/compound interactions. Prior to coming to Novartis, she worked at Explorys (now IBM Watson Health) as a data scientist modeling cost reduction and risk aversion strategies. She obtained her Ph.D. from UNC Chapel Hill in biological chemistry and undergraduate degrees in math and biochemistry from Miami University.
Moderated by Dr. Finith Jernigan, III (Silicon Therapeutics).
Dr. Jernigan is a co-founder and chief technology officer of Silicon Therapeutics and was instrumental in developing the underlying technology INSITE. Prior to founding Silicon Therapeutics, Dr. Jernigan was at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, where his focused on identification of tool compounds using novel in silico screening approaches for targets identified by BIDMC investigators. This work, performed in the labs of Drs. Sun and Chaikof, led to the creation Silicon Therapeutics’ proprietary drug discovery platform, INSITE. Prior to that, Dr. Jernigan earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the lab of Dr. David S. Lawrence. His work at the University of North Carolina focused on the synthesis and development of fluorescent sensors of kinases and the proteasome. This work led to multiple publications in top chemistry journals, including Journal of the American Chemical Society and Angewandte Chemie International Edition. Dr. Jernigan holds a B.S. in Biochemistry from Salisbury University, a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was a postdoctoral fellow at BIDMC/Harvard Medical School.
