Eberly College of Science to host entrepreneurship seminars for Penn State Startup Week 2022
As part of Penn State Startup Week, April 4-8, 2022, the Eberly College of Science will host two panels.
Eberly and Beyond: An Exploration of Alternate Academic Careers
April 4
4:00—5:00 p.m.
Click here for the event lnk and Zoom page.
Ryan Cirz
CEO and Founder, Revagenix Inc.
Cirz spent the past 19 years focused on the discovery and development of novel antibacterials for high unmet medical needs. At Achaogen, a San Francisco-based biotech which he helped found, he witnessed firsthand the evolution of both the pathogens they were targeting, and the regulatory framework to obtain market authorization for new, innovative products. Cirz then witnessed the financial collapse of one of the most prolific research and development organizations in the sector a mere nine months after FDA approval and launch of its first commercial antibacterial. He spent the last year at Achaogen engaging with the field team, end-users, charities/NGOs, and government stakeholders to seek to understand the driving forces behind the ultimate collapse. Cirz carried those learnings to Revagenix, Inc., which he founded to continue the focus on extreme unmet medical needs and the barriers to patient access that confound the antibacterial field to this day. Cirz received his degree from Penn State in 2001.
Barbara Dalton
Vice President for Venture Capital, Pfizer
Dalton has led the Pfizer Ventures since joining Pfizer in 2007. The venture team has invested in over 110 companies and approximately 20 funds pursuing products, technologies and services, relevant to all aspects of Pfizer’s business, since inception in 2004. The team has been successful in fulfilling their goal of providing financial and strategic returns to Pfizer. Dalton is responsible for Pfizer Ventures and directly manages investments in all funds and the portfolio companies: AMRA, Artios, Cydan, Imara, Ixchelsis, Levicept, Ravenna, Resilience, Saama, Second Genome and Simcha. She also chairs the Healthcare Advisory Board of the Partnership Fund for NYC.
Dalton’s pharmaceutical career started in the Immunology Division of Smith Kline & French Research Laboratories. She moved to venture investing in 1993 when she joined their venture capital group, S.R. One, Limited. In 2000, Dalton became General Partner in the private venture fund, EuclidSR Partners, that was supported by GSK (then SB) as a sister fund to S.R. One, Limited.
Dalton received her undergraduate degree from Penn State in 1974 and Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbiology from the Medical College of Pennsylvania, now Drexel University School of Medicine.
Michael Weiner
CEO and Founder, Abbratech Inc.
Weiner is currently CEO and founder of Abbratech Inc. and a self proclaimed serial scientific entrepreneur. The companies he has founded include Affomix (proteomics, acquired by Illumina), AxioMx (proteomics, acquired by Abcam), GnuBio (NextGen DNA sequencing, acquired by BioRad), and Encodia (NextGen protein sequencing). He was the CSO of 454 Life Sciences (NextGen DNA Sequencing, acquired by Roche) and RainDance Technologies (microfluidics, acquired by BioRad). Notable commercial life sciences tools he has developed or played a role in include cloned BamHI (Ph.D. thesis, Cornell Univ.), QuikChange Mutagenesis (Stratagene), pCR-Script directional blunt-ended cloning method (Stratagene), paired-end DNA sequencing (454 Life Sciences), emulsion PCR (454 Life Sciences), droplet PCR (RainDance Technologies), an all liquid HT automated yeast two-hybrid system (GlaxoSmithKline), an all liquid HT automated phage display system (Affomix), HT genotyping using Luminex beads (GSK), and expanding the radix for more efficient DNA sequence storage (Illumina).
Weiner is a co-author of many published papers and a named inventor on numerous issued patents. He is an editor for BioTechniques and serves on several SABs and BoDs. He has served as an ad hoc member of several NIH review panels and has been awarded over $20M in grant funding from NIH and DARPA.
He earned his bachelor of science degree in 1979 from Penn State in Microbiology and his Ph.D. in Genetics from Cornell University under Dr. S. Zahler. He subsequently performed post-doctoral research on protein folding under Dr. H. Scheraga in the Dept of Physical Chemistry at Cornell University.
Christina "Winnie" Winnicker
Director for Animal Welfare External Due Diligence for GSK, GlaxoSmithKline
Winnicker specializes in animal welfare, environmental enrichment and behavioral management for animals in research environments. A practicing veterinarian for over 20 years, she has experience in both academia and industry. In her current role as Director for Animal Welfare External Due Diligence for GSK, Winnie oversees the process by which third party partners adhere to GSK animal welfare standards in work done on the company’s behalf.
In her previous role as the Associate Director at Columbia University in New York city, she commissioned and managed 37,000 square feet of newly built multi-species vivarium for neuroscience research in the Manhattanville neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Prior to that, she served as the Director of Enrichment and Behavioral Medicine for Charles River Laboratories, a global contract research organization. In this role, she harmonized environmental enrichment practices and developed behavioral husbandry programs to enhance animal welfare and operational efficiency.
She has an international reputation as a behavior and enrichment expert in the laboratory animal medicine field, has led research to provide evidence-based data for enrichment and behavioral management initiatives, and has published in the field of laboratory animal enrichment and behavioral management in multiple species.
Winnie earned her DVM from Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine. She completed an internship in Small Animal Medicine and Surgery at the Animal Medical Center in New York City. She completed both a residency in laboratory animal medicine and earned a master’s in public health with a focus on toxicology at Columbia University in New York. She earned her Six Sigma Black Belt from Six Sigma Academy in 2011.
The Intersection of Bioinformatics, Innovation, and Human Health: Working at a Life Science Data Services Company
April 7
2:00—3:00 p.m.
Click here for the event link and Zoom page.
Dan Rozelle
Associate Director at Rancho Biosciences
Dan is part of the senior leadership team at Rancho BioSciences, a life science data services company. In this role, he directs all analytical and engineering services delivered on more than 150 projects annually. Working with his management staff of bioinformatics scientists, pipeline engineers, data scientists and software engineers to provide custom solutions to suit broad clinical, translational, and R&D domains.
In addition to management, Dan provides direct support for bioinformatics and engineering projects across oncology, immuno-oncology, infectious disease and clinical data science. His work in single cell transcriptomics processing and analysis is enhanced by expert fluency in both R and Python programming languages. As a data engineer Dan has also built numerous software packages, R-Shiny applications, and distributed cloud pipeline solutions.
Rancho BioSciences is an international company offering Data Curation, Data Governance & Models, Bioinformatics Analysis, Workflows & Pipelines, Knowledge Mining, Target Profiles, Building Databases with content, Business Analyst services to clients in Pharmaceutical and Biotech companies, Foundations, Government and Hospitals.