Chemistry Career Day 2023

“General Atomics (GA) is a defense and diversified technologies company that operates in five continents. GA Aeronautical Systems produces a series of unmanned aircraft and provides electro-optical, radar, signals intelligence, and automated airborne surveillance systems. GA’s Electromagnetic Systems Division produces electro-magnetic aircraft launch and recovery systems for the US Navy, satellite surveillance, electro-magnetic rail gun, high power laser, hypervelocity projectile, and power conversion systems. GA developed the UCSD Supercomputer Center and has constructed more than 60 TRIGA nuclear research reactors in 24 countries.”

Representatives: 

Jordan Robinson

“My name is Jordan Robinson and I graduated from San Diego State University in 2021 receiving a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration: Marketing with a Specialization in Integrated Marketing Communications. I have had the wonderful opportunity to join Diazyme’s team in October of 2022. I largely focus on our companies digital marketing strategy, content creation, and execution of marketing campaigns. I was seeking a job opportunity in the Life Sciences industry post grad simply because it is an incredible industry full of some of the brightest minds. It raises some exciting challenges for a marketer, and I am very happy to be facing that challenge head on each day.”

Ericka Borges

Ericka Borges earned her Bachelor’s degree in Marketing Management from SDSU in 2018 and began her career as a Sales Representative at Central Valley Gear. Eventually, Borges began her position as a Marketing Coordinator at Diazyme Laboratories in 2019. Borges works to administer product lines, assists in launching new programs, maintains production of marketing materials, coordinates advertising, and works with sales to develop presentations for clients or trade shows.

“With broad and deep scale and expertise in development sciences, delivery technologies, and multi-modality manufacturing, Catalent is a preferred industry partner for personalized medicines, consumer health brand extensions, and blockbuster drugs. Catalent helps accelerate over 1,000 partner programs and launch over 150 new products every year. Its flexible manufacturing platforms at over 50 global sites supply over 70 billion doses of more than 7,000 products to over 1,000 customers annually.”

Representatives:

Marion Panis

“Hello, I’m Marion Panis and I am a Quality Control Chemist I at Catalent San Diego. I graduated from UCSD in 2020 with a B.S. in Human Biology and a minor in Dance, where I participated in campus orgs such as Biological Sciences Student Association and Medical Literature Society. My career at Catalent began as a quality control intern during my last year of undergrad, and upon graduation, I transitioned to a full-time chemist. My work revolves around analytical testing on site-manufactured drug products to determine their shelf-life stability and examining how drug instability may impact patients.”

Brady Mears

Brady works as a Human Resources Coordinator. He provides administrative support for the site HR Team and guides new hires through the onboarding process. He also manages the payroll data for all hourly employees, including communications with payroll and managers. Mr. Mears led the event committee and coordinated all events for more than 200 people as well as maintained employee files and processed and tracked employee changes in HRIS (Workday) system

Catalent Presentation

“At Neurocrine Biosciences, our purpose is simple: to relieve suffering for people with great needs, but few options. We apply our experience and unique insight into the interconnections between brain and body systems to treat complex conditions. We relentlessly pursue medicines to ease the burden of debilitating diseases and disorders, because you deserve brave science.

While others walk away from neuroscience because of risk and complexity, our team persists, resulting in four FDA-approved therapies for tardive dyskinesia, Parkinson’s disease, endometriosis*, and uterine fibroids*, as well as clinical programs in multiple therapeutic areas.

For three decades, Neurocrine Biosciences has applied its unique insights into neuroscience to advance medicines for neurological, endocrine, and psychiatric disorders. We have specialized in targeting and interrupting disease-causing mechanisms involving the interconnected pathways of the nervous and endocrine systems. Through internal investment and external collaboration, we relentlessly pursue scientific discovery and development that can lead to important therapies for patients who desperately need new, better options.”

Representatives:

Anushka C. Galasiti Kankanamalage

Anushka was born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He received a doctoral degree in organic chemistry in 2017 then joined The Scripps Research, La Jolla as a post-doctoral fellow. He started his career as a medicinal chemist in Vertex – San Diego, and in 2021, he transitioned to his current role at Neurocrine Biosciences as a Research Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry. 

Alok Nerurkar, Ph.D.

Alok was born and raised in Mumbai, India and graduated with a MSc in organic chemistry in 2007 from University of Mumbai. In 2015, he received a doctoral degree in organic chemistry from the University of Missouri, MO under the supervision of Professor Keith R. Buszek. Alok’s graduate work focused on the development of indolyne cycloaddition methodology and its applications to natural product total synthesis. He then spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher with Professor Jennifer Golden at the University of Madison, Wisconsin working towards the discovery of novel antiviral and antiparasitic agents. In 2019, he joined R2M Pharma in San Francisco Bay Area as a medicinal chemist, and in 2021, he transitioned to his current role at Neurocrine Biosciences as a Research Scientist in medicinal chemistry.

“Element Biosciences is a multi disciplinary startup focused on innovating genetic analysis tools for the research and diagnostic markets. Founded in 2017, our headquarter is located in San Diego, California, with additional operations located in the San Francisco Bay area. 

For our first product, we are developing a modular and high-performing DNA sequencing platform that will deliver high-quality data, workflow flexibility and make next generation sequencing technology more accessible.”

Representatives:

Daniel Flores

Daniel grew up in Chicago before attending the University of Kentucky for undergrad. He moved to San Diego in 2015 to pursue a PhD in organic chemistry at UCSD. He graduated from the Schmidt Lab in 2020 and is now working in the biotech field. Daniel joined Element in January of 2022 as a member of the Chemistry team working on upstream R&D. He also loves being outside and being active, especially rock climbing and currently training for a marathon in June.

Seiko Asai

Seiko attended Wellesley College outside of Boston. She has 20+ years of Pharma experience. She started as a sales representative and worked across various commercial roles (Training, Operations, Commercial Excellence, US & Global Marketing) in large established companies as well as biotech startups. Seiko moved to San Diego in October to join Element as part of the People Team. She’s getting settled in San Diego, enjoying farmers markets, hiking, and various company activities (Footgolf, Soccer, Dodgeball, Pickleball).

Presentation

“BioAge is a platform-driven, clinical-stage biotechnology company that is mapping human aging to develop a pipeline of therapies that treat disease and extend healthy lifespan. Our proprietary platform encompasses >65M molecular measurements spanning 45+ years of human aging and unlocks a universe of novel biological insights and druggable mechanisms for age-related disease. Our growing clinical-stage portfolio includes BGE-105, a first-in-class apelin receptor agonist that prevented muscle atrophy in a Ph1b study of older volunteers at bedrest. We are developing BGE-105 in parallel for ICU-related atrophies and for muscle preservation during GLP-1 weight loss therapy. The portfolio also includes novel internally discovered NLRP3 inhibitors for neurodegenerative and ocular diseases driven by inflammation. Our mission is to develop therapies that change the nature of aging and provide patients with years more healthy time. To date, BioAge has raised $127M from Andreessen Horowitz, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, and others.”

Representatives:

Kim F. Albizati

Kim Albizati is currently Senior Director, Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls for BioAge Labs in Richmond, CA. BioAge is developing drugs to ameliorate the effects of aging. Prior to this position, Kim was involved in a number of large and small San Diego companies starting in 1993, including Pfizer and Agouron Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego area biotech success story. He stayed with this latter company through two mergers and built a 70-person department with capabilities in process development, chemical engineering, automation and robotics, high-throughput screening, computational chemistry and biotransformations. Prior to his career in industry, Kim obtained a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry at UCLA in 1983 and performed postdoctoral work in the chemistry of the marine environment at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He moved from Scripps to the Department of Chemistry at Wayne State University in 1985 where he built a nationally-funded, diverse research group, achieving tenure in 1992. He has co-authored over 75 publications including two books, several book chapters, review articles, and patents.