B-SoCCS 2019

Lara Czabaniuk, PhD

scientist at amgen

Lara Czabaniuk grew up in southeastern Michigan and attended the University of Michigan, where she received her BS in chemistry.  She then moved cross-country to Stanford, where she studied palladium-catalyzed asymmetric benzylation in Barry Trost’s lab. Upon completion of her PhD, Lara performed postdoctoral studies under the guidance of Tim Jamison at MIT.  Lara’s postdoctoral studies focused on the development of a tandem epoxidation/cyclization event to construct tetrahydropyrans. In 2015, Lara joined the synthetic technologies group at Pfizer, where she worked across the company’s small molecule portfolio to optimize reactions and routes, often using techniques such as reaction monitoring, design of experiment, and biocatalysis.  Lara joined the Amgen medicinal chemistry group in 2017.

Rebecca Leary, PhD

Lab Head, Senior Investigator, Next Generation Diagnostics at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research

Rebecca is a Senior Investigator in the Next Generation Diagnostics group at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), where she leads a lab to develop and apply new technologies to enable biomarker discovery in oncology trials. Prior to joining NIBR in 2013, Rebecca received her undergraduate degree at Wellesley College, her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and completed postdoctoral training at the Ludwig Center for Cancer Genetics and Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins. Her research focuses on non-invasive cancer detection and characterization of the tumor-immune microenvironment.

Darrin Stuart, PhD

director of cell biology - small MOLECULE drug discovery at novartis

Darrin Stuart is the Director of the Cell Biology – Small Molecule Drug Discovery group within the Oncology department. His group endeavors to discover novel therapies toward targets implicated in cancer pathogenesis and applies genetic and pharmacologic approaches to understand the mechanism of action and resistance to small molecule drug candidates. His personal research focus is on RAS-RAF-MEK-MAPK pathway signaling, therapeutic intervention and resistance. In this field, Darrin has successfully mentored NIBR postdocs to publish their work in leading journals. As a project leader, he has led small molecule drug discovery teams from inception to clinical proof-of-concept. Darrin received his PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Alberta where he developed novel liposomal vectors for oligonucleotide delivery for RNAi-based therapy. His BSc (Hons. Biology) and MSc (Vision Science/Biology) are from the University of Waterloo.

Jessica M. Wilson, PhD

neuroscience product specialist at I-MOTION a/s

Dr. Wilson hopes to bridge the gap between neuroscience and industry by empowering labs and businesses as a product specialist at iMotions. She received her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Northwestern University in 2015, where she studied the firing behavior of spinal motoneurons in healthy individuals and those with Parkinson's disease. During grad school, she co-founded the Northwestern University Brain Awareness Outreach (NUBAO) group, a non-profit entity which won the Next Generation Award for Education & Outreach from the Society for Neuroscience in 2013, and developed the Science Communications curriculum for Northwestern Neuroscience's postbaccalaureate program. Outside of work, she gives workshops to aspiring scientists on science communication, career development and networking.