SLAS Mentor Program

Mahi Banday is a scientist turned marketeer who has an extensive research background in molecular genetics, as well as in scientific and strategic marketing expertise in clinical, research and single cell multi-omics product portfolios. She is currently responsible for the commercial management of Curiox Biosystems product portfolio, which includes global new product development, product management, product strategy, upstream strategic marketing and downstream B2B/ABM marketing. She leads a team of six lifecycle management and downstream marketing leaders.

Cox Cox is a lab automation engineer and molecular biologist who specializes in scaling, development and teams. He has extensive experience with liquid handlers and integrated workcells in both R&D and factory settings. Cox also teaches 3D printing is a certified rescue SCUBA diver and is passionate about diversity and inclusion programs.

Peter earned his B.S. in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Miami and began his career in the Biopharmaceutical industry in 1997 at Mitotix/GPC-Biotech. Later he worked at Curis as a scientist and an automation manager. Since 2006, he has been at Merck Research Laboratories, Boston and is currently an Associate Principle Scientist within the Quantitative Biosciences and leads an Assay Operations Team. Peter has wide-ranging expertise in laboratory automation & integration, high throughput biochemical and cell based screens and high-content Screening. He currently oversees compound management and many devices including the integrated laboratory at MSD Boston, supporting early discovery efforts in Immuno-oncology and neuroscience.

Alison Hirukawa co-founded DropGenie in 2018, a startup that automates gene editing pipelines. Lying at the intersection of hardware, software and wet lab biology, DropGenie is developing a platform to execute CRISPR protocols in mammalian cellular systems, thus amplifying the pace of scientific discovery. As a scientist who took the plunge into the world of startups, she is a strong advocate for technical founders seeking to disrupt the status quo of the biotech industry. She’s happy to share DropGenie's experiences navigating the biotech start up ecosystem, personal challenges in flexing from an academic to entrepreneurial mindset, or chat about the innovations shaping the gene editing space. She has over 10 years of R&D experience related to the genetic manipulation of a wide breadth of different disease models and cell types including human embryonic stem (ES) cells, primary human and mouse immune populations, patient derived xenographs, and transgenic mouse models of breast cancer. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry from McGill University, MS from the University of British Columbia, and a BSc from Queen’s University.

David Jennions is an old-school systems' engineer, enjoying the challenges of meshing the diverse disciplines of science, engineering and people management. Ask him about deep theoretical physics, drug discovery, NGS or building teams and organizations!

Shastine Keeney has been doing automation for over 20 years, originally for industrial manufacturing and then for Biotech starting in 2005. She has focused on laboratory robotics, working in several companies that have spanned the gamut from drug discovery, to synthetic biology to diagnostics. After dabbling with consulting for a couple years on the side, she took the leap and became a full-time consultant in early 2019. The first year was a huge success and she enjoys the opportunity to focus exclusively on the technical challenges and also to set her own schedule.

Christina Minnick received her B.S. in Biology from Delaware Valley College and has been working in the pharmaceutical industry since 2010. Tina has worked for multiple pharmaceutical companies and CRO’s over the years and she has worked with many types of automated liquid handlers. She has a broad range of experiences in the industry, including live virus work, cell pharmacology, biochemical assays, robotics and compound management. For the past seven years she has been in an automation lab at Merck working with state of the art robotic platforms. She has also worked on projects from the target validation stage to the lead optimization stage, giving her a wide range of knowledge in drug discovery.

Aoi Senju is a chemical engineer and data scientist innovating in the clean energy space. He's currently the CEO of Colabra, a venture backed scienti?c software company. Senju studied chemical engineering and also holds certi?cates in environmental science and finance from Princeton, where his thesis on next-generation batteries was published in Energy & Environment Science.

Nick Shah is a scientist and leader with extensive experience discovering novel therapies for unmet medical needs. He is currently Head of Quantitative Biology at Nura Bio where the team is working to discover novel therapies to halt neurological disease. Previously, Nick was Head of In Vitro Pharmacology at DICE Therapeutics where the team discovered S011806 (PhI for psoriasis) and had a successful IPO (NASDAQ: DICE). Nick was an early scientist at Flexus Biosciences where the team discovered Linrodostat (PhIII for cancer) driving an acquisition by BMS. He also worked with RAPT Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RAPT) to discover FLX475 (PhI/II for cancer) and RPT193 (PhI for atopic dermatitis).

Jennifer Siewert is a senior scientist at Merck with over 8 years of pharmaceutical experience. She has led the installation, integration, maintenance and day-to-day operations of several robotic high-throughput screening (HTS) platforms containing various third-party equipment and technologies. She currently specializes in leading automation and liquid handler operations within her lab and has developed, optimized and executed methods for various pharmacology projects. She also has experience with compound management, performing a variety of cell-based and biochemical assays and sustaining cell culture.

Filip is an organic chemist and a big fan of high-quality research in a startup environment. During his Ph.D. and subsequent projects, he conducted research on intermolecular interactions and dynamic chemical systems. After leaving academia, he worked in the fields of drug discovery (TPD technology) and medical devices (transplantation). At the current position at Molecule.one he is responsible for performing organic reactions in high-throughput fashion at a nanomolar scale.

Mei is an interdisciplinary scientist with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, M.A. in Pharmacology, B.A. in Neuroscience and over 20 years of experience spanning academia, government and industry. She specializes in assay and product development for integrated microfluidic platforms and her academic work in automated single-cell microfluidics platform was selected as one of the SLAS Innovation Award finalists in 2014. As an industry scientist, she launched the first ever droplet digital PCR Mycoplasma kit for the Cell and Gene therapy market. Mei is happy to share her experience on transitioning from academia to industry, turning ideas into products, the product commercialization process and how startups are evaluated for potential acquisitions.