Network Like a Boss

Michelle Arkin, Ph.D. is a chemical biologist, Professor and Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Director of the Small Molecule Discovery Center (SMDC) at the University of California San Francisco. Her research focuses on developing methods and molecules that target currently ‘undruggable proteins.’ The SMDC engages in collaborative drug discovery research, capitalizing on tools and expertise in high-throughput screening and medicinal chemistry. Arkin is an investigator in the UCSF Cancer Center, the Tau Consortium, and the Bakar Aging Research Institute and is an adjunct professor at the Buck Institute for Research in Aging. She is deeply involved with the academic drug discovery community, as Director and former President of the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium, Fellow and former board member of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening and editor of the NIH Assay Guidance Manual. In 2020-2021, Michelle cofounded Ambagon Therapeutics and Elgia Therapeutics.

Nathaniel Hentz, Ph.D., is currently a Vice President at Artel. Prior to this position, Hentz served as the Assistant Director of the BTEC Analytical Lab at North Carolina State University for almost 11 years. In that role, he taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses as well as industry short courses focused on biopharmaceutical assay development and validation. His tenure in the HTS industry includes nearly two years supporting the automated screening systems within the Lead Discovery group at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Connecticut and seven years developing high-throughput screens at Eli Lilly RTP Laboratories in North Carolina.

Sandra Jernström , Ph.D., is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Okomera in Paris. She holds a Ph.D. in Cancer Genetics from University of Oslo (Norway), completed her postdoc research at the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) and has vast experience in translational clinical research using patient biopsies to improve the way we select treatments for patients. She is also the mother of two wonderful children.

Gianluca Pegoraro, Ph.D., is a molecular cell biologist interested in developing novel ways to automate liquid handling, microscopy and image analysis to systematically study complex biological systems. As the Director of the National Cancer Institute High-Throughput Imaging Facility (HiTIF) at NIH, he has used this technological platform to identify and characterize cellular pathways involved in gene expression regulation, genome structure, oncology, immune signaling and infectious diseases, among other fields.