Internships at the GMP Facility: Our short experiences as Mentees

News Article by Brianna Shares, PhD Candidate in Cell Biology of Diseases, and Robert Maynard, PhD Candidate in Cell Biology of Disease

One of the ways to determine what skills would be beneficial to future employers is to simply look at job postings and see which skills you have or don’t have. I noticed a recurring theme in the job descriptions: GMP experience was commonly a preferred or required qualification. If you’re thinking ‘what on earth is GMP?’ you’re not alone. A quick internet search gave me my answer: Good Manufacturing Practice (hence GMP) is essentially the standard for manufacturing and testing a product, such as a pharmaceutical drug, so that it is safe for human use. GMP was something that I had no experience with, so I decided to do something about it.

Internships at the GMP facility: My short experience as a Mentor

News Article by Luisa Caetano-Davies, Principal Scientist and Facility Director of The Upstate Stem Cell cGMP Facility

In 2016, I was a post-doc and I was far from imagining that my own URBEST internship at the Upstate Stem Cell cGMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) Facility (USCGF) would be my passport into USCGF management, business development and mentoring of students at my fingertips. The USCGF is located in the basement of the MRBX building, a truly hidden Oasis! We work as a team for the manufacturing of cell-based therapies for clinical trials. Our culture is industrial in its nature. As part of the production of materials to be tested for the first time in human clinical trials, we assure product safety, purity and potency by the documentation of process and procedures, qualification of equipment and analytical methods. The fact that the GMP facility is in the University is a plus because students can tour it and have a glimpse of what is happening in a Biotech company manufacturing setting.

Follow The Science - A Critical Path Toward Translational Research

Career Story by Elizabeth Evans, Vice President of Preclinical Research at Vaccinex, Inc.

As an undergraduate, I loved biology and, like many young students, was motivated “to make a difference”.  Throughout my education, I realized my curiosity and passion for critical thinking was best fulfilled by laboratory research, while my personal experiences fueled pursuit of translational research, especially cancer research.  I feel very fortunate to be able to pursue my professional goals, and to say I love my job 20 years later.  I remain hopeful that my contributions to a dedicated team will translate to effective therapies in the coming years.

Back to Back: Advancing Your Network

By Shannon Loelius, PhD Candidate and iBiology Intern, and E’Lissa Flores, PhD, URBEST aluma and Associate at Milken Institute

Last we spoke, we talked about the importance of establishing a network, and how to go about doing that. So, now that you have one, what do you do with it? We will be addressing that question on this edition of “Back-to-Back”. As before, two people with vastly different personalities (one entirely extroverted, the other introverted) will discuss their perspectives on the topic. 

My Job Search Experience - Securing a Postdoctoral Position Outside of My Area of Expertise

News Article by Mike Rudy, Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Rochester and Adjunct Professor

I was warned that finding a college teaching position can take a very long time, and that tenure-track positions are even harder to find. It’s a message that was reiterated many times, but I thought my preparation and teaching experience would make my own job search a bit easier. After all, by the time I graduated, I’d accumulated over 100 contact hours of college-level teaching experience, including an adjunct teaching position at St. John Fisher College here in Rochester. So with a fair amount of teaching experience under my belt, a first author publication, and a freshly minted Ph.D., I figured it should be relatively straight forward to find a teaching position near my family in Colorado. I was wrong. What I failed to anticipate was the difficulty I added to my job search by limiting my search to a specific (and far-away) state.