Dr.Madhavi Pulaskar is the Lab Director of Credence Genomics. In her talk, she spoke about her career transition from academia to industry and emphasized the pivotal role her academic proficiency played in facilitating a seamless transition process. She also spoke about the opportunity for insights and learning, particularly for those contemplating similar professional shifts.

Aritra is working as a Senior Process Engineer at Intel Corporation (Oregon, USA). He did his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Jadavpur University and M.Sc.in Chemistry from IIT Kanpur. Aritra acquired his Ph.D. degree from MIT in Physical Chemistry in 2014. Following this, he did postdocs for a few years at different institutes. Aritra shared his experiences in translation from academics to an American multinational corporation. He mentioned different career options available to PhDs in STEM, primarily in the United States. He also discussed the immigration hurdles one faces during this journey. 

Workshop on '(Science) Communication: A Two Way Street"

The theme of the workshop was inter-disciplinary science communication by Dr. Mohit Kumar Jolly. Communication being a two-way street many of us tend to focus more on one-sided traffic, i.e. sending the information. This workshop involved some improvisation-based group games to practice how to focus on receiving information from the audience and adapting one’s communication style in real time accordingly during talks/seminars/discussions etc. to improve our efficiency in communicating our research to a diverse audience.

Dr. Mohit Kumar Jolly did his PhD and Postdoc at Rice University. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering (BSSE) at IISc Bangalore. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Society and Policy at IISc

Workshop on 'A Peek into the Industry"

The workshop was arranged to give the participants an essence of how an industry functions on different levels. With an interactive character playing session, the audience were able to learn different intricacies of running a successful business and understand what goes behind successful product development and bringing the product into the market. Using drug development as a case-study the workshop provided a peek into the industry.

Dr Narendra Chirmule presently is the director of SymphonyTech Biologics. His company's mission is to simplify processes and enhance the quality of manufacturing drugs in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Apart from that, he is the CEO of Acuimmune and Scientific Officer of Immuneel. He has been the Senior Vice President of Biocon, overseeing the Research and Development. He also has been the Executive Director at Amgen and Director at Merck. Additionally, he has been the Assistant Director of Immunology at the Institute for Human Gene Therapy, University of Philadelphia. He also has been an instructor at Weill Cornell Medical College - North Shore Univerisity Hospital.

He is also a music enthusiast and actively worked on promoting Hindustani classical music in Los Angeles (Rupak School of world music) and Philadelphia (Sangeet Society).

Dr. Chirmule did his PhD on the development of a leprosy vaccine, at Cancer Research Institute, Mumbai. Followed by joined Cornell University Medical College-North Shore Hospital as a postdoc where he focused on understanding the pathogenesis of AIDS. 

Dr Nagendran is currently working as an R&D Scientist in 10x Genomics, California, USA. She did her PhD from TIFR, Mumbai where she was mentored by Prof. Mahendra Sonawane on her research focused on epithelial patterning in zebrafish. This was followed by a postdoc at the Desai and Harbury labs at the Stanford School of Medicine, where she developed a multiplexed ISH method to profile RNA in tissues. She joined the R&D team at 10x Genomics to innovate and deliver impactful technologies that enable spatial transcriptomics.

Her talk covered a brief bio, R&D and non-R&D career options for PhDs and PostDocs who want to look outside academia, some real-life examples of transitioning from academia to industry and how to prepare and seek opportunities in the industry. 

He has been an innovator of technologies and has translated them from lab to industry settings. The contributions from his PhD work are now in commercial use through a Bangalore based company. He has also worked with CCAMP. His work on microfluidic technology at the University of Texas is also licensed.

He discussed -

• How translational science is done.

• Major hurdles in such translation of technology.

• What it means to be an innovator and how one can help to bring a product to market from an academic setting.