Speaker Biographies for Education/Research Workshops

Sandra Schmidt, Ph.D. The Scripps Research Institute

Sandra Schmidt received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford University in 1985. Following a post-doctoral fellowship in Ira Mellman’s laboratory at Yale University, Sandra joined The Scripps Research Institute as an Assistant Member of the Department of Cell Biology in 1988. Currently, she is a tenured Associate Member of that Department. Her research interests include:

• The molecular mechanism of clathrin coated vesicle-mediated endocytosis.
• Structure, function and enzymology of the GTPase, dynamin
• Endocytosis of receptor tyrosine kinases and signal transduction

Sheri Cole, Ph.D. University of California, San Diego

Sheri P. Cole received her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Texas, Austin, and her Ph.D. in the Deptartment of Medicinal Chemistry at Purdue University. She did her post-doctoral work at the John Innes Institute in Norwich, England, then joined Abbott Labs in Chicago as a senior research scientist. She is currently an assistant project scientist in the Deptartment of Medicine at UCSD, researching the pathogenesis of Helicobacter pylori.

Kathy McGuire, Ph.D. San Diego State University

Kathy McGuire received her bachelor's degree in medical technology from the University of New Mexico and her Ph.D. in Immunology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas. She did post-doctoral work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, CA and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA before joining the faculty in the Biology Department at San Diego State University, where she is currently an Associate Professor.

Douglass Forbes, Ph.D. University of California, San Diego

Douglass Forbes received her Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 1978. She was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco before joining the faculty of the Biology Department at UCSD in 1984, where she is now a full professor. Her research focuses on the mechanism of nuclear transport, the structure and assembly of the nuclear pore, and the reconstitution of functionally active eukaryotic nuclei in vitro. She has been active in the American Society of Cell Biology and served on the Governing Council of ASCB from 1994-1997.

Anca Segall, Ph.D. San Diego State University Anca Segall graduated with Honors in Microbiology from the University of Maryland at College Park, and received her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Utah. Her graduate work with Dr. John Roth addressed chromosome rearrangements and chromosome structure in Salmonella typhimurium. She did postdocs with Dr. Rolf Menzel at the E.I du Pont Company in Wilmington, Delaware, where she worked on the control of superhelicity in E. coli, and at the NIH with Dr. Howard Nash, where she worked on the mechanism of site-specific recombination. She joined the Department of Biology at SDSU as an Assistant Professor in 1994.

Gail Baughman, Ph.D. MiraCosta College

Gail Baughman is professor of biology at MiraCosta College and associate director of the Southern California Biotechnology Center located on their campus. She received her bachelor's degree in biology from Cornell University, a master's degree in Biochemistry from Pennsylvania State University, and earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin. Following a postdoctoral research fellowship position in plant molecular biology at the University of California, San Diego, she spent 8 years as a staff scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Research studying programmed cell death of T-lymphocytes. In 1996 she accepted a faculty position at MiraCosta College where she teaches an intensive laboratory methods course in biotechnology. In addition, she is involved in coordinating activities and services among colleges, industries, schools, and government related to meeting the workforce needs of the biotechnology industry.

Tammy Dwyer, Ph.D. University of San Diego

Tammy J. Dwyer received a B.S. in Chemistry from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from UCSD. She taught at UCSD for two years, followed by two years of post-doctoral research at UC Berkeley. She is currently Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of San Diego where she teaches a wide variety of chemistry courses and has an active undergraduate research program using NMR spectroscopy to probe dynamics in small organic molecules and structure in small molecules of biological relevance. Tammy is an active member of the American Chemical Society and currently serves the San Diego Local Section as Chair-Elect, Councilor and Chair of the Education Committee.

Gabriele Weinhausen, Ph.D. University of California, San Diego

Gabriele Wienhausen is the Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Biology at the University of California, San Diego. She is one of the founding faculty members and serves as the UCSD co-director of the doctoral program in Mathematics and Science Education, jointly offered by UCSD and SDSU. Her specific research interest is how to promote "meaningful learning" in college science, and what role interactive, computer-based multimedia packages can play and how effective they are as a tool to facilitate the understanding of complex biological/scientific processes and concepts.

Leslie Gushwa, M.S. San Dieguito High School Academy

Leslie Gushwa fell in love with teaching in the first grade. She admired her teachers and loved school. She know says that "motivating kids to learn is magic." She spent eighteen years doing scientific research, including some teaching of science at the college level. She received her B.A. in Biology from UCR in 1970. She worked in Bacteriology and Food Poisoning research at University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1970-71. She returned to California to receive an M.S. in Microbiology from San Diego State University in 1974. In 1973 and 1974, she worked at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation on leukemia chemotherapy research. From 1974 to 1985, she was a Staff Research Associate in Dr. Roland Blantz’s laboratory at UCSD, doing nephrology research, primarily micropuncture studies on autoimmune disease in the kidney and hypertension. She received her teaching credential in 1985 and has been teaching ever since, for the last three years at the San Dieguito High School Academy. In 1998 she was honored as a San Diego County Teacher of the Year.

Lee Fortunato, Ph.D. University of California, San Diego

Lee Fortunato graduated with a B.S. in Biological Sciences from MIT and after working for a year as a consultant went on to do her graduate work in Molecular and Cellular Biology at UCSD. After three years as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Deborah Spector's lab at UCSD, she was recently promoted to Assistant Project Scientist, a more permanent, research-oriented position at the University. Her interest lies in understanding the mechanism of induction of genetic/DNA damage by human cytomegalovirus within the infected developing fetus.

Lora Mere Aurora Biosciences

Lora Mere is currently the Associate Director of Discovery Operations at Aurora Biosciences. Lora joined Aurora in 1996 and commissioned a high-throughput screening laboratory with the goal of providing High Throughput Screening Services to Aurora’s external customers. Lora heads a team of 9 individuals comprised of Scientists, Software Programmers and Automation Engineers. In addition, she manages a cross-departmental effort in the implementation of Aurora’s UHTSS^TM (ultra high throughput screening system), a new technology which will increase the pace of drug discovery.

Lora is the mother of a very active 5-year-old boy (Andre), who enjoys visiting Aurora to view the robotic workstations. Lora and Andre enjoy bicycling together and take frequent trips to the mountains for downhill skiing and camping.

Elaine Weidenhammer, Ph.D. Nanogen

Elaine Weidenhammer completed her graduate thesis at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittburgh, PA, and then accepted a postdoctoral research position at the UCSD School of Medicine. In 1998, Elaine accepted a research scientist position at Nanogen, a local biotech company. Nanogen in involved in developing electronic microarray formats ("chips") for analysis and characterization of nucleic acids and proteins; her particular area of interest is to devise protocols for determining mRNA expression levels in different cell types. In addition, Elaine is contributing to experiments designed to optimize Nanogen's technology for detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms in genes of clinical interest.

Lucie Bruijn, Ph.D. Bristol Myers Squibb

Lucie Bruijn is presently working as a Research Investigator at Bristol Myers Squibb Company in Connecticut. Her laboratory is involved in the search for new gene targets in neurodegenerative disorders and the generation of model systems to validate targets. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of London, United Kingdom. She completed her post-doctoral research at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the University of California, San Diego focusing on the mechanisms involved in motor neuron degeneration in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. She was a member of the fund raising committee for the 1997 Women in Bioscience conference and served on the AWIS Board in 1998.

France La Pierre Holme Dura Pharmaceuticals

Since 1998, France has been a Project Analyst at Dura Pharmaceuticals. In this position, she supports the Program Management team in maximizing progress toward the goals and objectives of Development programs. From 1992 to 1997, she held several research positions at Glycomed Inc. from Research Associate II, III to Scientist. Her position as a scientist provided an opportunity to represent the biology function on a project team, which stimulated her transition from Research to Program Management. From 1984 to 1992, she held research positions in Biochemistry and Diagnostics at Bio-Mega Inc., a division of Boehringer Ingelheim. In 1982, she began her industrial pharmaceutical career as a Chemistry research assistant at Ayerst Laboratories in Montreal, Canada. She received a Bachelors of Science degree in Chemistry from University of Montreal.

Shirley Johnson, Ph.D. Gen-Probe, Incorporated

Shirley J. Johnson is a Sr. Scientific Manager at Gen-Probe Incorporated. She directs research and development of miniaturized diagnostic assays based on multiplex amplification and probe-array (biochip) detection. She received her doctorate degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 1987, following which she did post-doctoral research at universities in Holland and Germany, intermixed with world travel. Upon return to the USA in 1992, she worked in the San Francisco Bay Area at a biotech start-up company. She joined Gen-Probe in 1995.

Workshop summary: Although there are many similarities in the day-to-day work of academic and industrial research scientists, there are also some important differences that can be frustrating to the scientist in her first industry position. While the academic scientist's primary goal is pure discovery, the industrial scientist is working towards the development of products. In addition, the industrial scientist usually interacts more closely with lawyers, accountants, and regulatory affairs specialists than is common in academia. This workshop will introduce the academic scientist to these differences, and show how an understanding of the goals of these other specialists at a company can help make your research experience more rewarding and successful.

Amy Percy, Ph.D. Independent Consultant

Amy Percy is currently an independent consultant in the biotech industry. She received her training in biology, earning a B.S. from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in immunology and parasitic disease from UCLA. She also recently completed an M.B.A. through UC Irvine's Executive M.B.A. program. She spent 10 years managing research groups in the biotech industry before starting her consulting business, working in the fields of veterinary therapeutics, forensic identification, and human diagnostics and therapeutic drug monitoring. With experience in both established and start-up companies, she is well qualified to discuss the excitement and frustrations of doing research in an industrial setting.