Jobs for our first three graduates

1 May 2020

Early in 2020 we were happy to announce that the first ESRs have graduated with PhD degrees and were getting ready for the next stage in their careers. Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, we caught up with them to make sure they were keeping well and ask what they had been up to since EVOluTION.

Dr Laura Menke was the first one to successfully defend her thesis and subsequently moved to the United States. Laura is currently working as an Associate Specialist at the Department of Vascular Surgery at UCSF in San Francisco. She is coordinating multiple clinical trials that study investigational devices or biomarkers in vascular patients by closely monitoring study activity of enrolled subjects and providing scientific input and support to industrial sponsors and the clinical and research teams.

Dr Monika Maciuszek stayed in England and in the pharmaceutical industry. Monika is working as a medicinal chemist at Antikor Biopharm, a biotechnology company originally spun-out from Imperial College. The company is developing an innovative class of Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) therapy called Fragment Drug Conjugates (FDCs). As a chemist, Monika is responsible for designing and synthesising payload-linkers used in ADCs. 

Finally, Dr Silvia Oggero is still based at William Harvey Research Institute. Silvia stayed in the Centre for Biochemical Pharmacology where she is working as a post doc researching new therapeutic strategies and testing novel GPCRs agonists for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction.

We are very proud that our first ESRs moved to a job straight after EVOluTION, having launched their careers as the science leaders of tomorrow and we look forward to hearing of their future successes.