Are you interested in Pharma R&D? Do you want to learn more about the day-to-day of researchers and project managers within pharmaceutical companies?

Join us on Thursday the 20th of February to meet our guest speakers from Pfizer, GSK and Immunocore, coming from both biological and chemistry backgrounds. They will touch on topics regarding their interest in pharmaceutical research and development, the work they carry out, the impact they bring forward in helping with the discovery of life saving therapies and recent trends within the industry. They will also talk about their career paths and previous undertakings that brought them to where they are now, and tips on how to approach job applications within both the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

Location: Lecture Theatre, Department of Pharmacology

Time: Thursday, 20th of February, 6.15-7.30PM

Please register your attendance. Open to all students and early career scientists. A reception will follow. To keep updated about career and scientific events in STEM, join our society by visiting www.oupharmsoc.co.uk

Speakers:

Nessa Carson, High-Throughput Experimentation Chemist at Pfizer, Former Research Scientist at AMRI

Roger Wu, Chief Operating Officer at Consilient Health, Former Project Manager at GSK

Sam El Ajouz, Senior Scientist at Immunocore, Former Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Oxford

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Nessa Carson was born in Warrington, England. After doing her MChem at University College, Oxford, she went onto postgraduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Prof Scott Denmark. She started pharma work as a synthetic chemist at Eli Lilly in Surrey in 2017, before moving within the same company to run the UK high-throughput automation laboratory. Nessa started at Pfizer as a high-throughput chemist in June 2019. She maintains a website of useful chemistry resources, https://supersciencegrl.co.uk.

Roger Wu got his PhD in Pharmaceutical Material Science at University of East Anglia (2008) and kickstarted his career as a Technical Project Representative at GSK (2008-2014). He then moved over to AMCo, where he occupied the position of Project Team Manager (2014-2016), to then move back to GSK as a Team Leader (2016-2019). He now is the Chief Operating Officer at Consilient Health, a pharmaceutical company specialising in commercialising products across the UK, Ireland, Europe and the Middle East.

Sam El Ajouz, graduated with a PhD in Physiology and Pharmacology from University of Leicester in 2011, after which he moved to the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, where he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher (2011-2014). He then later moved to the University of Oxford, where he was employed as a Postdoctoral Researcher (2014-2016). In 2016, he took a position at Immunocore, where he is currently employed as a Senior Scientist, and carries out research within the Protein Sciences team, helping with the development of a new class of immunotherapeutic drugs.