mAcademia - Science, More than Just Academia‪.‬ Elena Itskovich & Ofer Yizhar Barnea

Dr. Evan Bai is computational genomic team leader at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. There he leads collaborations across Research, Clinical, and Commercial. By designing and analyzing genomic studies across the drug discovery pipeline, ranging from target discovery to defining treatable patient population, he contributed to the advancement of one disease program from compound screening into Phase II clinical trials, and other disease programs from target discovery into lead optimization.
Evan is also the founder of Hanwen Interiors, an interior decorating firm specializing in modern, Asian-inspired homes. He helps homeowners find peace and retreat by creating functional and beautiful designs. Hanwen Interiors is also a proud member of the Massachusetts LGBT Chamber of Commerce. To help support the LGBTQ+ community, I pledge to donate 10% of our design fees to local LGBTQ+ non-profit organizations.

Evan is also the volunteer leader and co-chair of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ PRIDE Employee Resource Group (with over 400 members globally), where he leads and oversees company-wide programs that support the career advancement of LGBTQ+ employees and allies. 
Elena talked with Evan about his career path to and at Vertex, his new role as interior designer and the parallels between the two. They also discussed how being part of the LGBTQ+ community has affected his career and how he is serving and supporting this community now.

You can find more about Evan:
Website: hanwen-interiors.com
Instagram handle:  @hanwen.interiors
LinkedIn profile:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-bai/

Music credits
Funkorama Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Dr. Yaniv Erlich is the co-founder and CEO of Eleven Therapeutics. Prior, he was the CSO of MyHeritage, a consumer genomics company (acquired by Francisco Partners), an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University and a Principal Investigator at the Whitehead Institute, MIT. 

We talked with Yaniv about his unique career that led him to leave academia and focus his efforts on building exciting biotech companies. Yaniv shared his insights into academic and non academic career development pathways for scientists, delved into the advantages of building a company in the UK as well as shed some light on how research is done at Eleven Therapeutics. 

Tune in and join the discussion in our 'mAcademia podcast' group on Facebook. 

Music

Funkorama Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/


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Gali Arad and Eran Seger from Protai had talked to us about moving from their previous life in tech and academia into the fast pace of illuminating the druggable Proteome for better cures.
Eran Seger is the Co-Founder and CEO of Protai, a fast-growing biotech startup sitting on the intersection of proteomics and machine learning to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of complex diseases. Eran is an experienced technology executive and entrepreneur with a strong technical background and over 15 years of tech leadership positions at the Israeli Intelligence forces and HighTech.
Gali Arad, PhD is a Computational Biologist and the first employee of Protai, a drug discovery startup combining AI and proteomics to create intelligence-driven pharma. She is an end-to-end computational biology scientist, with broad experience in systems biology, data analysis, hands-on technological practice, and clinical samples handling. In her current role, Gali leads the scientific research, focused on target discovery and prioritization, and the collection and curation of Protai’s data warehouse. She holds a Ph.D from Tel Aviv University, applying mass-spectrometry-based proteomics to study cancer heterogeneity. Her findings were published in top-tier scientific journals and emphasized the added value of clinical proteomics in the study of cancer.

Music:
Funkorama Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Dov Moran, Managing Partner of Grove Ventures, is one of the most prominent Israeli hi-tech leaders in the world. Dov is an investor, inventor, and entrepreneur, who is best known as the inventor of the USB flash drive. He founded M-Systems, acquired by SanDisk for $US 1.6 billion in 2006. He also served as the chairman of Tower Semiconductors, a developer and manufacturer of semiconductors and integrated circuits, in which he led a massive overhaul. Under Moran’s guidance, the company achieved a notable turnaround and became an enormous success. It was acquired by Intel in 2022 for 5.4 billion. 

We talked about innovation, entrepreneurship, out of the box thinking and much more. We also mentioned Dov's first book ‘100 Doors - An Introduction to Entrepreneurship’ that was published in 2016 and included insights from his untraditional path.



Music:

Funkorama Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/


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Over two years have past since we started this podcast. We learned a lot! We also applied some key take home messages to our own lives and careers. Today we share our progress with you! 


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Corrie Painter is the Deputy Director of Count Me In and is a research scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.  A trained cancer researcher with a Ph.D. in biochemistry, she completed her postdoctoral work in cancer immunology, focusing on melanoma. In 2010, Painter was diagnosed with angiosarcoma. She has combined her cancer advocacy and scientific background to engage with patients in order to build and carry out patient-partnered genomics studies. She is also the co-founder of Angiosarcoma Awareness Inc.

We talked with Corrie about her brave and determined journey, about how scientists can lead work of impact and change, about personal strengths, determination and appreciation of life. This is an inspirational conversation, demonstrating how much good can come out of adversity, how much impact can be achieved, when nothing else seems acceptable. Don't miss this conversation.

Music:

Funkorama Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/


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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/macademia/message