On Saturday, Feb. 22 from 11 a.m. to just before 3 p.m., people gathered for the second annual BioBreakthrough Conference in the Advanced Technology Lab (BLDG 7). Guest speakers and a Cal Poly alumni panel discussed translational technologies and business principles in the STEM field.
The coordinators of this year’s event included biology senior Jacob Pogue, biochemistry junior Jack Kilshaw, environmental earth and soil sciences senior Marco Iandolino and biology junior Stephen Schaefer.
Pogue hoped attendees were able to take away that biotech as an industry is “really cool” and that there are more opportunities than just academia.
“A lot of us are just herded into Ph.D. or Masters programs, so just kind of getting exposure to alternative pathways is definitely a priority for me,” Pogue said. “It is hard to do. It is hard to learn about unless you have some crazy initiative. So kind of reducing that barrier is really the goal in that sense.”
Pogue said the conference was hard to coordinate but they were glad they did it.
Senior Vice President at Sana Biotechnology Inc. and head of hypoimmune platform Sonja Schrepfer began the day with a talk about her early developments in science and her work with islet cells.
After Schrepfer, CEO of Vincerx Pharmaceuticals Ahmed Hamdy talked about translational sciences and how drugs go from discovery to approval.
Public health junior Grace Caltabellotta learned there are a lot of steps and different factors to developing a drug.
After the first round of speakers, a student alumni panel of recent graduates Ethan Tse, Kristi Leung and Andre Yarcan shared their post-grad experiences. They were co-founders, along with Pogue, of the event.
They shared where they are now, how they found out about the biotech industry outside of medical school, why they chose their specific post-grad programs, or, in Leung’s case, being accepted into a grad program but trying to decide if she is going to go.
They also discussed their experience and strategies for finding jobs after graduation and experiences in undergraduate that they found valuable in their life.
Caltabellotta said she attended to see what alumni have done to find jobs because she is looking for a job.
“I just wanted to see what it looks like in the biotech field,” Caltabellotta said.
UCSB professor and CEO at Laxmi Therapeutic Devices Sumita Pennathur talked about her experience building medical devices and her inspiration. She opened up the room to questions about her presentation.
To round out the event, employees from Sarepta Therapeutics, which has facilities in Cambridge Massachusetts and Columbus Ohio, spoke about their company. Cal Poly alumnus Gary Charbonneau gave career advice and talked about the industry, and Danielle Griffin and Sarah Lewis explained their role in Sarepta.
Biomedical engineering sophomore Arthur Klujian said he thought some of the work that Sarepta was doing was amazing.
“I think some of the advice they gave resonated with me about taking my time here at Cal Poly and exploring my options to stay in school,” Klujian said. “And the general life advice a lot of the speakers gave just seemed very useful.”
Klujian wants to go into the biotech field and maybe own a business one day.
“A lot of the speakers here are in the exact kind of positions I would like to be in in the future, so I just came to absorb as much knowledge as I can,” Klujian said.