2018-2019 STEM Talks
Thank you to all of our wonderful past speakers!
Thank you to the American Society for Cell Biology and Sharon Education Foundation for funding our STEM Talks in the 2018-2019 school year!
Thank you to the American Society for Cell Biology and Sharon Education Foundation for funding our STEM Talks in the 2018-2019 school year!
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Laura Laranjo (Brandeis University)
The Pipeline of Drug Development 
The Pipeline of Drug Development:
From Basic Research to your Medicine Cabinet.
We all have extensive access to many different FDA approved drugs that are useful in treating multiple injuries and diseases – many of which have become so commonplace that they can be readily found at bedsides and medicine cabinets across the globe. However, we might not often consider how these drugs are discovered and how they impact our biology. As a research scientist, Ms. Laranjo is intrigued by drugs that treat diseases such as cancers, HIV, and sickle cell anemia, but also causes mutations in our genome. In this talk, she will explore the biology and ethics behind specific drugs to better understand drug development and treatment. The talk will also focus on cancer and antiviral drugs, their mechanism of action, and how scientists decide drug benefits versus drug risk. In addition, she will explore the role that society and science policy plays in the drug development pipeline.
Lauren Celano (CEO, Propel Careers)
Overview of career opportunities in the Life Sciences 
Overview of career opportunities in the Life Sciences Sector. Lauren Celano is the Co-founder and CEO of Propel Careers, a life science search and career development firm focused on connecting talented individuals with entrepreneurial innovative life sciences companies. Lauren is very passionate about working with individuals with strong scientific backgrounds to find exciting growth opportunities in the life sciences and related industries. Lauren co-founded Propel Careers in 2009 and since then, has worked with thousands of students, postdocs, medical residents and professionals to help advance their careers. Before Propel, she spent about 10 years in the life sciences industry working with companies to advance drug molecules through SNBL USA, Aptuit, Quintiles, and Absorption Systems. She has a B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Gettysburg College and an MBA with a focus in the health sector and entrepreneurship from Boston University. Lauren is on the Board of MassBioEd, the Advisory Board of the Boston University School of Public Health Pharmaceuticals Program, and the Advisory board for Endicott College Boston. She also serves on the Gettysburg College Entrepreneurial Fellowship Advisory Council and the programming committee of the Capital Network. She has also been part of the selection committee for the Life Sciences Immigrant Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the last 4 years with the Immigrant Learning Center.
Dr. Ruhul Abid, Brown University
Global Health 
Dr. Ruhul Abid's global health work involves development of a workplace mobile health clinic for the garment factory workers in Bangladesh using a paperless, electronic medical record system for health screening and treatment of diseases. More recent work involves two 8-member medical team serving 700,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals to Bangladesh, called the Rohingya, since October 2017. The teams have been providing medical care to 250-300 patients per day (around 6,500 patients per month) in the makeshift camps of the Rohingya in Kutupalong and Balukhali, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. http://www.browndailyherald.com/2017/11/16/prof-provides-health-care-displaced-rohingya-refugees/ https://www.brown.edu/initiatives/global-health/news/2016-11/health-wheels
Dr. Lauren Zasadil (Amon Lab), MIT
2n or not 2n: Can Errors in Mitosis Lead to Cancer? 
Dr. Zasadil is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. She received her Bachelor’s degrees in Molecular Biology and Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, and her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. Her PhD work focused on the mechanisms by which cells with an abnormal chromosome content contribute to the initiation and growth of cancers, as well as response to chemotherapeutics. In her postdoctoral work, she is investigating a role for the immune system in detection and clearance of cells with an abnormal chromosome content. Dr. Zasadil is an advocate for appreciation of the visual world of science, and science art. Her talk will focus on the causes and consequences of errors during cell division, and how we can build from observations in mouse models which have been engineered to exhibit defects in this process.
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Dr. Joe DeGiorgis (Providence College/MBL)
DNA Barcoding and Photographic Imaging of Marine Life 
DNA Barcoding and Photographic Imaging of the Marine Life of Narragansett Bay: the Search for Novel Species.
Joe DeGiorgis received a BS in Oceanography from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1986. During his undergraduate career he worked as an intern at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute first in the aquaculture facility raising unicellular algae then in the Department of Chemical Engineering designing an emergency breathing apparatus for the Johnson Sealink Submarine. In 1985, Joe became a SCUBA diver/collector for the MBL Department of Marine Resources and has been at the MBL every summer since. He began working on kinesin motor proteins with Bruce Schnapp at Harvard Medical School. Joe received his PhD from Brown University in 2001 in Cellular and Molecular Biology were he worked on myosins in the squid giant axon with Elaine Bearer. Joe served as a postdoc with Tom Reese at the NIH where he focused on the structure of the postsynaptic density used techniques in electron microscopy. Currently, Joe is a Professor of Biology at Providence College were he teaches Neurobiology as well as Light and Electron Microscopy. In addition, Joe teaches artists how to take images with microscopes at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.
Dr. Vladimir Botchkarev (Livingston Lab) DFCI/Harvard
Cell Biology in Health and Disease 
Dr. Botchkarev is a Research Fellow in Cancer Biology and Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. After graduating from Sharon High School, Dr. Botchkarev obtained his Bachelor's degree in Medical Science from the University of Leeds (UK) and completed his PhD work in Jim Haber's lab at Brandeis University on proteins that control cell division and the DNA damage response. Dr. Botchkarev is passionate about investigating cancer biology, taking pictures with microscopes, and science education. In his talk, Dr. Botchkarev will share with the audience scientific anecdotes from his career in hopes of inspiring students to enter the exciting world of STEM. Dr. Botchkarev is a Co-Founder of the Sharon STEM Talks.
Rylie Walsh (Rodal Lab), Brandeis University
What can fruit flies tell us about Alzheimer's Disease? 
Rylie Walsh is a graduate student in Molecular & Cellular Biology in the lab of Dr. Avital Rodal at Brandeis University. Rylie obtained her BS in Biology at Providence College and then worked as an electron microscopy technician at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA for two years before beginning her PhD. Rylie’s research centers around how cells sort important materials (such as proteins, lipids, and RNAs), particularly in neurons, where failures in these systems can lead to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. In her talk, Rylie will explain how the humble fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is used in her research to provide important insight into how neurons function – and she will show how researchers use microscopes to bring neurons to life.
Yitzi Calm (Naughton Lab), Boston College
Nanotechnology and Nanophotonics 
Yitzi Calm is a Ph.D. candidate in the Dept. of Physics at Boston College researching nanophotonics. Yitzi is trying to answer the question, "how small of an object can be resolved using light?" Like any other area of science, this is a big question with many people working on it in their own creative way. There is no "one" right answer. One pathway Yitzi has explored is to trap light inside of tiny coaxial cables. But, in the bigger picture, what motivates that question in the first place is that confining light down to the nano-scale critically enables many useful, cutting-edge technologies. A famous person once said, "there is plenty of room at the bottom", meaning that the industry of miniaturizing our technology down to ever smaller scales has a long future ahead. Yitzi will discuss what inspired him to pursue a STEM career, some of the places he has worked, and his plans for after graduation.
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