September 13, 2018

Agenda:
1:00-3:00pm: Amgen Office Hours
3:15-4:15pm: Amgen Seminar “Unlocking the potential of biology for patients”
4:15-6:00pm: Happy Hour / Networking

Place: 953 Indiana Street, San Francisco
Seminar and Happy Hour at Community Room and Office Hours at GEHC and Pop-Up Office

Amgen Seminar Speaker:

AI CHING LIM
Director Therapeutic Discovery Research
Ai Ching received her B.A. in Chemistry from Haverford College and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology under Prof. Jackie Barton. Ai Ching has been at Amgen for 13 years and is currently a Director of Biologics in the Therapeutic Discovery department. Ai Ching leads the Protein Technologies groups in South San Francisco and Boston. She has 20 years of biotechnology industrial experience with increasing responsibility leading multi-disciplinary teams focused on protein and antibody reagents and therapeutics. Prior to Amgen, she worked at Incyte Genomics, Phylos and Adnexus Therapeutics, gaining experience with both midsize biotech and start-up environments.

 

Office Hours with:

JOSH PEARSON
Director Preclinical Research
Josh received a BS from California State University, Chico in chemistry before receiving his PhD from the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Washington where his thesis focused on protein/ligand interactions and protein dynamics of drug metabolizing enzymes. Josh entered Amgen in 2006 with a primary focus on Discovery candidate selection and translation of preclinical data packages to clinical strategy. As an individual contributor he has progressed 15+ Discovery teams in to nonclinical and clinical development. Josh currently manages the pharmacokinetic and drug metabolism support for small molecule and protein therapeutic Discovery and Nonclinical Development programs in Oncology and Immune-Oncology at the South San Francisco site. He is also a member of the Amgen Ventures scientific advisory board and a reviewer for licensing opportunities.

SHARVARI BHAGWAT
Scientist, Clinical Pharmacology
Sharvari received a BTech In Pharmaceutical Technology from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Florida where her research focused on developing a dissolution based semi-mechanistic pharmacokinetic model for inhaled drugs. Sharvari joined Amgen as a scientist in the Clinical Pharmacology, Modeling and Simulation group at Amgen and currently supports programs in the cardiovascular therapeutic area as well as immuno-oncology.

BECKY PFERDEHIRT
Senior Manager, Business Development
Becky joined Amgen in 2016 and is a Senior Manager in Business Development, focusing on licensing of external technologies to support Amgen’s R&D across all therapeutic areas. Prior to joining Business Development, Becky was a scientist in Discovery Research at Amgen, focusing on technology development for gene and cell therapies. Becky holds a BS from MIT, a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from U.C. Berkeley and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Genentech.

JOYCE CHAN
Director, Business Development
Joyce received her BSc in Biochemistry from University of Waterloo and her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Notre Dame. Following a short post-doc at Notre Dame, she joined the Cardiovascular Therapeutics department at Berlex Biosciences developing therapeutics for hypertension and heart failure. She joined the Cardiometabolic Research group at Amgen in 2004 as an in vivo pharmacologist, working on programs in diabetes, dyslipidemia and heart failure. Over the next decade, Joyce championed several large and small molecule programs and successfully made her mark as first author of Amgen’s seminal proof of concept publication for pharmacological inhibition of PCSK9 and is one of the inventors of the first PCSK9 inhibitor, Repatha, for LDL-C lowering in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Joyce transitioned to Business Development within Amgen and is currently a licensing director. In this role, she leads cross-functional teams in the search and evaluation of new external opportunities, with the goal of complementing the company’s internal R&D efforts and strengthening Amgen’s Cardiometabolic and Neurosciences therapeutic pipelines.