Alumni News

Our proudest contribution is our alumni, which have had even more impact than any research results or inventions.

Chi Yu Kao visited recently. She works at the "FDA" in Taiwan, and was attending a drug conference in Boston.  She was appreciative of the very broad education that she received here.

Emanuel Carrilho recently completed a sabbatical with George Whitesides working on paper microfluidics for medical diagnostics, and has returned with the project to Brazil (8/2009). Read an interview before he left.

Jeff Mazzeo is currently Director of Biopharmaceutical Business at Waters. In a recent interview, he reflects for prospective students on his career path from the Barnett Institute, through the pharmaceutical industry and a contract research organization.

Jose Carlos Diez Masa has been a member of the National Research Council in Spain for 25 years; a recent direction is the investigation of glycoproteins as biomarkers for many diesease states. He visited the institute to compare notes on CE methods, MS coupling, and data analysis. (more)

Wassim Nashabeh has been promoted to Sr. Director, CMC Regulatory Policy & Strategy (from Associate Director, QC Analytical Technologies) at Genentech, Inc. (June, 2009).

Paul Shieh is now President of Shanghai Applied Protein Tech (link), a proteomics services company founded by the Research Center of the Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Shieh worked with Dr. Karger's DNA sequencing project and is a co-author of the 1994 patent on replaceble polymers.

Prof. Dr. Kirstin Hebenbrock writes from the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at the Provadis School of International Management and Technology in Frankfurt. In her teaching, she praises experiential learning "As a postdoc at Northeastern University, I was greatly impressed with how students benefit from internships or collaborations with partner companies, to integrate what is learned in the lectures with current practice in manufacturing." Prof Hebenbrock was postdoc with Prof. Karger 1993 - 1995, working on CE of DNA for sequencing with Jan Berka, Yvan Pariat, Odilo Müller, Franta Foret, and David Heiger. (posted 4/'09)

Rigoberto Blanco Sáenz is currently Assistant Director Electrochemistry and Chemical Energy Center (CELEQ), with the Ministry of Environmental Management of Costa Rica. He recently chaired the workshop on Environmental Microbiology, presenting on Microorganisms and their Applications in Biotechnology: Biofuels and Microbial Degradation of Hydrocarbons, at their eighth annual Symposium on Analytical Environmental and Sanitary Chemistry.

“It was twenty years ago I left your lab, but I remember it like yesterday as the very good times with you and the others at the Barnett. I really enjoyed my years in Boston under your direction and I am very proud to have gotten my PhD at Northeastern with you. I frequently tell my students about the savor of doing real research in a top-level lab under a strict mentor. I have four grandchildren, and I am still working in the University.” (4/'09)

Franta Foret is Program Chair of the upcoming MSB meeting (molecular-scale bioseparations) in Prague. (See the news and photo gallery of the MSB2009 meeting in Boston!)

Russell Garlick (M.S. '79; Ph.D. '87, Giese) is CEO of Protein Forest in Lexington, MA. 

Anya Pashkova is at MaxWell Biocorporation in the Ukraine, working on the role of chronic infections in cardiovascular disease.  

Beverly Brenner returns to visit;  Emanuel Carrilho on sabbatical in Boston

Lorena and Elma Carrilho, Beverly Brenner, and Emanuel Carrilho.  (9/26/2007)

Enrique Arevalo has joined Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in Cambridge, MA., from his position as a Sr. Research Scientist in Dr. Karger's group  

Viktor Andreev is now an Associate Professor at the University of Miami Medical School, doing mathematical modeling, bioinformatics and systems biology for pharmacogenomics and neuroscience applications.

Marek Minarik is Founder and President of a successful biotech company, Genomac, in Prague; and gave us an interview about his path there from the Barnett.  

Alex Lazarev is now Director of Research and Development at Pressure BioSciences, which makes a novel gentler cell lysis device.

Eugene Moskovets, who built the 2 kHz MALDI, is now at MassTech. near Baltimore MD, to work full-time on a new MALDI MS system, on which he had been consulting in a joint grant. 

Alexander Ivanov is Associate Director of the Proteomics Facility at the Harvard NIEHS Center for Environmental Health, of  the Harvard School of Public Health.

Yelena Lyubarskaya at the recent GBMSDG meeting.  Yelena is currently with Biogen Inc

 Congratulations to Recent Ph.D.'s 
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Susan Schiavo completed her Ph.D. in Feb 2009, showing results from several papers coupling LC-MS with additional detection methods. She will do a postdoc with Bruce Kristal at Harvard Medical School.

Jim Glick presented work in December 2008 on "DNA Adduction in Context: Native Metabolic Activation of a Food-Borne Carcinogen". He continues as Group Leader with Prof. Vouros' group, on projects he obtained funding for (link).

Caroline Cealles, in November 2008, defended a dissertatation "Application of Mass Specgrometery to Novel Metabolic Pathwasy of Vitamin D, and on quantitation of DNA Adducts. She married Jimmy Flarakos, and is currently working at Unilever.

Ching Liao completed in December 2008 a co-op Ph.D. with Prof. Paul Vouros, while working at the mass spectrometry instrumentation facility at Harvard.

Dyana Argoti presented her thesis on "LC-MS for Detection and Characterization of DNA Biomarkers and Reactive Metabolites", in October 2008.

Terrence Black finished up in September 2008, including a chapter on Forensics, as well as pioneering work on differential mobility spectrometry (DMS) studies of protein phosphorylation. He went to do postdoctoral work at Georgetown Medical School.

(cont'd below)

Susan Schiavo enjoying a milestone moment with her committee and friends.

Ye Gu  defended her thesis under Dr. Karger in December 2007, became a Senior Scientist at Anthill Technologies in Woburn, MA., and is currently a Research Scientist I at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge.  

John Williams finished his Ph.D. with Dr. Vouros in September 2007, and is working with Vertex Pharmaceuticals.  

Haven Baker earned his Ph.D. with Prof. Hancock in June 2007 and will be attending Harvard Business School.  

Tatiana Plavina completed her Ph.D. with Prof. Hancock in Spring 2007, and continues as a Research Scientist at Biogen Idec.  

Xiaoyang Zheng earned her Ph.D. with Dr. Hancock, and is now a Research Scientist at Genzyme.   

Danielle Falcone is now working  at Merck, after completing an M.S. with Graham Jones in the spring of 2007 .  

Longfei Xie, completed his Ph.D. with Graham Jones in the summer of 2007 and is currently with Pfizer, in Groton CT.

Lingyun Li finished his Ph.D. with Dr. Karger last fall (2006). Of several strong offers, he elected to become a Research Scientist in the Analytical R& D group at Genzyme, in Waltham, developing quantitative analytical methods. 

Yiqing Lin earned his Ph.D. with Dr. Jones in the summer of 2005, and after postdoctoral work with Paul Vouros and Roger Kautz applying the LC-MS-NMR platform to natural products discovery and structure elucidation, Yiqing is now at Molecular Insight in Cambridge developing new analytical methods. 

Li Zang, before she graduated in Aug 2005, distinguished herself with three major Barnett Institute awards: The Barnett Institute Alumni Award, The Gustel and Ernst Giessen Memorial Award in Advanced Research, and the First Year Graduate Student Award. Li is currently a Scientist at Biogen-Idec and, of note, she recently gave birth to a daughter. 

Yonghui Wang, since earning her Ph.D. with Prof Hancock in 2005, has been working at Centocor, a J&J company in the Philadelphia area. 

Anna Pashkova is now one of the founding scientists with Max-Well Pharma in Kiev. She returned to her beloved Ukraine, after earning her Ph.D. with Dr. Karger, to bear and raise a daughter. 

Hsuen-shen Chen is a Senior Research Chemist at Merck in Rahway, NJ, since receiving his Ph.D. from Dr. Karger in 2005. 

Ziping Yang, who earned her Ph.D. with Prof. Hancock in 2006 and was awarded the Gustel and Ernst Giessen Memorial Award in Advanced Research, is currently a Principal Scientist in the Department of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics at Novartis in New Jersey. 

Elaine Ricicki has been working as an Applications Scientist at Agilent. After her Ph.D. work with Prof. Vouros in capillary LC-MS techniques for DNA adducts, she has very much enjoyed using Agilent’s full range of instruments in applications from forensics to food safety to pharmaceuticals. 

Christine Andrews earned her Ph.D. with Dr. Vouros in 2003, and is now an Associate Principal Scientist at Schering Plough. 

Jimmy Flarakos, who earned his Ph. D. with Paul Vouros in 2005, is doing postdoctoral research at MIT on novel approaches to interfacing gas or liquid chromatography to accelerator mass spectrometry for metabolomic studies, seeking biomarkers in differential patterns of isotope-labelled endogeneous metabolites. 

Steve Carr, also a visiting scientist in 2004, is the Senior Scientific Leader in protein biochemistry and proteomics at the Broad Institute, leading the Proteomics platform.

Aimin Tan, who built a preparative IEF device for prefractionating proteins as a postdoc with Dr. Karger, has distinguished himself at Anapharm in Toronto. As Project Coordinator since last year, his work leading a group in bioanalytical method development and application is recognized both internally and by client pharmaceutical companies. “Though what I am doing now is not related to Proteomics, I owe a lot to the guidance I received from Dr. Karger and Franta Foret.”

Jerry King is now the Ansel and Virginia Condray Endowed Professor in Biochemical and Chemical Separations at the University of Arkansas.

Jan Berka in November, became Senior Director of DNA Sequencing at Perlegen Sciences in Mountain View, CA.  (He has been.at 454.com in Branford, CT.)

Roland Annan came up from GlaxoSmithKline to visit, and gave a lecture on protein phosphorylation.  

Phil Savickas is running the Greater Boston Mass Spectrometry Discussion Group (GBMSDG), and is working with the Pharmaceutical and Analytical Development group at Shire Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge MA.

Rustom Poncha, Dr. Karger's first graduate student in June 1967, passed away June 2007, from cancer.  He is survived by his wife Geri.  (4/08)

Michael Miller, who received his Ph.D from Dr. Karger in 1968, will retire from the NJ DEP July 1st, but will remain  active in the Eastern Analytical Symposium and the National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Conference.  (4/08)

Dallas Hughes and Yuriy Dunayevskiy have been appointed as Vice President of Research and Research Fellow at Advanced Viral Research Corp (ADVR) (more) (12/5/2007)

Complete Listing of Barnett Institute alumni. .

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