CASSS is excited to announce the winners of the 2024 WCBP Emerging Leader Award in the Advancement of Scientific Knowledge (ELAA). This competitive award provides early career professionals, PhD students, or post-docs with the opportunity to aid in the planning of the WCBP Symposium while receiving hands-on guidance through the planning process by industry, regulatory, and academic leaders that will oversee the successful implementation of their proposed session content. This recognition allows the awardees to be part of the conversation when crafting scientific content while cultivating opportunities for knowledge-sharing.
The inaugural award winners are Roger Liu, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, John Orlet, Pfizer, Inc., and Chong Wang, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited.
Roger Liu, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
Roger Liu is a senior research scientist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Previously, he was a senior scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb. At BMS, he was responsible for supporting mass spectrometry capabilities for biologics characterization and regulatory filing, developing analytical strategies for protein release and stability, and impurity profiling. Liu earned his PhD with Dr. Michael L. Gross from Washington University in St. Louis (Missouri, US), focusing on the characterization of protein higher order structures through developing and applying novel mass spectrometry-based approaches, most notably: fast photochemical oxidation of proteins, hydrogen deuterium exchange, footprinting by targeted reagents, and native spray.
Prior to his PhD study, he received his BE in applied chemistry from East China University of Science and Technology (Shanghai, China) and MS in polymer science from the College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, The University of Akron (Ohio, US). He has authored and coauthored 16 publications, delivered oral and poster presentations for various conferences, and served as a peer reviewer for many journals. His scientific contributions and community engagements have been recognized with numerous awards, most recently the Next Generation Investigator Award in the 2022 CASSS Mass Spectrometry Symposium.
John Orlet, Pfizer, Inc.
John Orlet is a senior scientist at Pfizer, Inc., based in Saint Louis, MO. He is a part of the analytical R&D group within Pfizer’s Biotherapeutics Pharmaceutical Sciences organization. Prior to his current role, Orlet worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. As a trained separations scientist, his interests have been to champion novel analytical tools, which was reflected in his graduate work at the University of Michigan expanding analytical opportunities with capillary electrophoresis. Recently, Orlet won the CE Pharm 2023 Poster Award for his poster presentation.
Chong Wang, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited
Chong Wang received her PhD in immunology from Peking University and went through postdoc training at Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital, supervised by Dr. Frederick Alt. Her main focus during her postdoc training was to study the mechanisms that render antibody V exon as a privileged location for somatic hypermutation (SHM), and the application of antibody intrinsic SHM pattern in developing anti-HIV broadly neutralizing antibodies. She joined Takeda in 2020 as a scientist in analytical development, CMC, and cell therapy. With her strong background and expertise in genomics, including a variety of subjects ranging from bulk/single-cell transcriptomic profiling to post-gene editing on/off target and chromosomal alteration evaluation, she has led the efforts in and made significant contributions to building the first next-generation sequencing (NGS) based advanced analytical platform in Takeda Cell Therapy.
After being promoted to senior scientist in 2022, she continued to excel by leading the efforts in utilizing the NGS-based in-house platforms she built, to support process development, safety assessment, IND filing, tech transfer, and all Cell Therapy CMC-related activities. Now she is overseeing a team of scientists, a senior research associate, and an intern, to expand, customize, and optimize NGS-based innovative advanced analytical toolbox to support various cell therapy programs, and directing strategy designs of bioinformatic analysis pipeline building with internal teams and CRO. Her dedication and contributions have made several oncology department-wide newsletters endorsed by leadership, and some of her works have been presented in multiple Takeda-wide poster sessions and external conferences as an oral presenter.
Meet these emerging leaders this January in Washington D.C. at WCBP 2024.