CSB Alumni Event: “From Stanford to Careers – Alumni Share their Journeys”
The Department of Chemical and Systems Biology Presents
CSB Alumni Event
“From Stanford to Careers – Alumni Share their Journeys”
Friday, August 4, 2023
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Pacific Time)
Munzer Auditorium (In-person)
Please ensure you are following all COVID related policies.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Ari Firestone, PhD
Principal Investigator
Calico Life Sciences LLC
Bio: Dr. Ari Firestone is a Principal Investigator of Oncology at Calico, where he established his lab in 2018. Prior to founding his independent group, he served as a Senior Scientist in Jeffrey Settleman’s Laboratory begining in the fall of 2015. Dr. Firestone’s academic journey includes postdoctoral research conducted at the University of California San Francisco Cancer Center under the mentorship of Dr. Kevin Shannon. He holds a B.A. in Biology from Carleton College and a Ph.D. in Chemical and Systems Biology from Stanford University School of Medicine, where he worked with Prof. James K. Chen.
David J. Woodhouse, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer
NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Inc.
Bio: Dr. Woodhouse became Chief Executive Officer and a member of NGM’s Board of Directors in September 2018. He previously served as NGM’s Chief Financial Officer, joining the company in March 2015. From 2002 to 2015, he was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, most recently as a Managing Director in the healthcare investment banking group and co-head of biotechnology investment banking. Earlier in his career, Dr. Woodhouse worked at Dynavax Technologies and also as a research assistant at Amgen, Inc. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Surrozen Inc. Dr. Woodhouse received a B.A. in pharmacology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a Ph.D. in molecular pharmacology from Stanford University School of Medicine.
Laura Banaszynski, PhD
Associate Professor
Green Center for Reproductive Biology Sciences
UT Southwestern Medical Center
Bio: Laura Banaszynski is an Associate Professor in the Green Center for Reproductive Biology Sciences at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Laura began her academic career studying Chemistry at the University of Notre Dame. She obtained her PhD from Stanford University under the mentorship of Tom Wandless, where she developed chemical genetic tools called degrons to allow targeted and conditional depletion of proteins of interest. Laura completed postdoctoral training in chromatin biology with David Allis at The Rockefeller University. She joined the faculty at UTSW in 2015 as an Endowed Scholar and CPRIT Scholar. Her lab studies the role of chromatin dynamics in development and disease, with a focus on histone variants. The Banaszynski Lab is particularly interested in how histone variants contribute to chromatin posttranslational modification landscapes associated with both gene activation and the silencing of repetitive regions of the genome.
Eric Churchill, PhD
Head of Lung Cancer
Global Medical Affairs Oncology
Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Co.
Bio: Eric received his PhD at Case Western Reserve University and went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship in Daria Mochly-Rosen’s lab where he worked on PKC signaling in the heart. Following his time in the department of Chemical and Systems Biology he worked for several years as a Medical Science Liaison (MSL) engaging physicians on clinical trial development and preclinical research initiatives. Following this he worked as an acquisition and integration lead, which opened up several exciting paths within the Medical Affairs Organization at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. These paths included working as a medical communications lead, a training lead, and a diagnostic lead all within lung cancer. This experience provided him the opportunity to become a global product medical lead followed by the lung cancer franchise lead at Takeda. Eric currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife (Aimee) their six daughters and three grandchildren.