Her Story
About Ana
I work in biopharmaceuticals, specifically in technology transfer for upstream processes. I now work more as a leader and liaison between the R&D groups and getting processes into manufacturing, doing a lot less bench scale work and focusing more on transfer packages - getting all the scientific work into digestible formats to bridge that gap between science and manufacturing, making sure we can scale to all different kinds of process plants. Previously, I was working in the R&D section where I pioneered a lot of the tangential flow filters that we're using for perfusion harvest for continuous manufacturing. Instead of the traditional batch process where you run a bioreactor, harvest material, then stop and go to the next step, I worked in continuous manufacturing where we are continuously sending streams of material through all those process steps. My field of expertise was on the perfusion harvest - instead of waiting for the bioreactor to grow to a certain parameter and then harvesting all at once, we basically start perfusion, continuously sending material into downstream manufacturing for a set number of days. When I started, we were still at a laboratory scale, and I was able to find engineering techniques to bring that lab scale to a larger clinical scale and beyond. I've pioneered a lot of the TFF work we've done with proof-of-concept work for TFF regeneration and mid-run TFF swaps, really scaling the TFF perfusion device past the laboratory scale. I have presented on that at numerous conferences.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Ana
01What do you attribute your success to?
I definitely attribute it to a lot to my family's support. My family's always been very supportive of me continuing education. Also my personal drive - I am very driven as a person. I honestly like situations when they're a little bit more stressful and a little bit tougher. I like the challenge, it keeps me going forward and it keeps pushing me. So it kind of keeps driving me to keep pursuing the next thing. I just love learning. As I said, I have 3 bachelor's degrees and a master's degree. I'm always looking for the next outlet to learn something new, and to just grow.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I would say don't give up. As somebody who decided to return to school a little bit later in life because I wanted to pursue my dream, I did that, and it's been so rewarding. It's never too late to just keep doing what you want to do, what you love to do, and just keep pushing forward.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
It's been a pleasure to see the industry start to be more inclusive to young women. I think advice would be to keep pushing for their goals, to not let themselves be sidelined, to just keep pushing to progress. We're seeing so many more women become leaders nowadays, compared to when I first started, even compared to when my mom was an engineer back in her day. Keep our momentum going forward and keep being present in the room. When they're in school, do the research lab opportunities, do the internships, do all the extracurriculars, join the organizations, and get your name out there as much as you can, because there's gonna be a lot of people fighting for the same job.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think the biggest challenges currently are, when COVID happened, there was a very large growth boom for pharmaceuticals. There was a lot of additional funding as a result of COVID directly, and there was a lot of new companies starting up, a lot of job market out there. Now that COVID has decreased and we're not getting that extra funding, I'm seeing a lot of these startup companies start to shut down. Right now, the positions are not as open as they used to be, and I think it's going to be very hard for the next generation. There's gonna be a lot of people fighting for the same job, which is really sad to say.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Values in my personal life are definitely family, friends and honesty. In my work life, respect, integrity and inclusion.
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