Former Industrial Scientist

Geneva Laboratories, Inc.

While my research and employment experiences have always been intellectually stimulating, they have also addressed larger societal issues as well, including antibiotic resistance, transparency to consumers, and new method development for use in drug discovery.

After graduating from Rockford University in 2013, I worked as a chemical analyst under Dr. Greg Daigneault at Geneva Laboratories, an independent contract laboratory in southeast Wisconsin.

In this position I gained extensive instrumentation experience and routinely performed analyses in accordance with company standard operaing procedures (SOPs), the United States Pharmacopeia (a publication that contains legally recognized standards of identity, strength, quality, purity, packaging, and labeling for drug substances, dosage forms, and other therapeutic products, including dietary supplements), and other compendia.

My department was frequently subjected to audits, ranging from client companies to the FDA, therefore I quickly acquired good laboratory practices (GLPs) and impeccable documentation skills.

With a solid foundation of scientific expertise, I began looking for a job to further my professional development and moved from this small company to a global corporation.

Tate & Lyle

The highlight of industrial career was working for Dr. James Smoot and Dr. Penny Patton at Tate & Lyle. Employment at an international company gave me the opportunity to be a part of a cross-functional team and acquire more advanced scientific research skills, including literature review for available intellectual property (IP) domains, experimental design via computational modeling, data collection and analysis, technical writing, and, most importantly, critical thinking.

My research focused on synthetic methodology development to support the growing clean-label movement. Being immersed in research on a daily basis drastically increased my ability to communicate research to others. Whether I was presenting results at project meetings, documenting activities in my lab notebook, or writing formal reports for internal publication, this opportunity was invaluable.