Join Kelsey Weigel, Scientist II at Flagship Biosciences, Inc.to discuss how she used her Notre Dame PhD for a career in the pharmaceutical industry.

All students, postdocs & faculty welcome. Cookies/coffee will be provided! 

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Kelsey Weigel Bio: After completing her BS in Molecular Biology and BA in Spanish at Rockhurst University, Kelsey went straight into the PhD program at the University of Notre Dame. While at Notre Dame she worked on a few different projects. She was in the home lab of Dr. Zach Schafer, and there she mainly focused on the contribution of the tumor microenvironment (TME) to the regulation of anoikis (detachment-induced cell death). In addition, she worked on a collaborative effort with Dr. Shaun Lee’s group on a unique therapeutic development proof-of-concept project. Most of the work on all her projects was done in breast cancer models. Upon receipt of her PhD, she proceeded to a two year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. While at Anschutz, Kelsey worked predominantly on TME signaling in head and neck cancer with heavy emphasis on mouse modeling. Although she had never had much opportunity to explore alternate careers, she used her time at Anschutz to network with and learn about the local pharmaceutical/biotech/diagnostics industry space and accepted a job offer from Flagship Biosciences. Flagship Biosciences is an imaging analysis company that operates in the pre-clinical to clinical space and focuses on the diagnostic personalized medicine space. Now, as a Scientist at Flagship, Kelsey utilizes her knowledge of cancer signaling pathways and mechanisms of action to interact with clients including large and small pharmaceutical companies and physicians. Her experiences gained in academia directly contribute to study design, data interpretation, and data-driven decision-making to improve cancer drug development and patient treatment opportunities.