Thirty years as a physician and professor of medicine and pharmacology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and several stints as chair of FDA advisory committees exposed Alastair Wood to the challenges and pitfalls of the drug development process. Today, as managing director of Symphony Capital, a private equity firm dedicated to the biotechnology industry, Wood spends his time working to improve that process through business savvy. "Although great science may help drive a great business, great science on its own is not enough," Wood says. Click here to read about Wood and Symphony associate Sam Hall analyze a biotech business model from conception to completion.
Katharine Gleason is the research manager of Drexel University College of Medicine's Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women, where she is responsible for publishing studies evaluating ELAM's programs. Gleason holds a masters degree in public health from Boston University, and she...
This month, The Scientist welcomes intern Megan Scudellari, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Masters Program in Science Writing. Scudellari took an interesting path to her career: At Boston College, she originally majored in theater, but then took so many biology classes that she decided to make it a double major. Upon graduation, she decided science was her thing and worked at the Museum of Science in Boston, where she handled a bobcat one day and liquid nitrogen the next. "It was really fun," she says. She even united her two majors, and penned a play about the recently discovered "walking fish" fossil, Tiktaalik roseae. This month, Scudellari compiled a chart for the feature on G protein-coupled receptors, and she will be contributing innumerable news stories online. "I like how enthusiastic scientists are in talking about their work. I used to think [interviewing them] would be like pulling teeth," she laughs.
Born in Poland but raised in Canada, illustrator and designer Tomasz Walenta was fascinated by Polish posters, an art form used during World War II that hid political messages behind symbolic imagery. Walenta was drawn to the style's technical richness and ability to communicate an idea on multiple levels. Like those posters, Walenta's goal is to "create one image that will tell a story." For the cover and feature on the biotech industry, Walenta strove to "translate the idea of the complexity in creating a biotech company" into an image, he says.
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