Dear LS4FUTURE Community, 

We are delighted to invite you to the next session in our “Researchers in Industry” series of online informative sessions, where we highlight the unique experiences of researchers who have successfully transitioned from academia to industry. 

Our upcoming speaker is Alexandra Vitor, currently a Clinical Research Scientist at Merck, who will be sharing her career journey from academia to the pharmaceutical industry. Alexandra will talk about the challenges she encountered, the skills she found essential, and her experiences in navigating the research environment in a global company. 

Date: September 27th, 2024 

Time: 14:00  

Format: Online (Zoom link here) 

Meet our speaker:

Alexandra Vitor, Clinical Research Scientist at Merck KGaA, Germany. Since April 2024, Alexandra has represented the clinical activities for assigned Phase 1 oncology studies within Global Clinical Development Oncology, focusing on DNA Damage Response (DDR) assets.
Alexandra completed both her Master’s and PhD projects in Sérgio de Almeida’s Lab at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes. During this time, she conducted research on the mechanisms that maintain genome integrity, with an emphasis on the reciprocal interactions between DDR, chromatin dynamics, and transcription. She co-first authored a scientific publication that received the Annual National Prize from the Sociedade Portuguesa de Genética Humana in 2015.
After completing her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Lisbon at the end of 2018, Alexandra moved to Germany in early 2019. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the BioMed X Institute in Heidelberg, where she developed a work package aimed at identifying new synthetic lethal interactions with DNA repair genes in combination with chemotherapy, using CRISPR/Cas9-based genetic screens on modified human cell lines. This research further strengthened Merck KGaA’s drug discovery pipeline.
In November 2021, Alexandra joined Merck KGaA as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the DDR Research Team within the Research Unit Oncology. There, she advanced therapeutic targets through various discovery phases by delivering and optimizing cell-based mechanistic and phenotypic assays, collaborating with a cross-functional team of drug discovery experts.

We look forward to welcoming you to this Online Session.