[Text on screen: Michael E. Hoover
Research Scientist II, Charles River Laboratories
Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program Alumni
Class of 2017]

Michael Hoover: Hi everyone, my name is Mike Hoover. I'm a 2017 alum of BSGP and currently a research scientist at Charles River Laboratories. 

[Image of a man standing next to a bike with the following text on screen: Overview and current role
- Role of safety assessment in drug development process
- Method development scientist
- Opportunity to touch a variety of biomolecules, small molecules, ADCs, others in a meaningful way
- Daily interaction with great scientists and business leaders bringing the next generation of drugs to market]

Charles River is a global CRO involved in all aspects of the drug development pipeline. I work in the bioanalytical chemistry group, which functions in the safety assessment business. So we're at the stage of the development pipeline whereby sponsors are making go or no-go decisions based on safety profiles and clinical observations. 

I'm a method development scientist, so I'm in the laboratory determining extraction parameters to purify drug compound out of a biological matrix and then using LCMS to quantitate that drug. The methods I'm developing are then being validated per regulatory guidelines and then are used to analyze study samples from either preclinical or clinical toxicology studies. 

So one of the things I really love about my current role is the opportunity to see so many different chemistries and so many different therapeutic strategies. So in addition to the traditional synthetic small molecules, we're seeing a lot of proteins and peptides, oligonucleotides, antibody drug conjugates, and other novel therapeutic strategies. Charles River worked on more than 90% of the drugs approved by the FDA last year, so we're doing work that's highly rewarding and seeing the efforts that we're undergoing on a daily basis come to fruition in a big way.

[Text on screen: What can BSGP (and OSU) do for you?
Technical skills (proteomics, mass spectrometry, analytical chemistry)
Interdisciplinary collaboration, project management, critical thinking, leadership; the list goes on...
Pelotonia fellowships/funding
Global Gateway Grant
Areas of Emphasis]

So in addition to the technical skills that you'll hone as a graduate student, you'll inherently be developing some soft skills, like working with scientists who don't think like you do, and managing a project soup to nuts, and interacting with people who, non-scientists and scientists, who may not understand what you're doing, and conveying the importance, and what you need, and how they can help, and how you can help them, and managing people. These are all skills that employers will highly regard when you move to the next level. 

So I'll conclude by highlighting a few opportunities that I think make Ohio State great and unique. So we have the Pelotonia Fellowship program, which speaks for itself, and then we've got something called the Global Gateway Grant, which is in place to foster international collaboration.

So I got a Gateway Grant funded to visit a collaborator in Austria who had an expertise in an analytical tool that helped me in my own research. So I went to Austria for a week and brought the skills back to use in house. BSGP also has areas of emphasis, which are great opportunities for you to deepen your understanding of a particular area, like bioinformatics or cancer biology, and kind of supplement your research in the classroom. So I encourage you to look at each of these if you're interested. 

[Logos of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are shown as well as the following text on screen: Thank You]

Thank you for listening, and go Bucks.