Carole A. Heath, Ph.D.

First, I’d like to say that it is an honor to be nominated for the SBE Managing Board.  While I’ve been aware of SBE for a couple of years because of news about the CHO Consortium, I directly participated in an SBE-organized event when I attended the excellent Conference on Accelerating Biopharmaceutical Development on Coronado Island in March 2007.  What I found particularly compelling about that conference was the focus of the well-chosen talks on the concept of acceleration within the broader aspects of biopharmaceutical development.  One of the strengths of SBE, through its conferences, consortia, and forums, is its ability to work across the traditional disciplinary boundaries to find niches where opportunities for advancement exist.  SBE leverages these cross-disciplinary interfaces by bringing people and their ideas together so that we learn from each other to advance the state of the art.  I have spent my entire professional life working, in one way or another, on the interfaces between biology and engineering.  This is why am excited about the opportunity to serve on the SBE Managing Board.  The goals that I would advocate for, if I am elected to the Board, are as follows:
1.  Identify additional specific areas where we can cultivate knowledge without compromising trade secrets and intellectual property.  For example, there could be a mechanism by which SBE could facilitate and/or establish one or more continuously-operating forums or working groups that encourage sharing, learning and collaboration. 
2.  Find ways of enhancing student internships in industry.  One possibility here is that SBE could consider setting up a website with links to industrial internship announcements for students. 
3.  Continue the excellent tradition of focused, cutting edge conferences.  For this, I believe that it’s important to carefully consider whether or not to offer a conference on a topic that was successful one year again two or three years later.  In some cases this is warranted but in others the next conference could be more successful and have greater impact if it has a different focus because the needs of industry change. 

Biographical Information
After earning degrees in Biology, Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, Carole Heath received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1988.  Carole began her professional career as an Assistant Professor of Engineering in the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.  While at Dartmouth, Carole earned an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award.  After five years at Dartmouth, Carole accepted the position of Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Iowa State University, where she held joint appointments in the Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience Programs.  After ten years in academia, Carole joined Immunex as a Staff Scientist in Process Development where she has been responsible for upstream development of two commercial molecules.  Currently, Carole is the Director of the Cell Science & Technology Department at Amgen, which acquired Immunex in 2002.  Carole’s current responsibilities include cell line and process development for early and late phase molecules and for upstream technology development.   Carole has published 35 papers, has given many presentations, nationally and internationally, and has been actively involved in conference organization throughout her career.