Meet the nextGEN
Zahra Jawad- Creasallis
My journey (so far)
After my PhD, I was set on being an academic, but no good postdocs were coming through. So, when I was offered an industrial post at Domantis, I joined reluctantly – I’ll never forget the hiring manager saying at the time “You’ll never regret this!” That’s where my career in antibody engineering began. Domantis was later bought by GSK and the work shifted to focus on making therapeutics for patients – very different from simply making the molecule. GSK introduced that whole ethos of helping people in need to me and it’s been a real driver for me since.
I moved from GSK to MRC Technology, now known as LifeArc, where we took ideas from the chaos of academia to develop them into high-value molecules and real therapeutic candidates for the pharma industry. After that, I was employee #2 at US company Agenus’ new site in Cambridge (UK). We had nothing at the start – no pipettes, we borrowed a lab bench, and we used our own credit cards to buy the first materials. Although my real speciality is delivering drug candidates, I was surprised six months later when I was told to lead the Innovation Group, Discovery Technology – I’m someone who delivers projects and makes sense of the chaos.
Zahra’s full profile is available for our members inside the community.