Diversity in Life Sciences

Tom is a molecular biologist with a BS in Biology from the University of New Mexico and a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Washington. During his studies, Tom utilized the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to identify and characterize essential molecular components that regulate DNA replication, DNA repair, chromosome segregation, and ribosomal DNA maintenance.

After obtaining his PhD, Tom conducted postdoctoral research at Princeton University as a Burroughs Wellcome research fellow, a New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research fellow, a Ford foundation research fellow, and a Keystone Symposia fellow. His work used S. cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe to identify and characterize important molecular pathways mediating genome stability and telomere maintenance in the presence of both endogenous and exogenous stresses.

Tom entered the antibody space in 2019, joining NovaRock Biotherapeutics as a senior scientist and lead for molecular design. He leveraged his expertise to design and develop recombinant expression vectors and proteins to produce monoclonal, bi-specific, and multi-specific antibodies. Tom was also a project lead for one of the company’s therapeutic antibody candidates, centrally involved with the identification of monoclonal antibodies derived from hybridoma screens and the development/implementation of pipeline improvements to streamline the molecular cloning workflows.

In 2021, Tom joined Specifica Inc, a company focused on providing the next generation of human antibody engineering and discovery. Specifica specializes in creating custom antibody libraries to obtain drug-like antibodies straight from selection. As a senior scientist, Tom leverages his prior academic and biotech experience to advance the selection of novel antibodies. He has a central role in expression vector design and construction, yeast display, yeast engineering, technology development, and process improvement.