Rose Nash

Education/degrees:

BS, Biology, Indiana University
PhD, Microbiology, UW–Madison
Postdoc, HHMI
Postdoc, CU Boulder

Previous positions held: 

• R&D Manager, InDevR
• Director of R&D, GT Molecular
• Chief Scientific Officer, BlackFur Biomedical
• Chief Operating Officer, Burst Diagnostics

Current position or career path:

After my PhD work at UW-Madison, I stayed on the ‘professor career track’ for 3 years and 2 postdoctoral fellowships. Ultimately, I made the transition to biotech nearly 10 years ago. I have specialized in getting small startups, recently transitioned out of academia launched, funded (by grants and venture capital), and operational. My largest commercial success was launching one of the first commercial laboratories for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in community wastewater early in the pandemic – transitioning a 3 month old company with a single employee into a $10M/year commercial enterprise. Recently, I founded Biota and have raised an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round from venture capitalists in the biotech and cleantech sectors. At Biota, we are developing a biosensor assay for forever chemicals in community wastewater by adapting point-of-care diagnostic technology to the water sector.

Advice for current graduate students and postdocs:

1. Your time is worth money! The skills you develop in graduate school are highly valuable to small biotech companies. Make sure you know you worth and don’t low ball yourself. I see this a lot.
2. ALWAYS negotiate your first job offer. This is expected and hiring mangers often have room in their budget for some negotiation. It shows that you know your value.
3. Always be networking. People love connecting people. Never be scared to reach out and ask a contact for introductions.
4. Cold emails won’t get you far. Always do you research and add a personal detail when you reach out.
5. Small biotech startup culture is a nice alternative to academia and large corporate biotech. In this setting, scientists often write grants, oversee a research team, and operate like a (better paid) academic group.