HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - Dr. Phyllis Frosst, senior policy fellow at the Personalized Medicine Coalition in Washington, D.C., and former senior advisor for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, will visit Marshall University at noon on Friday to talk with students about career options in the biomedical science field.

The talk is in Room 102 at the Robert C. Byrd Biotechnology Science Center on the Huntington campus.

Dr. Richard M. Niles, senior associate dean for biomedical sciences at the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, says Frosst’s visit is part of a new immersion program for doctoral biomedical students aimed at introducing them to graduate school academics, expanding career opportunities and team building skills.

“We implemented our new program, Transforming Interdisciplinary Graduate Education (TIGRE), over the summer with a Biomedical Boot Camp where students learned many of the skills necessary to succeed,” he said. “One component of TIGRE includes exposing our students to the variety of opportunities available in the biomedical field.”

Niles says the TIGRE program also will offer doctoral students the opportunity for an internship in the growing biomedical field.

“When I started my career, most jobs for researchers were in laboratories or academics,” he said. “Now the field includes positions in industry, technical and science writing, biotechnology patent law and science and medicine policy. Dr. Frosst will focus on what’s happening at the federal level and allow students a glimpse into a biomedical sciences job that isn’t in a lab.”

Frosst is with the Personalized Medicine Coalition in Washington, D.C., which represents a broad spectrum of academic, industrial, patient, provider and payer organizations that work on personalized medicine concepts and products that ultimately benefit patients.

Prior to her current position, she was a senior advisor for Policy, Communications and Strategic Alliances at the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and head of Policy and Program Analysis at the National Human Genome Institute, both at the National Institutes of Health. Frosst holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees with honors from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and a doctorate in Cell and Molecular Structure and Chemistry from The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

Niles says Friday’s talk is geared toward biomedical science graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, but all students are welcome to attend.

Date Posted: Thursday, October 17, 2013