Conrad Cruz, ‘19

Why did you choose to come to UMR? I chose UMR because I wanted to go to a college that offered a focus in the health field.

What did your Capstone experience involve? My Capstone experience involved an entry level position into the biotechnology industry as a lab scientist. I spent a majority of my time researching how people transition from college into the biotech industry. This included sending cold emails to directors of biotech companies and meeting people for informative interviews. During this time, I tailored my semester and extracurricular activities towards molecular biology while seeking out skills like biostatistics. I continued to work at Mayo Clinic as a research assistant in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell creation via Viral Vectors. I was offered a job as a Clinical-Grade Biomanufacturing Operator for Aldevron in February 2019, during my Capstone reflection period.

How did your Capstone experience prepare you for your future in what you’re currently doing? My Capstone’s expected outcomes taught me the skills of researching and better tailoring yourself to a position you may be seeking. My unexpected outcome was that I learned to become more comfortable with uncertainty. I felt really unsure that this would all work out and whether this would be the final career I wanted. I had limited resources with information about the biotech industry, so I had to be comfortable with uncertainty.

What are you currently doing? I currently work at the biotech CMO Aldevron where we manufacture clinical level biological material (plasmids, mRNA, proteins, and antibodies) to use for human gene therapy. One notable example of what we are doing is working with big pharma clients in pushing for the COVID19 vaccine. I am currently pursuing a Masters of Data Science at UND while I work to branch out into Bioinformatics/Data Management to find connections in the biological data we generate to optimize our everyday experiments and processes.