Rotary Lunch Speaker: Alan Goggins, Merck Research Labs

Alan Goggins, Merck Research Labs   On Tuesday, October 3, our lunch speaker will be Alan Goggins, a PhD research scientist who will share stories about his path to now, as well as what his day-to-day role looks like in the world of cancer research and drug discovery.

Alan is an Associate Principal Scientist in the Pre-Clinical Development Group (PCD) group within Merck Research Labs – South San Francisco. In this role, Alan supports Merck’s discovery pipeline by characterizing the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic drug properties of candidate compounds, with particular emphasis on immunogenicity risk assessments.

Prior to his role in PCD, Alan completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Biologics and Vaccine Bioanalytics group at Merck, where his research project focused on developing assays to characterize the antigen-specific cellular immune response to mRNA vaccine platforms. During his postdoc tenure Alan served as the President of the Merck Postdoc Association, facilitating career development and training opportunities for the postdoc community; and served as New Jersey’s Young Science Ambassador for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM).

Alan obtained his PhD in Biomedical Sciences (’16) from the Microbiology and Immunology department at the Tulane University School of Medicine and a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Health from Western Carolina University (’10). In 2014, Alan was awarded the ASM Robert D. Watkins Minority Research Fellowship to support his dissertation research. Alan is a Latinx, first-generation college graduate, and a passionate advocate for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in microbial sciences and STEM.

Signup for lunch here.

This meeting will both in-person at the Riverhouse Convention Center in room Cascade B, and virtual.

Join the Zoom Meeting here: RCGB Zoom Link

You can also call in to the meeting at (669) 900-9128 and enter meeting ID: 692 491 9146. If you’re asked, the passcode is 5110.

We will record the presentation for others who aren’t able to attend at noon.