Entrepreneurial Fellow Is Building a Biotech Company

Name: Lucas Shores (he/him)

PhD: Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, 2021

What was your main area of research?

I studied how a supramolecular peptide vaccine platform could be used to develop targeted vaccines for autoimmune diseases and infectious diseases. The work looked to apply engineering principles to biologic design.

What is your current job?

I am an Entrepreneurial Fellow at the Chicago Biomedical Consortium in Chicago, Illinois.

The position involves evaluating research proposals from faculty at partner universities that are looking to build biotech companies. After a thorough diligence process, we present in front of a venture board and then project manage the money.

I love that I get to see a variety of different professors' science, and still stay up to date with the cutting edge of what's being done, BUT with a completely different framing. It values generalist thinking in biotech as opposed to hyper specialized thinking.

How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?

I found this position through the Postdoc Office at UChicago.

PhD graduate ➡️ postdoctoral fellow @ UChicago ➡️ Entrepreneurial Fellow ➡️ currently forming a biotech company to run

Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?

I gave myself 2 years to be successful in my postdoc, and my major project failed at about a year and a half, so I started looking for opportunities to leave. The pay is too low and the job too unstable to stay in academia.

What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?

Start informational interviews with people sooner rather than later.
Be prepared to start fairly low in the hierarchy and work your way up as you have so many new skills to learn.
Get professional advice on your resume from someone who works with PhDs so they can help you reframe your experiences

Are there any components of your identity you would like to share, including how they have impacted your journey?

I'm the first in my family to attend college (let alone grad school) and grew up fairly poor. The social connections were always hard for me to maintain with the proper kind of network, sometimes just because I couldn't afford to pay to be in the room.

If you share this background, it will be more difficult for you but there are resources and paths forward.

Don't settle for no, and don't let people's lack of imagination on how to move forward limit your own.