Career Day 2021 - Bioscience - The University of Utah

The University of Utah graduate programs in Molecular Biology and Biological Chemistry designed the Bioscience Career Symposium to provide an open forum in which graduate students and postdoctoral fellows can explore the wide range of career options available to Ph.D. life scientists. We appreciate the willingness of the invited professionals to share their perspectives and look forward to an enjoyable and educational Career Day.

Please email the Bioscience Program Office with any questions

Julie Jay, PhD

Director, Foundation Medicine / Roche (UofU Alumna)

Keynote Speaker

Julie started her career at Roche Tissue Diagnostics as a Senior Scientist in 2010 in on-market technical support for immunohistochemistry (IHC) assays. She then moved into development supporting assay integration on a next generation advanced staining system. After four and a half years as a scientist, Julie transitioned into a commercial role as an International Product Manager in the IHC Companion Diagnostics division, where she supported over four assay development programs for non-Roche pharma partnerships.

In 2017 Julie joined the Roche Sequencing Solutions Women’s Health division as a Senior International Product Manager. In this role she supported the on-market AcfS Harmony non-invasive prenatal test covering reagents, hardware and software. In 2018 Julie shifted her focus to support all new assay and end-to-end system development for the division, as well as supporting pipeline development for novel assays. In August 2019 Julie took on the new role as the Project Leader, supporting the business in strategy development and execution of all projects in development.

In the last month, Julie transitioned to Foundation Medicine, a member of the Roche group. Foundation Medicine is a leading decision insights company helping physicians connect their patients to the latest cancer treatment options and making precision medicine a reality through comprehensive genomic profiling. In her new role, Julie is leveraging her experience at Roche Tissue Diagnostics in Companion Diagnostics and her marketing and technical experience in cell-free DNA assays from her roles in the Sequencing division. As the Director Biopharma Assay Product Lead she will enable monitoring of circulating tumor DNA to support drug development and clinical strategy with biopharma.

Julie’s experience in on-market support, development and product management have inspired her to drive innovation to deliver quality products that improve the screening/diagnostic solutions available to health care providers and patients.

Her dynamic keynote talk will highlight her career trajectory from graduate student at the UofU, to Project Leader, to Director at Roche and Foundation Medicine, unraveling the inner workings and range of careers & skillsets needed to bring clinical products to patients.