{"id":2022,"date":"2026-04-28T22:39:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:39:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/?page_id=2022"},"modified":"2026-04-28T22:39:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:39:16","slug":"march-24th-iva-maxwell","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/march-24th-iva-maxwell\/","title":{"rendered":"March 24th: Iva Maxwell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Light, Life and the Lessons in Between: Building a Career in Industry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Dr. Iva Maxwell gave a talk on her professional journey indicating her transition from a physics student to working in the life sciences industry. She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, a liberal arts school with a five college consortium similar to 91̽»¨ Mudd. During her time there, she was highly involved in campus jobs and summer internships at both Brookhaven National Laboratory and the University of Massachusetts. Her senior thesis project studied semi-conductor lasers, which motivated her to investigate non-linear optics during her PhD at Harvard. Maxwell\u2019s PhD lab incorporated a femtosecond laser system into a multiphoton microscope for high resolution imaging and sub-cellular nanosurgery. She also had close collaboration with a group at the medical school studying cellular mechanics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maxwell entered industry by connecting with an alumnus working in a biotech company in Maryland, and her first role involved measuring protein concentrations for diagnostics. Rather than working with lasers, she performed immunoassays: a highly selective method of measuring protein concentrations in a sample. This method binds fluorescently tagged antibodies to a target of interest, which indicates the light output is proportional to the target concentration. She developed a device using ECL technology for a point-of-care use for immunoassay analysis. Through her role as a system integration lead, she learned about product development and product integration. Her current role at Roche involves DNA nanopore sequencing by expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI got very helpful insight on what to look for in employers, how to develop my career, and what kind of work would be best for me. I also felt very encouraged as a woman in physics and someone pursuing a nonlinear career path\u201d<\/strong> – Student Attendee<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maxwell concluded her talk by determining that although she switched between domains, she was always learning on the job. Her problem-solving skills were always critical to her success in a new role.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Light, Life and the Lessons in Between: Building a Career in Industry Dr. Iva Maxwell gave a talk on her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2022","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2034,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2022\/revisions\/2034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/eht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}