125th Anniversary Symposium

The 3rd Symposium celebrates our graduates working in biorenewable and biomolecular industries

Amir Hejri 
Engagement Manager, Trinity Life Sciences

Amir Hejri has nearly a decade of experience spanning academic research and life science consulting, with a focus on commercial strategy across a range of therapeutic areas and advanced modalities, including cell and gene therapy. He specializes in early commercial strategy, new product planning, and portfolio strategy—guiding assets through key inflection points from initial product positioning to go to market strategy and launch planning.

He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from ChBE@GT and a graduate certificate in Technology Commercialization from the Scheller College of Business. His doctoral work, conducted under Professor Mark Prausnitz, centered on new drug delivery approaches for treating eye diseases, particularly inherited retinal disorders.

Monica McNerney
Associate Director of Product Management, Ginkgo Bioworks

Monica McNerney is an Associate Director of Product Management at Ginkgo Bioworks, a synthetic biology services company in Boston. She recently spearheaded the launch of the company’s first direct-to-user offerings, including cell-free protein synthesis kits and engineered yeast expression strains. She previously served as a Business Development lead at Ginkgo, where she developed technical proposals for prospective customers.

Monica earned her PhD from ChBE@GT in 2019, where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Mark Styczynski’s lab. Her research at Georgia Tech focused on developing low-cost, point-of-care blood tests for micronutrient deficiencies.  

Kim Nelson
CTO, GranBio USA

Kim Nelson is CTO at GranBio Technologies. She has more than 17 years of comprehensive innovation scale-up and business development experience. She holds 20+ patents and 50 patents pending in the biorefinery and nanocellulose fields. She has extensive experience managing research and development projects, joint development projects with nanocellulose end-user companies, and government funded projects. She  has secured a large portfolio of government grants including, most recently, $80 million from the department of energy for scale-up of Sustainable Aviation Fuel and nanocellulose co-product production.

Nelson obtained a PhD from ChBE@GT and a Master of Science from the Institute of Paper Science and Technology at Georgia Tech. She is on the Executive Board of Directors of the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI) and was recently named one of the outstanding leaders of the bioeconomy by the Biofuels Digest.

Charlene Rincón
Sr. Director Technical Development Operations, Moderna

Charlene Rincón joined Moderna in 2022 to lead High Throughput Operations—delivering end-to-end (DNA, RNA, LNP) non-GMP materials for Research and Process Development—and in 2024 expanded her scope to Pilot Scale Operations to translate processes to GMP and generate preclinical supply.  

Previously at Amgen (2008–2022), she led the Clinical Drug Product Assembly & Packaging team and held roles in Process Development and Global Operations, where she helped create the CMC commercialization framework and served as Global Operations Leader for four clinical oncology programs. She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez and a PhD from ChBE@GT.