Haley Ehlers

Class of 2017

Education: Blended BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering at Cal Poly

 

Biography

Haley is interested in the Regenerative Medicine Program because she is excited to be part of the new developing field of stem cell research. She believes she will be able to make a difference to help many people. She is interested in the cancer stem cell research for her concentration. She plans on getting a job at a stem cell company and working on developing products.

Her internship site is Fate Therapeutics in the Process Development lab and her mentor is Chad Green. The company is working to develop immune cell therapies to target cancerous tumor cells. Haley is specifically working with iPSCs, which have the potential for many cell therapeis. iPSCs have the ability to be genetically engineered and expanded indefinitely in culture. These cells can be used as a cell source in the creation of "off-the-shelf" cellular therapies. Being a member of the Technical Operations team, she helps with process development, optimization and technology transfer of activities for iPSCs and other lymphoid effector cells. These activities include collaborating with the R&D team for the transfer of processes to process development, optimize scaled processes for these products using GMP-compatible equipment, disposables and reagents, author and review standard operating procedures, equipment installation and operational qualification protocols, and finally execute final process verification studies and data collection.