Senior Advisor- R&D

Elanco•Indianapolis, IN

6d•Onsite

About The Position

At Elanco (NYSE: ELAN) – it all starts with animals! As a global leader in animal health, we are dedicated to innovation and delivering products and services to prevent and treat disease in farm animals and pets. At Elanco, we are driven by our vision of Food and Companionship Enriching Life and our purpose – all to Go Beyond for Animals, Customers, Society and Our People. At Elanco, we pride ourselves on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment. We believe that diversity is the driving force behind innovation, creativity, and overall business success. Here, you’ll be part of a company that values and champions new ways of thinking, work with dynamic individuals, and acquire new skills and experiences that will propel your career to new heights. Making animals’ lives better makes life better – join our team today! Your Role As a Senior Advisor, Vaccine Discovery Project Leadership – Farm Animal R&D, you will be accountable for driving novel vaccine and infectious disease projects from Idea through Hit/Lead and Lead/Candidate, using both internal and external resources. You will identify approaches to apply transformative technologies to address infectious disease in novel ways in the veterinary industry. You will work closely with laboratory-based colleagues to ensure internal scientific execution aligns with infectious disease farm animal target product profiles, while being responsible for strategic oversight of our Discovery ID portfolio. You will collaborate closely with R&D peers, External Innovation colleagues, Innovation Marketing, and Commercial leaders to identify and advance new Infectious Disease innovation opportunities aligned with Elanco’s global strategy, while ensuring project execution through the Discovery phase. Additionally, this role offers the opportunity to follow Discovery phase projects into Late Research and Full Development. Taken together, you will be a key leader in influencing and Leading Elanco’s Discovery Vaccine strategy.

Requirements

Master’s degree in a relevant scientific discipline (e.g. animal science, veterinary medicine, chemistry, biology or related sciences) plus relevant industry experience
Proven vaccine project leadership history across species, technology types & R&D stages, including familiarity with farm animal vaccines.
Demonstrated ability to work within regulated product development.
Demonstrated strong leadership skills and strategic thinking
High emotional intelligence
Proven ability to work independently with minimal supervision
Clear written and oral communication skills

Nice To Haves

PhD and/or DVM with >5 years of R&D project leadership experience in the animal health industry
Deep understanding of one or more of the following technical disciplines: molecular biology, functional immunology, protein/antigen design and engineering
Successful project leadership in a matrixed R&D environment

Responsibilities

Align with Corporate & Global Innovation Strategy to identify major technical gaps for key disease indication target product profiles (TPPs), and propose relevant technical solutions for farm animal TPPs
Act as Discovery Project Leader for a portfolio of Farm Animal Infectious Disease projects, coordinating and defining technical plans, leading cross-functional project team meetings, assembling project budgets, and providing governance forum updates
With Discovery Research peers, collaboratively design and assemble molecular vaccine concepts to address key infectious disease target product profiles in swine, poultry and ruminant indications
Collaborate with laboratory scientists to ensure timely and quality execution of vaccine construct design and characterization, bioanalytical methods, and potency assays
Work closely with Clinical Development colleagues to design and execute proof of principle serology and challenge model studies to confirm safety and efficacy of novel vaccine candidates.
Collaborate with Antibody Discovery, Functional Immunology, and AI/ML colleagues to enable Reverse Vaccinology 2.0/3.0 discovery approaches for antigen identification and vaccine design
Work closely with External Innovation colleagues to review asset, platform, and capability opportunities from external sources, including defining an academic partner strategy in the Infectious Disease space
Influence the assessment of novel infectious disease technologies, including vaccine platforms, delivery technologies, antigen identification and validation
Define optimized project plans for projects including internal/external resource needs for R&D and manufacturing, development costs, cost of goods and margin.
Collaborate effectively and timely communicate with functional SMEs to plan and execute projects.
Set clear goals and objectives for the project team members, hold self and others accountable.
Positively influence, foster creativity, and motivate project team members.
Identify & communicate to executive leadership project specific risks, status and opportunity, including impacts.