UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Launched in 2022, the Huck Leadership Fellows Program was developed for faculty members seeking to sharpen their leadership skills with an opportunity for exposure to senior leadership within the interdisciplinary research unit.

For the 2023-24 academic year, Huck leadership has selected the following applicants to the program:

• Scott E. Lindner, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, will use his fellowship appointment to align the focus of Penn State’s doctoral training programs with the current standards that biotech and pharma companies need in new hires.
• Neela Yennawar, research professor and director of Huck’s Automated Calorimetry and X-Ray Crystallography core facilities, will use her fellowship appointment to build research teams around the emerging cross-interdisciplinary area of biosensing.

“As we move past the COVID-19 pandemic and face other challenges in global politics, bio-sensing technologies are emerging as increasing in significance in basic science, healthcare, agri-food, environmental, and security sectors, and this is reflected in the continued growth of worldwide markets for such technologies,” said Yennawar. “Studying the binding of biomolecules, designed mimics, large macromolecular complexes, viruses and microbes being researched at the Huck Institutes with inorganic materials being studied at MRI could lead to novel biosensing technologies of the future."

Lindner said, “With more and more of our graduates choosing careers in biotech and pharma, we want to ensure that they are the top candidates and are well-prepared to take on those roles. As a Huck Leadership Fellow, I will work with hiring managers in leading biotech and pharma firms to learn what matters most to them in making new Ph.D.–level hires and then pilot changes to our training approaches here at Penn State to make our graduates even more highly competitive.”

Outgoing Huck Leadership Fellows, Nicole Lazar, professor of statistics, and Laura Weyrich, associate professor of anthropology, served as the inaugural cohort for the 2022-23 academic year.

"Serving as a Huck Leadership Fellow over the past year has been a truly fulfilling, illuminating experience,” Weyrich said. “I gained innumerable soft skills that I can apply in my career moving forward. I learned how universities operate, saw how leadership makes key decisions, and contributed to several institute-wide and University-wide initiatives, broadening my Penn State network considerably.”

Lazar said, “As a relative newcomer to Penn State, one of my goals for the fellowship was to learn more about how the University operates. I also wanted to get an up-close look at the Huck Institutes, which is such a unique and exciting organization.  I am grateful to the Huck for affording me the opportunity to focus on a ‘passion project’ during this past year and for opening doors that I wouldn't even have known existed.”

Weyrich added, “I am grateful to the Huck Executive Board for their guidance and patience over the past year, and I wish next year's fellows the best of luck.”

For more information about the Huck Leadership Fellows program, visit: https://www.huck.psu.edu/about/leadership/huck-leadership-fellows