Jody Plank Email & Phone Number

Durham, Nc, Us

Lead multi-departmental, data-centric, strategic projects involving software developers, marketers, and various operations teams from across the organization and facets of academic publishing. Manage a team of data analysts to inform data ingestion, flow and utilization through various systems, and reporting to the right stakeholders to answer key strategic and operational questions.

Durham, Nc

Rubriq provides rigorous, independent peer review of scholarly manuscripts across virtually all disciplines. In my role as the Product Manager, I work with departments across the entire company to facilitate the continued sustainable growth of Rubriq. This involves working closely with the software engineering team to manage projects involving developing new products, features, and tasks for improved operational efficiencies. In addition, I work with established and potential partners to maintain and develop new opportunities.

Durham, North Carolina

Rubriq provides rigorous, independent peer review of scholarly manuscripts across virtually all disciplines. As the Operations Manager, I worked with the team to standardize and optimize the workflows used for the identification and recruitment of reviewers. This involved developing and evolving new steps in the procedures using an agile, “Lean Startup” approach; implementation of new data tracking methods and analysis; and design and implementation of software solutions with the software engineering team.In addition to leading the Ops team, I worked with our Marketing and Business Development departments to facilitate trials and informational interviews with potential partners interested in working with Rubriq and developed new products and product features for our partners or our direct, “B2C” customers.Research Square is the parent company of American Journal Experts, Rubriq, and JournalGuide.

Durham, North Carolina

I established a Scientific Illustration department at AJE, developing services and workflows for formatting figures and the creation of custom illustrations for scientific manuscripts. This involved developing the business and operations models for the services, working with the marketing department to develop the messaging and presentation of the services, and working with the software engineers to incorporate the services into the manuscript management software utilized by the company.In addition I built and managed the operations team. This included recruiting, hiring, and training new team members, monitoring product quality, collection and analysis of customer and operations data, and continuing to implement efficiencies through both workflow improvements and the development of new software tools.Research Square is the parent company of American Journal Experts, Rubriq, and JournalGuide.

I published over 25 articles with Bitesize Bio on a variety of topics, sharing the tips and tricks for working at the bench more efficiently as well as touching on some of the social dynamics and soft-skill aspects of working in a biomedical, academic lab. In addition, I worked with new contributors to Bitesize Bio and assisted them with the development of their articles, both in terms of scope and tone.

Davis, Ca

During my postdoc in Dr. Steve Kowalczykowski’s lab I worked on several projects. I developed and optimized a new system that allows for the insertion of engineered DNA structures into DNA substrates large enough to be used for fluorescent single-molecule studies. This allows researchers to study DNA repair proteins on DNA structures that are relevant to their function, greatly expanding the types of enzymes that can be studied and the types of data that can be collected. I also developed a series of DNA substrates to study the ability of the cell to select the best template to use for repair of a DNA strand break, utilizing MutSα, a component from the mismatch repair system.In addition, in collaboration with Dr. Petr Cejka I also continued my double Holliday junction work with yeast Topoisomerase III and Sgs1 helicase and prepared several substrates for use in DNA resection studies.

Durham, North Carolina

During this period I continued to work in my graduate laboratory finishing up manuscripts, adapting the substrate that I prepared for my graduate work (see below) for use in characterizing other helicases, and training the graduate student that would be continuing the work I began on Topoisomerase IIIα and Bloom’s helicase.

Durham, North Carolina

My graduate work in Dr. Tao-shih Hsieh's lab in the Department of Biochemistry focused on determining a role for topoisomerase IIIα and Bloom’s helicase in resolving a complicated DNA structure called a double Holliday junction. This involved expressing and purifying both (challenging) proteins and relevant mutants using a baculovirus expression system, characterizing the proteins using standard assays, and then characterizing their activity on a large, physiologically-relevant double Holliday junction substrate. A substrate like this had never been prepared before, so I designed a synthesis scheme and optimized the efficiency of the ~eight critical steps required to prepare the substrate in useable quantities. In addition, I also characterized the developmental effects of several Topo IIIα mutants that we introduced in fruit flies, along with the corresponding transgenic rescue experiments.

Postdam, New York

While attending Clarkson, I served as a teaching assistant for Cell Biology I & II for two years, Molecular Biology, and did guest lectures in Biochemistry and General Biology. In my final semester at Clarkson I served as a laboratory instructor for General Biology II, designing the labs and teaching three sections per week. While rewarding in its own right, this experience provided valuable public speaking experience.

Lake Placid, Ny

I spent the summer working on the purification and solubilization of oncoproteins.

Phd, Biochemistry

Bs, Biology, Chemistry