What Made OLS Special to Evana Fytros Sirabian
“One of my fave science teachers was Mr Raugh. We were lucky to have him and I loved his class especially when we learned about genetics. I wish I could personally thank him for being one of the people that inspired me to become a scientist.”
Here’s what Evana has been up to since she graduated from OLS:
After graduating OLS in 1976, I attended Our Lady of Good Counsel High School. After high school, I decided to move to Greece for a few years to explore the country and my heritage. Then I returned to the U.S. to start college. I didn’t want to leave home again so I started taking classes locally at Mercy College. I met a genetics teacher through my coursework and she invited me to do a year-long research project on transposable genetic elements — “jumping genes” — with her at New York Medical College. It was a great opportunity. I graduated from Mercy in ’89 with a BS in Biology.
That August, I was hired for a laboratory position by a small startup company called Regeneron, located in Tarrytown. I think I was somewhere between employee 25 and 50. At that time, their focus was neurodegenerative disease research for the development of treatments. Fast forward 30+ years later, the company has 15,000+ employees worldwide and has become a leading, fully integrated biotechnology company that invents, develops, manufactures, and commercializes novel therapeutics for serious diseases.
As a Senior Scientist in the Antibody Molecular Biology Group of Protein Expression Sciences, my main responsibility is antibody and reagent cloning. Antibody medicines are an established class of treatment for diseases such as cancer, heart disease, asthma, and eczema. We utilize cutting-edge technologies to help improve and discover new antibody medicines.
My proudest career accomplishment is I was on the cloning team that helped develop the antibody treatments for EBOLA virus and COVID-19. My proudest Regeneron moment was definitely when my younger daughter was hired as a Regeneron scientist. My older daughter is a Medical Social Worker specializing in hospice care.
