As we continue our tour of the team behind Biosero, today we meet with Evelyne Ploquin, Solutions Architect. She joined the company in 2020 and was recently chosen by the San Diego Business Journal for its list of Women of Influence in the Life Sciences. She holds a computer engineering degree from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, France, and completed her engineering studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
Q: What do you do at Biosero?
A: I help our biotech, pharma, and diagnostic customers create a plan to optimize the use of technology within the lab. They know that the goal is to get faster and more reliable results, and they know automation is going to help them with that, but they don’t necessarily know how to make it happen. They come to us because they have instruments, workcells, and informatics products, and they want to combine all those together to get the best and fastest results.
Q: How did you get on this career path?
A: I worked as a consultant for many years and when I took my first job in lab automation, I fell in love with it right away. I realized the potential impact it could have on our daily life. Life science is about improving the quality of human life worldwide, and lab automation is an accelerator to help researchers develop diagnostics and therapeutics faster.
Q: What brought you to Biosero?
A: I met David Dambman, Biosero’s Chief Technology Officer, many years ago. I’ve always been impressed with his vision, technical ability, and patience. Then I met CEO Tom Gilman back in 2017. Tom reached out last year to let me know they were expanding and asked me if I wanted to join. I am absolutely delighted I did. Biosero has a very talented team.
Q: What’s one thing you wish more people knew about laboratory automation?
A: Laboratory people think it’s going to take their job away, but really, it’s going to help them perform their job better and will only take away the most mundane tasks. Also, with some people, automation needs to be demystified. They think it’s all-encompassing — that they’re going to push a button, and everything’s done. But it takes a lot of thinking to make automation work for you.
Q: If you could automate anything in your life, what would it be?
A: All the chores in the house that I don’t like doing.
Q: What’s your best career advice?
A: Choose the people that you work with. Don’t just choose a job. Make sure that the team and the manager are on the same wavelength as you are.
Q: What was the first thing you ever wanted to be when you grew up?
A: I went to circus shows and really enjoyed them, so I wanted to be in the circus — first as an acrobat because I was a very flexible little girl, and then later as a clown.
Q: What’s something your colleagues don’t know about you?
A: I actually worked with the CIA for a number of years at the beginning of my career.
Q: Now that you’ve told us that, do you have to kill us?
A: For many years I couldn’t tell people that, but it’s public information now. At the time I was working on artificial intelligence algorithms to help with conflict resolution. It was fascinating! Now the system is used to help companies and boards come up with resolutions when there’s a disagreement.
Interested in doing work that matters, consider joining Team Biosero.