April Workshop

Nicole Barkley was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland where she attended McDonogh School in Owings Mills. Nicole had a passion for learning science and while attending McDonogh her passion continued to grow. Nicole obtained her Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Biotechnology at University of Delaware as a HHMI Scholar in the NUCLEUS program. Nicole would continue her education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County obtaining a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences. Her doctoral thesis focused on identifying novel biomarkers that may be used to determine efficacy of chemotherapeutic treatments for prostate cancer. After graduate school, Nicole was a post-doctoral fellow working on a joint project between North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in pancreatic cancer. 

After her post-doctoral fellowship, Nicole wanted to move into the biotechnology industry, specifically working on medical devices for oncology. Nicole’s industry career began at Roche Tissue Diagnostics (Ventana Medical Systems) as a CDx Scientist developing immunohistochemistry (IHC) assays for various biomarkers targeted in cancer therapeutics. She would continue in the biotechnology industry working on next generation sequencing assays (NGS) focused on oncology at Personal Genome Diagnostics (PGDx) and Foundation Medicine, Inc. (FMI). Currently, Nicole is an Associate Director of IVD Product Development at Natera in Austin, TX. She is leading a team developing an NGS-based assay that will be used to track potential cancer recurrence and detect early stages of cancer development.