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Melissa Lucero-Nguyen is Director of Upstream and Lab Services at Bionova Scientific.

Since 2017, Melissa has managed the Upstream and Laboratory Services Groups at Bionova Scientific and served as interim Cell Line Development Manager. She was instrumental in establishing Bionova’s single-use platform and our best-in-class in-house perfusion operations platform. She is also an integral part of the team supporting GMP facility buildout.

Prior to joining Bionova, Melissa was a Senior Engineer at Boehringer Ingelheim where she worked in Process Science Cell Culture, Clinical Supply, and Upstream MSAT groups. She worked on tech transfers, GMP troubleshooting and made significant contributions to the establishment of a single-use platform at BI Fremont. As a member of a global team, Melissa helped harmonize operational practices across 3 sites and collaborated on implementing new technology. Melissa led operational teams in the planning and execution of new product introduction (NPI) and clinical manufacturing tasks; as well as owning and managing change controls and deviation investigations. She was a member of the Inspection Readiness Team and participated in client audits as well as PAI readiness audits. Melissa also worked cross-functionally on facility design and estimating CAPEX, OPEX, and plant capacity. She served as a project manager to onboard and validate equipment for the disposable manufacturing facility.

Melissa also held prior positions at Eli Lilly and Biogen, where her work included media optimization studies, process simplification, stability studies, scale-down modeling, and the investigation of perfusion technology in various cell culture stages. Melissa also led a small team of scientists working on various development projects.

Melissa earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.