Employees of the Month: Urvashi Rai and Alyssa Arnheim

The Sanaria employees of the month for February 2021 are Urvashi Rai and Alyssa Arnheim.  Urvashi is a member of the Vaccine Extraction and Model Systems team, responsible for portfolio ranging from extraction of sporozoites from mosquito salivary glands for GMP manufacturing, conducting research in immunology and model systems and managing a crucial program to train vaccine extraction specialists.  Alyssa is also a member of the Vaccine Extraction and Model Systems team. Urvashi was nominated for employee of the month for playing a very important role in the QC team. Even though she is not part of QC team she has been helping  tremendously with the gowning training for the part time dissectors, as well as scheduling the counters and SMIA operators for the QC stability testing. Sanaria and the Quality Control team greatly appreciate all her invaluable support, consideration, and their willingness to help by offering their time and knowledge when it is most needed. 

Whether from home or on site, Alyssa has planned, prepped and made enormous contributions to ensure smooth functioning and fulfillment of my team’s goals during the entire year of the pandemic. 1.  Production campaigns materials management and room compliance 2. Scheduling personnel for QC stability counts and SMIA 3. On-boarding newer entrants to the team including Tanya and Samantha, especially in light of her own imminent departure to grad school in 2021 4. Invaluable help to Urvashi for all virtual training activities for part-time personnel 5. Handled most of the team’s QA-related Novatek document commitments. 

Urvashi gained her PhD in Cell Biology from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, and her MS in Recombinant DNA Technology from New York University, NY where she first became interested in malaria.  Urvashi has been with Sanaria since March 2018.