Scott C. Savett, Ph.D.

Intro

Coming soon...

Work

Since my degrees are in chemistry (BS from Ursinus, PhD from Clemson) and I’ve loved computers from a young age, I have found a niche career in laboratory information management systems (LIMS) also known as informatics. I work as a senior software analyst for Thermo Fisher Scientific, a large multi-national company that helps our customers accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, improve patient diagnostics and increase laboratory productivity. My customers could be any kind of laboratory, but are most commonly pharmaceutical, environmental, clinical, and biotech laboratories. In recent projects, I've been involved with varied topics such as next-generation sequencing, aquatic animal health, and clinical testing such as cancer screening.

When explaining the nature of a LIMS, I frequently give the example of a pharmaceutical company that produces aspirin tablets. For each batch coming off the assembly line, the manufacturer would typically take measurements to ensure product quality. For example, they might visually inspect the packaging, perform analytical chemistry testing to determine the amount of active ingredient, or see how much of the pill dissolves in water. This is a simple example of the type of information that our software keeps track of.

How did I get to Thermo Fisher Scientific? It's a long story of corporate mergers and acquisitions. Upon graduating from Clemson in 2000, I was hired by Beckman Coulter in their Laboratory Automation Operations (LAO) division, I relocated to River Vale, NJ (northern Bergen County). LAO was a small division (50 people) who were responsible for helping laboratories in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and biotech environments help keep track of their product testing-related information. It was my first LIMS job and Lab Manager was the first LIMS product I worked with.

In July 2003 Beckman Coulter's LAO division was acquired by Philadelphia-based InnaPhase corporation. InnaPhase already had a firm foothold in the LIMS industry with their Waton, Galileo, Kinetica, and EP products. With the addition of Lab Manager to their product lineup, it cemented their position as the leading supplier of enterprise LIMS solutions to the pharmaceutical industry.

As a result of the LAO / InnaPhase acquisition, I was able to transfer to InnaPhase's Philadelphia office. I purchased a house in the Philadelphia suburbs and transferred to Philadelphia in September 2003. This is truly the best of all possible worlds. With continued strong support from my colleagues in our northern New Jersey office plus the beehive of activity in Philadelphia, I am well-suited to assist my traditional Lab Manager customers and communicate the future of InnaPhase in our new LIMS products.

In the summer of 2004 InnaPhase was apparently a ripe target for an acquisition. Thermo Electron, the world leader in analytical instruments, bought the complete assets of InnaPhase. This marked the second acquisition I'd been through in 14 months. The Informatics division of Thermo relocated to the Philadelphia office, which was great from the standpoint that I was in the center of the action. Despite the change in ownership, there essentially wasn't any change in my duties or job description, which was comforting.

In 2006 Thermo Electron purchased Fisher Scientific to form Thermo Fisher Scientific. Another merger and no real change in roles or responsibilities. In the years since 2006, Thermo Fisher Scientific has grown significantly in size but my role in the company has stayed essentially unchanged.

Emergency Medical Services

My involvement in EMS started at Ursinus College, a small liberal-arts school in the Philadelphia suburbs. As a freshman at Ursinus, I enrolled in the local EMT program, which was held two nights a week for a semester at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell. Fitting a semester-long off-campus EMT class into an already-packed academic schedule forced me to budget my time.

Within a year of earning my EMT certification, I was part of a small group of students that founded Ursinus’ EMS response group, which is still in existence. Include all of the “soft skills” that are associated with EMS administration (personnel / HR, resource management, public relations, budgeting, inter-personal communication, leadership), and I'm a believer that campus EMS provides so many real-life experiences that can’t easily be taught in a traditional classroom.

About the same time as the Ursinus campus EMS group was getting off the group, an organization at the national level was also forming. The National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation (NCEMSF) was created in 1993 to promote and advocate campus-based EMS. I am proud to say that I was at the very first NCEMSF conference, which was held in April 1994 at Georgetown University.

After receiving a BS in chemistry from Ursinus in 1994, I enrolled in graduate school at Indiana University-Bloomington. In 1994, I founded IU-EMS, an organization dedicated to providing comprehensive pre-hospital education and service. That organization also still exists, though its name is now IC-EMS.

I transferred to Clemson University in 1995 to continue my graduate studies in chemistry. I volunteered with Clemson University Fire Department and EMS (CUFD-EMS) as an EMT-Intermediate and eventually cross-trained as a firefighter. A few things about my time at Clemson EMS stand out. First, I fondly remember working football games and concerts at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium. With a seating capacity of over 81,000, this was quite an EMS operation, especially during the first games of each football season when the warm South Carolina weather was unforgiving for patrons who didn’t stay hydrated. More than 30 EMTs and medics were strategically located in teams of two throughout the stadium. It was my introduction to large venue EMS, which still comes in handy. I also remember responding to EMS calls on Clemson’s campus on my bicycle with a minimalist “first-in” bag. Many parts of Clemson’s campus were ideally suited for bike EMS and I was frequently the first EMS on scene. At the time, bike EMS was a relatively new phenomenon as evidenced by IPMBA giving its first EMS course in 1997.

I’ve maintained an EMT certification continuously since 1991 and I have had some involvement in EMS wherever I’ve lived -- PA, IN, SC, NM, NJ, and back to PA. This has been concurrent with being involved in campus EMS from an administrative standpoint at a national level through NCEMSF.

Contact

Write to me at:
Scott Savett
2764 Carole Lane
Allentown, PA 18104-9682

Phone: 484-533-2042

Cell phone number available upon request.

Or you can e-mail me at ssavett@gmail.com if I can provide you with any information on campus EMS, graduate school, or any other miscellaneous topic mentioned on my Web site.

I'm also on LinkedIn and Facebook.

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