Osvaldo Rivera, PhD

Who I am:

I’m a Scientist with 12+ years of experience in combined wetlab and drylab molecular biology research. I've worked in multiple fields spanning cancer biology, genomics, proteomics, enzymology, and nanotechnology. For the past 8 years I’ve focused on RNA biology research, particularly in the context of RNA processing dysregulation and RNA-based therapeutics. Throughout my PhD training at the UPenn Perelman School of Medicine Biomedical Graduate Group and continuing into my industry career, I’ve worked closely with wetlab scientists to write code for the processing, analysis, visualization and interpretation of complex biological data. During my training, I have also immersed myself in biotech commercialization procedures, contributing to scientific teams briging early-stage techologies to market. I've worked within commercialization hubs such as the UCity Science Center, Pennovation, and more recently the Puerto Rico Science and Technology Trust. Overall, I've sought to stay in touch with the deeply scientific aspects of biotech R&D while also enabling strategic pathways to commericalization; I'm passionate about merging science and business.

What I am up to:

Working to enable biotech in Puerto Rico.

Firstly, I've been building Ozcorp Scientific, a private sole-prop technology firm to undertake the establishment of new biotech ventures, empower lean business models, deliver tools to the market, and invest in the most promising ideas. In other words, through Ozcorp I capitalize and systematize my venture work and help scientific teams develop their biotech business and commercialize technologies. Since graduate school, I identified the need for an entity to help emerging biotech companies with process implementation, product development, and operations management while the founding scientists focus on what they do best: refining the science.

Furthermore, I've recently started building GENOS, a startup business to empower biolabs with bioinformatics capabilities by contributing to the implementation of data processing pipelines as well as pushing scientific projects through custom analyses. I decided to venture on building GENOS after having encountered several unmet needs in the sphere of experimental biology. GENOS envisions executing upon transformative collaborations to ultimately drive biotechnological progress and adoption across fields such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and molecular dynamics. Lots of investigators have backed up data that they wish to analyze, and are seeking cost-effective and timely solutions without the need to switch gears and learn new frameworks.

Finally, I’m still involved in academia. I’m Principal Investigator at RIVERA-OMICS, an academic initiative aimed at elucidating biological mechanisms leveraging omics data and exploring the commercialization landscape of biotechnologies. Specifically, RIVERA-OMICS is a branch of RIVERA Initiatives Inc., a newly established 501(c)(3) organization being built to empower talented students through comprehensive resources and collaborative research endeavors. Through RIVERA, I mentor students in scientific topics, methods, and industry techniques, training them to develop unique research projects. Additionally, I establish liaisons with academic labs and enterprises to enhance the learning experience and career development of my students.