Three U of T Chemistry Alumni spoke to the department's third and fourth year Undergraduates in an evening panel on March 25 in a Backpack to Briefcase event offered by the Department of Chemistry.
Andrew Folkerson, Adam Forman and Francine Lui spoke to students in Davenport about unexpected career turns, resilience, and even work-life balance during the event, which was hosted by Professor Barb Morra and Jess D'eon, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, of the Department of Chemistry. The event is the second in recent years, follow-up to a panel hosted in 2025 by Professor Andy Dicks.
After a casual networking session, where students got to know the alumni guests over snacks in the Davenport Atrium, Professor D'eon opened the panel with guest introductions before moving into asking a range of questions about just how they made the change from student life to the professional sphere.
Not all graduates from the department stay within the professional realm of chemistry, of course—2025's alumni panel included a lawyer—but Folkerson, Forman and Lui are all currently working in STEM. Adam Forman obtained his PhD in biological chemistry in 2020 under the supervision of Professor Mark Nitz, where he synthesized carbohydrate substrates for the characterization of enzymes involved in bacterial biofilm formation. He discussed the journey to his current role as Director of R&D at Synakis—a Toronto-based biotech startup developing biomaterials for the treatment of ocular diseases.
Synakis was spun out of Professor Molly Shoichet’s lab at the University of Toronto, where Adam worked as a postdoctoral fellow in chemical/biomedical engineering prior to joining Synakis.
Francine Liu, meanwhile, leads the clinical translational strategy at a company called ProteinQure. She earned her Honours Bachelor of Science and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Toronto and completed her postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School.
She spoke to the gathered students about the need to roll with the ups and downs that can come with research processes, and the role of ego in knowledge making.
In her work, Liu noted, there is often a go-no-go stage—a moment where a team will decide whether to go forward with a program or not. "You need to make those decisions really quickly and without emotion. You cannot be so married to a program that you try to push it through because it was yours."
Instead, she said, emphasizing the importance of collaboration. "You have to let it go and pivot with the team."
Folkerson received his Bachelor of Chemistry and biomedical toxicology in 2020 and went on to earn his PhD in Environmental Chemistry in 2024, both from University of Toronto. An Associate Application Scientist at Sciex, he serves as an intermediary between LC-MS customers and R&D scientists and engineers. His role leverages real-world insight into valuable workflows to ultimately help develop new cutting edge technologies for current and future mass spectrometry applications.
Backpack to Briefcase (b2B) is organized in conjunction with U of T's Division of University Advancement, to connect undergraduate students with successful alumni and discuss their different career paths. It is an opportunity for students to discover the many avenues their degrees offer.
But jobs are not the only goal. A final piece of advice from Forman to the gathering was to remember to occasinally look beyond the laboratory. "It gets really hard in grad school when you feel like you have to progress your research project and you decide sometimes you want to work on evenings and weekends, or whatever is necessary to keep it moving forward. And then it's the next publication... or getting closer to graduating. Remember as best you can that there are other important things in life too."
With Convocation approaching and graduates' job searches about to begin, these perspectives, from students who have stepped out of the classroom and are already forging their career paths, are especially timely and valuable.