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Dr. Patrick Gordon is an Associate Director of Scientific Program Management at Taconic Biosciences. Patrick has 15 years of experience with genetically engineered mouse models – including the design, generation, and validation of new models as well as the management and oversight of large and complex colony management programs. Broadly trained in neuroscience, genetics, and developmental biology, Patrick obtained his PhD at the University of Utah in 2014 before completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Neural Stem Cell Institute in Rensselaer, NY. During this time, his research was focused on embryonic neurogenesis in the developing mammalian nervous system. Patrick initially joined Taconic in 2017 as a Scientific Program Manager in Taconic's Colony Management Solutions group, before moving to Taconic's Custom Model Generation Solutions group in 2020.

Gowri Nayak just celebrated her first year with Taconic as the Scientific Program Manager for Custom Model Generation Solutions. She came to Taconic with several years of experience designing and working with genetically engineered mouse models. Gowri Nayak received her PhD degree from the University of Sussex, England, where she started her research career studying mouse models of human deafness. She later pursued her postdoctoral research in the same field at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. During this time, she published papers on Marveld2, which encodes tricellulin, a protein necessary for the integrity of tricellular junctions of the cochlear sensory epithelia. She then turned her focus to non-visual photoreceptors, particularly, OPN3, which is a blue-light sensitive opsin that is functional in mouse adipose tissue. Her study showed that OPN3 in adipose tissue responds to blue light by upregulating lipolysis, a pathway that generates fuel for energy expenditure and adaptive thermogenesis. In her finale years at Cincinnati Children’s, Gowri trained in gene editing and custom model generation at the transgenic facility at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, where she led the cell-targeting and mouse IVF services, laying down her path to Taconic.