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Elissa Hudspeth

Elissa Hudspeth, M.S. is a Senior Scientist at BTEC supporting the Accelerated Innovation in Manufacturing Biologics (AIM-BIO) program. Her expertise is on downstream processing of biopharmaceuticals and supporting analytical assays, including gene therapies and vaccines.

 At BTEC, Elissa teaches in the Analytical Methods for Gene Therapy short course and in the asynchronous online short course, Trends and Emerging Technologies in Downstream Biopharmaceutical Processing. She also supports other courses, including Hands-On cGMP Biomanufacturing Operations, Hands-On cGMP Biomanufacturing of Vectors for Gene Therapy, and Downstream Biopharmaceutical Processes: Fundamentals and Design.

Elissa brings her knowledge and experience gained from over 10 years in biopharmaceutical process development. She spent the last 5.5 years developing extensive expertise in cell and gene therapy. As a Senior Manager for Downstream, she played a key role in building the process development team and new lab at Novartis Gene Therapies. As a Scientist at Lonza Cell and Gene Therapies, she led and supported several AAV, adenovirus, and lentivirus downstream projects, including in-process protein analytics. Elissa also spent over 5.5 years as a Process Development Scientist leading and supporting several vaccine manufacturing projects at Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

 She obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Southern Mississippi and an M.S. in Biotechnology from the University of Houston – Clear Lake, where her thesis work focused on protein crystallography.