Associate Manager, Medical Writing

Melissa Christianson joined Whitsell Innovations (WI) through the WI internship program in 2014. In addition to managing a team of writers and providing project management services, she supports clients in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and academic sectors with clinical, regulatory, and consumer-directed communications. Dr. Christianson’s areas of expertise are neurobiology and oncology, and she has experience in the therapeutic areas of dentistry, dermatology, hepatology, immunology, neonatology, obstetrics and gynecology, and respiratory disease. She also leads in-house and external training sessions on regulatory and medical writing best practices.

Prior to joining WI, Dr. Christianson was a postdoctoral researcher in the Departments of Neurobiology and Anesthesiology at Duke University. Her postdoctoral research used invertebrate models to identify novel genes involved in pain signaling. She also held part-time writing positions with the American Brain Cancer Cure and HDBuzz foundations.

Dr. Christianson obtained her PhD in neurobiology from Duke University, where her research was funded by the National Science Foundation and focused on shared mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease in Alzheimer’s disease and glaucoma. She holds a bachelor’s degree in cognitive science from Yale University.