About the SoCal Regional Chapter
Founded in 1988, the SOT Southern California Regional Chapter is comprised of members living and working in cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Bakersfield, and Fresno, as well as other southern California locales.
View the SoCal Membership Directory
Officers (2025–2026)
Tejas Lahoti
President
Tejas Lahoti is an American and European board-certified toxicologist, currently working as a Principal Scientist within the Drug Safety Research and Evaluation department at Takeda Development Center Americas, Inc. He has been an industry toxicologist for past eight years and actively involved with the SCCSOT chapter and a councilor for past four years.
Christine Hoffmaster
Vice President
Christine is an Associate Director (Toxicologist) within Nonclinical Development at Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Christine has been in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry for more than 20 years specializing in toxicology and nonclinical drug development. Christine is a member of SOT and ACT and is currently engaged with a number of collaborative projects with the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI).
Patrick Allard
Vice President-Elect
Dr. Allard is a recognized scholar, based at University of California Los Angeles, whose work resides at the intersection of toxicology, genetics, and epigenetics. His laboratory leverages the tractability of model organisms and stem cell-based approaches to examine reproductive and neurobehavioral impairments following exposure to environmental toxicants. His research focuses on the effect of environmental exposures has been published in several high-profile journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), PLOS Genetics, Cell Reports, and Environmental Health Perspectives. Dr Allard has received multiple awards and grants including a Burroughs Wellcome Innovations in Regulatory Science Award and funding from NIEHS, NIAAA, and the Templeton foundation. Dr. Allard serves as Associate Editor of Environmental Health Perspectives and is a twice gubernatorial expert appointee to California EPA's Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee. Since joining in 2008, Dr. Allard has an extensive record of SOT service, most notably as current elected Vice-Chair of the Awards Committee, past Chair of the Collaborative Conferences Committee, past chair of the Stem Cells Specialty Section, and as a past member of the Education Committee where he focused on international educational opportunities. Within SOT and at his home institution, Dr. Allard is a passionate advocate for mentoring, diversity, and inclusion and has presented at several SOT mentoring and diversity-focused sessions during the Annual Meeting and ToxExpo.
Amy Tran-Guzman
Secretary
Amy Tran-Guzman is a Scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb, where she supports the identification and management of toxicological liabilities using in vitro systems and serves as a toxicology project representative for drug discovery programs. She received a doctorate in Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology from the University of Southern California in 2022, where she served as Chair of the USC Student Chapter of AAPS from 2018—2019 and as the Chair of Professional Development in the Pharmacy Graduate Student Alliance from 2020—2021. Amy is the first author of four peer-reviewed publications and serves as a reviewer for Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology and Toxicological Sciences. She has been a member of the SOT since 2020 and served the SOT as graduate student representative for the Stem Cell Specialty Section from 2020—2022 and was a member of the graduate student leadership professional development subcommittee from 2021—2022.
Dale Baker
Treasurer
Mr. Baker is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at Vertex San Diego. Mr. Baker is responsible for leading the early safety strategy for the Vertex San Diego pain portfolio. Additionally, he leads the global in silico genetox effort within Vertex. Mr. Baker received his BS in Biology from the University of Michigan in 1995 (Go Blue). Mr. Baker's specialty is in vitro toxicology as he was fortunate to mentor under leaders in this space. In more than 20 years as a toxicologist, he has worked with many talented scientists during his tenures at Pharmacia Upjohn, Amgen, Celgene, Allergan and Vertex; covering a variety of small and large molecule programs in oncology, inflammation, ocular, neurotoxin, general medicine, CF and pain. Mr. Baker has been a member of SOT and ACT since 2006 and has presented a poster at almost every SOT since becoming a member until he stepped away from the bench in 2015.
Mamta Behl
Past President
Mamta Behl is a board-certified toxicologist who serves as Principal Scientist at Neurocrine Biosciences Inc., in San Diego where she plays a key role in the discovery and development of planning and implementation of preclinical testing using in vitro and in vivo approaches for new and current drug candidates. She provides strategic and operational direction ensuring studies are conducted in line with regulatory guidelines and manages the conduct and reporting of studies. Prior to her current position she was at the National Toxicology Program, NIEHS where she led the Developmental Neurotoxicity Health Effects Innovation Program.
Elana Elkin
Councilor
Dr. Elkin is an Assistant Professor at San Diego State University and a toxicologist specializing in reproductive and placental toxicology. Her research seeks to understand how exposures to environmental and occupational pollutants during pregnancy contribute to elevated risk of developing adverse birth outcomes. Dr. Elkin studies how exposure to pollutants disrupt normal physiological processes in the placenta during pregnancy. She currently employs both traditional laboratory-based techniques and ‘omics’ approaches to investigate placental toxicity using in vitro and in vivo models.
Sabitha Papineni
Councilor
Dr. Papineni is the Global Head of Regulatory Sciences and Strategy at Labcorp Drug Development where she is responsible to develop and execute regulatory strategy for the regulatory consulting group to meet the needs of the clients and lead a global team of regulatory experts including toxicologists and environmental risk assessors. She is an experienced Regulatory Professional with 13+ years of global regulatory toxicology experience in crop protection industry with a specific focus in mammalian toxicology conducting human health risk assessments. She has effectively led many toxicology testing programs for new active ingredients and plant protection products and biotech traits globally with effective regulatory strategies to overcome regulatory challenges. She is proactive in external scientific outreach and has organized and chaired number of symposiums, workshops and continuing education courses and has been an invited speaker in international conferences (SOT, ACS,CLA, IUTOX, Toxforum). She is primary and co-author of 38 peer reviewed journal publications and couple of book chapters. Dr. Papineni obtained her PhD in Toxicology from Texas A&M University, College Station in 2008 with a dissertation work focused on exploring growth inhibitory and antiangiogenic responses of different analogues of synthetic derivative of natural compounds such as Diindolylmethanes (DIMs) in various cancer cell lines.
Adam Filipowicz
Postdoctoral Representative
Dr. Filipowicz is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studies the neurotoxicity and epigenetics of environmental exposures. He received his doctorate in Neuroscience from Oregon Health & Science University in 2022 and then joined Dr. Patrick Allard's laboratory at UCLA for his postdoctoral training. He is an author/co-author of 10 publications. He is a new member of SOT, and started attending SOT meetings in 2023. He has been awarded multiple certificates of appreciation, a travel award, and a poster award from the Southern California Regional Chapter of SOT. Dr. Filipowicz has previously served as Vice President of Organizing for Graduate Researchers United AFSCME Local 402, Vice President for the OHSU Graduate Student Organization, and Graduate Student Representative for the OHSU Student Council.
Jeanette Sullivan
Graduate Student Representative
Jeanette Sullivan is a 4th year doctoral candidate in the Biomedical Sciences program at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. She completed her BS in Biology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, where she worked in Dr. Alan Levine's lab studying the impact of opioids on human CD4+ T cells. During the first year of the pandemic, Jeanette performed Covid-19 testing at Avellino Labs USA, one of the first private companies to obtain FDA authorization for their AvellinoCoV2 PCR test in March 2020. She then began her graduate studies at UCI in Dr. Angela Fleischman's lab investigating the impact of inflammation on hematopoietic stem cell mutations, focusing on the influence of cigarette and e-cigarette exposure on clonal expansion and macrophage dysfunction. She has been an active volunteer for recruitment events and peer mentor programs and am a member of GPS-STEM at UCI, a professional development program for motivated graduate students. Jeanette joined SOT in 2023 and the Southern California regional chapter in 2024. She presented posters at SOT2024 in SLC and at the SCCSOT chapter meeting in October 2024, where she was also selected for an oral presentation.
Allen Louie
Graduate Student Representative
Allen Louie is a 6th year PhD candidate in the Environmental and Molecular Toxicology (EMT) Program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Allen has a BS in biology from UC San Diego and an MPH in environmental health sciences from UC Berkeley. He has worked at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, Calibr (now Calibr-Skaggs and Genentech. Currently, in the Environmental Cardiology and Vascular Biology (ECVB) Laboratory, directed by Dr. Jesus Araujo, he is interested in determining the role of alveolar macrophages in the development of cardiometabolic disorders after exposure to particulate matter in the air. His work has resulted in 5 published peer-reviewed papers, with a book chapter on Chronic Vascular Pathology and Toxicology in Comprehensive Toxicology. Allen was a T32 Molecular Toxicology Training Pre-doctoral Fellow (2021-2023) and a current recipient of the UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship. He has presented his work at local, regional, and national conferences and holds several leadership positions at UCLA and SOT.
Bylaws
View the SoCal Regional Chapter Bylaws.
Sites of Interest for SoCal Members
- CAL-EPA (California Environmental Protection Agency)
- CAT (California Association of Toxicologists)
- CERES (California Environmental Resources Evaluation System)
- CPCS (California Poison Control System)
- GETA (Genetic and Environmental Toxicology Association [of Northern California])
- PROP65 (California Proposition 65 Information)
- SCALACS (Southern California Section American Chemical Society)
- SoCal SETAC (Southern California Regional Chapter SETAC)