Pharma, biotech, medical devices R&D

Parent Cafe
1

<p>Dear CC members,</p>

<p>I am writing today in hopes that the parents here can provide insight into R&D fields w/in the pharma, biotech and medical devices industries. Your experiences and advice are valuable to me as I try to decide the next steps in my education/career. I don’t personally know anyone in these fields so I hope you can share some of your experiences and answer a few questions. </p>

<p>Thank you for your time,
HKLincoln</p>

<ol>
<li><p>What do you know about the field now that you wish you knew when you first started? </p></li>
<li><p>What programming languages are used? How about CAD programs?</p></li>
<li><p>How high or low is the ceiling for people with master’s degree versus PhD (in terms of doing lab work)? </p></li>
<li><p>Are there specific PhDs that are valued more (engineering, biomolecular science, etc.)? </p></li>
<li><p>What’s your typical day like? A boatload of meetings or more bench work? </p></li>
<li><p>What skills would you like the “newbies” to come in with but don’t see? </p></li>
<li><p>What are the benefits and consequences of working in a large company versus a small one?</p></li>
</ol>

2

major bump because I am interested as well

3

While this thread is two years old, and usually we encourage people to start new threads vs. bumping old threads, I’d say the reason this poster never got any replies is because he was asking a LOT of information in one post… and some of this information can be garnered with some internet searches. Since no one responded, this thread can stand as if it was just started.

But most importantly, if someone wants to go into this field, why aren’t they talking to someone at their college/university? Establishing relationships with professors who have connections would be the most practical way to go about this kind of research; and if professors aren’t current in their field, they can almost always direct a student to someone who is. Of course, I’m making this assumption based on the OP’s sharing that they are trying to decide the next steps in their education/career, insinuating there has already been some college, if not at least a bachelor’s degree.

4

teriwett I agree about using the school as a first line source of info …but the problem if you are at a major research school like Pitt, Texas A & M, etc …you can not just walk in and talk to a researcher.

I will say that I know a person who works for a fairly small pharma related company (not as a researcher or a big time player on the outside of that …and part time) but they tell me all the time they have never seen so many smart people assembled in one place and the energy of the people is intense and exciting.
perhaps a large and well established medical or pharma company is more bureaucratic and structured. and since many of those companies have offices spread around the world the “energy” may not be there. (just a gut feeling)

5

There are no “answers” for any of these questions, save maybe, question #7, which would apply to nearly any job situation out there, and #1, which is experiential.

These are broader than anyone can jump over, but pretty soon, someone with a very small and limited amount of experience will come by and start supplying answers.

Here…I’ll beat them to it.

  1. Anything useful
  2. It varies.
  3. It depends on the person.
  4. Depends on your job, and then, sometimes, it just depends.
  5. Depends on which newbies.
  6. I'd like to say working in a large company provides more stability, but that's not broadly true.
6

Well then, how do so many undergrads get research positions if they can’t talk to a professor/researcher? Obviously it helps if it’s a professor you’re either in class with or have had a class with. That being said, before anyone goes in to talk to a professor, they should do some legwork and have very specific questions that show they’ve done their legwork. Most Ph.D. level university professors have contacts within the industry they can put students in touch with if students have questions about working in industry. We know plenty of people who have done mentoring for undergraduate students.

H works for a large pharmaceutical company - the large majority of their core researchers/scientists are at the main location, although there are smaller manufacturing plants around the world where you might find other scientists. But the main core are at the headquarters doing research. Maybe this company is an anomaly, but he knows people at almost every major pharma around the U.S. and they are all located at their company’s main headquarters - yes, with tens of thousands of other employees, but surrounded by lots of high level scientists of all disciplines within their departments.

7

The person who wants to work in the industries should be able to develop contacts with professors within his/her U by the time they are seniors in college. A college advisor is a first step. Part of getting jobs is learning how to get them. Learning how to talk with those in charge is an important step to being a peer of those older adults once you finish being a student.

A college friend of mine with a PhD started as a bench chemist at a large pharmaceutical company. Eventually she moved to managerial/administrative positions and was there her entire working career. Careers evolve with changing ages and times. Another friend with a P Chem PhD worked at different pharmaceutical companies during his career, in different sized places et al.

Therefore I like post #4’s definitive answer. Many variables.

8

I agree with others, if you are thinking of going into the field, and are at a research university, you should be talking to them. Among other things, the whole health care/pharm industry is in a period of flux, and it all depends on your own talents. I am not directly in the field, but being in the financial industry routinely hear discussions of business sectors, and pharm is not monolithic. Big pharm companies have many areas, so you might have more traditional research into new drugs based on traditional chemistry (like chemotherapy), you might have the typical development of antibiotics, then you have for example, genetic based treatements, or the latest cutting edge treatments for things like cancer, using the person’s own immune system characteristics to fight the disease. A small biotech company, versus let’s say Novartis, might be focusing on one specific aspect, like genetic based therapy, so there if your background is in biogenetics, genetic engineering (or whatever it happens to be called), that might be more of a fit.

You also have to take into consideration, too, the demographics of research. Like many industries, the pharm industry has outsourced or insourced research to/from places like India and China, so a lot of what might have once been done here is being done overseas or with foreign visa holders working as consultants and such. So you may want to do some research on that, too. I work in an area that still has pretty significant presence with the Pharmaceutical industry (places like Novartis, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Johnson and Johnson,Bayer, Glaxo Smith Kline, and ton of smaller firms), and I have known a number of people who worked for them who found their jobs shifted/lost to this trend.

The other thing that a researcher I met doing jury duty a while ago told me was that you see in their commercials all these fancy computer modeling/simulations, these amazing clear glass walls where you can ‘design’ molecules and such, and he laughed, he said a lot of it is still the grinding lab work, trial and error, kind of thing, that that kind of what he called ‘star wars’ stuff was more PR in a lot of cases than reality, so if you see it as being this uber high tech thing, you might be surprised that it is more like, as he said, the world of Thomas Edison trying to create a practical light bulb (his almost exact words)

Again, I agree with others, you should be talking to professors and such if you are at a research school, or reach out to ones at other schools via e-mail and such, I think that will be a lot more valuable.

9

Some companies that have done that, though, have found it didn’t work out so well. Production was low and there were some issues with intellectual property being stolen. It actually might be considered a trend that some companies that did that, are now moving that contract work back to the states.