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Hello there! I'm glad to find this biotech/pharma thread, since I've been toying with the idea of joining "the dark side" after my Master's. Sadly, I have virtually no clue what "the industry" actually does, so I'd really appreciate some advice (even if it'll shatter my illusions of "I can do research, keep my dignity AND earn money!" v v).Most people here seem to work on the more chemical/engineering end of things, are "purely biological" research jobs not so common? And is it also possible for biologists to stack up experience on top of a MSc to make up for lack of a PhD for more "advanced" positions? Also, I've always pushed myself for good grades (yay Asian), but I have the impression that to the industry, grades matter less than, let's say, experience with lots of assays/techniques. For example, my bachelor thesis project involved the ubiquitin-proteasome system and I loved it, so for my 2nd master project I applied to a Japanese lab also in this field (other master project was peroxisome biogenesis). It's super interesting to me, but I'm a bit worried that by indulging in this preference, I'll miss the chance to learn more new techniques and it'll hurt my prospects in the future...
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May 5, 2011 17:25
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 01:38 |
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Sundae posted:I'm afraid you've just missed the boat for pure biology in industry. We just announced that we are laying off, depending on specialty, anywhere from 65%-80% of our research discovery departments. Rather extreme percentages, but much of the industry is doing this right now. Small biotechs are your best bet for finding stuff, but don't count on stability or $80,000 wages anymore. Aw well, I was already fearing that the pharma/biotech industry are struggling to maintain their research/development. On the bright side, I have virtually no external student loans (thanks to cheap European universities), but I want to be able to pay back my parents as soon as possible. If I could stay in Europe, where PhDs are usually paid positions and only take ~4 years, I wouldn't mind doing it - but a boyfriend issue forces me to move to the US (whole different story). So now I'm struggling to find a good path, since the whole PhD system is so different in the US and I'm aware that I'm not well-trained for an industry position. To clarify my situation a bit, I'm finishing my first year of a 2-year "Molecular Biology and Biotechnology" MSc programme in the Netherlands, with a cell biology-centered curriculum (but it's quite flexible). My bachelor was actually in biotechnology, but the college sucked and the engineering parts never clicked for me so I switched universities and back to biology for my masters. Oh the irony! In my own fantasy future, I'd like to do pre-clinical biomedical research and develop/optimize drug strategies with cells or tissues... I know "translational research" is a buzzword, but it pretty much sums up what I was hoping for..oh dreams. Thanks for all the input and putting things in perspective though, it's very much appreciated.  Edit: I agree with this article wholeheartedly. I like research and wouldn't mind doing it as a postdoc forever (was never keen on becoming a professor, although I'd enjoy the teaching part), if it was a real job and not a stepping stone. plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 20:10 on May 5, 2011 |
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May 5, 2011 20:05
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Sundae posted:Want some serious, serious advice?
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May 5, 2011 20:16
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seacat posted:you're living in the netherlands and you want to move TO the US? You need your head examined I appreciate the quality of life in the Netherlands, but I'm really tired of being "the foreigner" (I did my bachelor thesis project in Sweden), and swore to myself that I'd go to an English speaking country next time so I can finally have a normal social circle again. That being said, I'm a German citizen of Chinese descent, but feel comfortable with both German or English. Back on topic: Grad school in Europe (at least in the Netherlands, Germany, to some extent Sweden, and definitely Switzerland) is actually not so bad. Takes ~4 years, costs no tuition and usually you count as "research assistant" staff and get paid a salary (with benefits) or alternatively, a stipend (no benefits). I just checked a Lausanne/Zurich postgrad programme and they pay 50,500 CHF (58,052 USD) per year during your PhD.  drat...
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May 5, 2011 21:59
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find a new boyfriend pronto.
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unixbeard posted:50k is not a really a lot in Switzerland, it's barely the equivalent minimum wage. You wouldn't starve, but you would probably be living out of town and not doing much. Not that there is much to do in Switzerland. You would also probably still be an ausländer, but most of the Swiss universities are full of foreigner students according to a friend doing a PhD at ETH, so it might not be all that bad. In the German parts I could at least understand the language! XD And some salary is better than none and having to pay tuition on top of that. I guess, two of my old classmates are doing their PhD in ETH Zürich and Lausanne, respectively, and they seem to be doing well. From the posts here I get the impression that the market sucks for everyone right now, no matter what I choose... so I guess I'll have to evaluate my priorities and find a good balance between (financial) comfort, intellectual reward and personal life. I talked to the boyfriend about jobs and stuff and he was actually open about maybe moving to Europe for a while, so we'll see.
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May 8, 2011 12:39
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seacat posted:I've never really heard of a happy postdoc I've seen plenty of content-to-happy postdocs in my previous labs (cell biology, structural biology, cell biology/biotech), the extreme being a 50+ year senior postdoc who has been in the same lab for 15+ years and everyone's go-to guy. He is perfectly happy with doing as much research as he wants without having to worry about the organizational stuff that professors do. That being said, I have no clue what his salary is  ...
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May 10, 2011 17:13
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Eunabomber posted:How does anyone in a PhD program have time for an internship? I have a question! Assume we have several potential drug candidates, small scale tests on mice (academics level) have been published and results are promising. Now for a (relatively big) company - is it expensive for them to do the pre-clinical testing and optimization stuff (pharmacokinetics, formulations) for a bunch of those? What else has to be done before a company would consider registering it as "Investigational New Drug"? Is the threshold very high? I'm asking because we're writing a small case study/advice for a company as a project - we found some nice things in the literature, but I don't know if it's feasible to tell the company to go ahead and have some chemists work on all of these potential candidates to figure out which they want to push further (phase I), or if it's so expensive that we should stick to just 1 or 2. Any input is greatly appreciated!
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May 27, 2011 23:47
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I miss my cells.. even the stubborn mycoplasma-infected ones and those who refused to take NaCl from anyone else than our group leader. I wonder how their (greatgreatgreatgreat grand-) kids are doing :<
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Jun 8, 2011 21:14
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Not a bioinformatician myself but I'm doing a project in a bioinformatics group (university) and maybe this is in some way useful to you. My impression is that as long as you're familiar with maths/statistics/R and are willing to adapt (read up on biological topics), you can work well in bioinformatics, and the boundaries between sub-fields within are a lot lower compared to biology. The background of the staff here varies immensely, we have a postdoc with a PhD in theoretical physics, a software engineer with "only" has a bachelors (who doesn't really read literature though), most grad students here have bio/biotech backgrounds, and the prof has a background in maths but moved towards bioinformatics via statistical genetics. They collaborate a lot with companies (many from food/agricultural), their focus of this lab here is all sorts of (epi)genomics and (quantitative trait loci) mapping and proteomics, but they also have people working inbetween here and the hospital (doing something with SNPs). Summary: biostatisticians are extremely versatile and appear to be quite sought-after. A master's degree is useful if you want to be more than "the programming guy", although it can also be in Maths or Physics and probably some engineering (a friend of mine went to bioinformatics after a space engineering undergrad). plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Jun 21, 2011 |
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Jun 21, 2011 09:26
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Gimperial posted:Anyone have any experience getting lab jobs in the UK with no experience per se? (Just graduated with an MSc) I actually have the same question for the U.S., with the caveat that I'm a EU citizen (Germany) graduating this summer. My boyfriend and I have been planning to move together (he's American), but I'm a bit skeptical about job hunting, since industry employers will probably prefer an applicant without the visa hassle (especially at entry level). Would I have a better chance with university labs? Do they hire "research assistants" at all, or is it all done by grad student slaves+the resident technicians?
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Jan 10, 2012 02:47
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Solkanar512 posted:For the love of god, please learn your (very limited) rights as a visa worker in the United States! Actually I wasn't thinking of H-1B, but rather J-1; the 1 year limit isn't an issue since we might return to Japan (where I am currently) for a couple years. Anyway, industry seems to be out of my reach at this point - now I'm just trying to figure out whether I'd qualify as a "specialist" under J-1 and if that comes with the same set of requirements as H-1B. [Edit] Also it's a bit ironic - right now I'm doing exactly those 12-hour days you mentioned, and I'm usually the first to leave.  . (I hear it's better in the more international labs here/RIKEN).
plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 11:03 on Jan 10, 2012 |
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Jan 10, 2012 10:31
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Since I'm getting no answers in the CV/resume thread... In a resume, what are the correct "titles" with research done as student (undergrad thesis and MSc projects)? Is something like Research Assistant ok or should it be "Student Researcher" or similar? There was never any contract involved so I have no idea.
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May 8, 2012 17:41
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Dik Hz posted:Research Assistant. I feel so ignorant right now, my experience points only have a single short paragraph summarizing what I did (I listed 5 projects and didn't want the resume to exceed 2 pages). Is there supposed to be more text? By independent funding you mean actual sciencey stuff you have to write grant applications for, right? I did get scholarships for two of my projects but they were ERASMUS and EU-JP cooperations and not tied to research topics at all.
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May 9, 2012 00:14
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Reseach Assistant in an academic lab. Not grad school yet because I cannot make a commitment to stay in one place for several years at the moment.
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May 9, 2012 03:36
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Hey, thanks. It's actually a two-page resume and a full-page cover letter for this application (plus a crazy 5-pages Selection Criteria response because it's for Australia and I had to address 15 criteria). Is the 1-page limit also true for academics? Only one project is from my undergrad though, the others I did for my master's and 2 of them lead to publications (JBC, PLoS One). I'm also referring to them in my Selectrion Criteria responses so I'd want to keep them in the resume. Since my BSc was just at a mediocre school nobody's heard of, and my MSc will be from a Dutch university (they're all respectable, but none is awe-inducing), I think my appeal will have to come from the projects. I think they're interesting, but I'm also afraid the topics are too over the place to make an impact (biochemistry/photocrosslinking, bioinformatics/epigenomics, fungal genetics/organelle biology, cell biology/signaling). ...I forgot what I was trying to say. plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 23:23 on May 9, 2012 |
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May 9, 2012 16:53
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Thanks a lot Dik Hz, that helped a bunch.Dik Hz posted:First off, are you a citizen of the US or located in the US right now? If not, you're not going to get anywhere. quote:Second, 5 different labs is a warning flag. Why didn't you stick with 1 or 2? I'd drop the two 2-month projects and just put the other 3 on your resume. It's also considered gauche to name-drop the professors on your resume. If they know the professor for whose lab you're applying, then you should make the connection in your cover letter, with your professor's permission. - #1 was for my bachelor thesis abroad. Research was great (ubiquitin stuff) and I was asked to return for a PhD, but my boyfriend didn't want to move to Sweden (and winter darkness got to me). - #2 was just a summer job in my hometown, I'll remove this - #3 was the first of 2 obligatory projects in my MSc program and had to be done at my Department (Netherlands, topic no connection to #1 sadly). I did well and was asked to stay for a PhD, but again, my boyfriend didn't want to move here and I'd rather work with mammalian cells. - #4 was a bioinformatics project that I did in place of 2 courses that clashed with #5 timing. I wanted to leave this one here because I learned R from scratch and managed to produce enough results within 2 months to get another co-authorship (paper in submission), which I'm kinda proud of and says something about my learning pace and computer literacy. I'm also referring to this on in my Selection Criteria response. - #5 was my second MSc research project. I've always wanted to go to Japan for an internship and was accepted by a good lab in line with my interests (some connection to #1), in a place where my boyfriend also wouldn't mind living (he's half Japanese). I also got a decent scholarship so all seemed gravy - but after tons of problems (bad communication, terrible lab safety, regular 60-70 hr weeks) even if the outcome was o.k. I'd prefer western-style labs for the future (or the RIKEN labs, but they only employ PhD/postdoc level). I'm aware and I agree that the resulting lab salad is too scattered to leave a good/clear impression, but I'm having a bit of trouble to compress this without leaving out important things (e.g. projects leading to papers). Also I don't know if I can refer to not listed projects list in Selectrion Criteria (this is an AUS issue). quote:As I mentioned before, you should lead with the fact that you got independent funding from a competitive merit-based scholarship for your research. This is a big loving deal in academia, even if it's only a couple grand. quote:Finally, drop the skills section. If you have relevant skills to the jobs you're applying, address them in the cover letter. Don't just say you're proficient at protein expression, for example. Say you expressed and purified over a dozen proteins, including human Bcl in E. coli to a yield of 3 mg/L culture at a purity of 95%. That'd be an impressive achievement that both demonstrates your ability, and shows that you know what's important. Again thanks a lot for all that advice, seems like I have a whole lot to think about/work on still. plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 16:59 on May 10, 2012 |
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May 10, 2012 11:34
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Ouch. Although in my case it probably wouldn't be a big problem. Save for one person (from the summer job), all three group leaders know I've been applying, think favourable of me and already agreed to be my referees... I probably should approach them again and be more adamant about referring me to someone they know. Too often my pride gets in the way of asking for help, it's pretty stupid.
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May 10, 2012 19:27
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Oh man, I'm super excited but nervous and don't know what to do. I got an amazing offer from my MSc project supervisor to do my PhD in her lab (within 3 years, since I got a co-authorship during my MSc project and can use that one; prof is also super nice and supportive). The problem is that the lab is the Netherlands, and my boyfriend probably can't get a job+visa there with his qualifications (Japanese language major, and he's American). My prof wants to know if i'm accepting ASAP (deadline for the funding app is July 15th), but I'm waiting for a response to a Research Assistant job application in Australia, where we both could go. The deadline for the job app was this week - when is it ok to mail the person and ask about it? plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 6, 2012 21:11
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canvasbagfight posted:I dunno, that PhD sounds pretty tempting. Insensitive I know but aren't we in the lab rat thread? Yeah it sounds great, just in the wrong country (and here in Europe, PhDs are usually 4 years, since you have less courses and no lab rotation as these are usually included in the MSc). My boyfriend made clear he doesn't want to move to the Netherlands, so... I won't go E/N here. The RA position in Australia would be very cool and perfect for our plans, but I'm running low on time to wait for the results, so I'd like to know if/when it's acceptable to ask the group leader in charge of hiring, without seeming impatient/needy. [edit:] Woo, I got an interview! Not sure what kind of questions to expect, but I'm super excited.
plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Jul 9, 2012 |
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Jul 6, 2012 23:32
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C-Euro posted:I'm looking at listings and I saw a job that requires a Bachelor's in Chemical Engineering, but I'll have (or be close to having) a Master's in Chemistry by the time I'd start such a job. Does it depend on the responsibilities of the job, or do employers adhere to these sorts of guidelines more strictly? Seconding gninjagnome, but if you'll ultimately get away with it depends a lot on the job responsibilities, e.g. whether they're looking for a mechanical or process engineer who understands basic chemistry or vice versa. plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Feb 16, 2013 |
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Feb 16, 2013 01:46
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I'm at a crossroads deciding where my career/life is going, but excluding E/N stuff it boils down to one question: In pharma/biotech companies, what roles are there for biologists? I used to believe that there's lots of pharma jobs for biologists from "popular" fields (cancer, immunology), but actually there seems to be much more for chemists (formulation, analytics, QC), pharmacists (PK/PD, formulation) or bioprocess engineers (manufacturing) - "pure" biologist roles seem to be split cleanly into either "lab monkey" (where a PhD would put you into the overqualified pile) or "distinguished lab head" (where a PhD is not nearly enough). Is that true? I'm wondering if and where in a typical company structure you'd find biologists that do not fit these 2 types. Essentially, I'm trying to decide whether getting a bio PhD (molecular immunology or cancer biology) would practically keep me from getting into industry forever. plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Aug 1, 2013 |
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Aug 1, 2013 03:06
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 01:38 |
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Thanks! That's actually quite helpful, sorry for my rambly writing but I've been stewing on this for a while. =)quote:Are you debating between a PhD and no PhD, or just what to get a PhD in? I'd love to do a PhD - I'm itching to be "on top" of a project again, instead of just doing experiments for 10 different projects I don't fully understand. Time and money aren't major issues at this point, but I'm not sure if it would help me get into industry. Many sources claim it's easier to get in with a MSc than with a PhD, as companies would more often need technical skills (assays, cell culture, mouse work etc) than expert knowledge in a certain field. I sort of saw this on company visits - at one, they almost discouraged us from getting PhDs and made it sound like it was easiest to get in through undergraduate/MS level internships. Another company claimed to only hire PhDs, but there was only one biologist (biomarkers) and everyone else we saw were chemists/pharmacists/engineers working on formulation and upscaling. I guess there's probably a ton of different company structures, and I happened to see two examples with no roles I could fit in. Field of study is another question, as I'm unfortunately not into some "traditional" topics for pharma (receptors, kinases, structural biology). A bunch of stuff I'm interested in (degradation pathways, ubiquitin signaling, cellular trafficking) is only tangentially related to some diseases/applications at this point, and I don't know if that sort of research would be done internally. Or would it be more likely outsourced to academic collaborators/CROs? plasmoduck fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Aug 2, 2013 |
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Aug 2, 2013 15:29
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