{"id":3915,"date":"2009-07-24T12:23:31","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T12:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/07\/24\/pnas-dennis-lee-biotech-resear\/"},"modified":"2009-07-24T12:23:31","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T12:23:31","slug":"pnas-dennis-lee-biotech-resear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/07\/24\/pnas-dennis-lee-biotech-resear\/","title":{"rendered":"PNAS: Dennis Lee, Biotech Researcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers<\/a> with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Dennis Lee<\/a>, a researcher at a biotech company.)<\/i><\/p>\n

1) What is your non-academic job?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m the director of research for a small biotech company based in
\nHouston. We’re developing a new device for high-throughput screening
\nof antibody and compound libraries for potential use as therapeutics
\nand\/or diagnostics. Essentially the goal is to develop a device that
\ncan speed up some of the early stage drug discovery steps; product
\ndevelopment pipelines are starting to run dry and we hope our project
\ncan help pick up the slack.<\/p>\n

2) What is your science background?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have a bachelor’s of science from the University of Chicago in what
\nthey called “biological chemistry” (why they didn’t just call it
\nbiochemistry I’ll never know) and a Ph.D. from the Department of
\nBiochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. My doctoral work was
\nactually on Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant, doing molecular genetics.<\/p>\n

3) What led you to this job?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Truthfully, it was a good bit of luck in being in the right place at
\nthe right time. I had decided that I did not want to do the academic
\nroute and was looking at various jobs in government labs and even
\nconsulting when this opportunity came my way. Turns out that one of my
\ngood friends is the son of one of the founders of the company, and
\nwhen he heard I had defended, wanted to talk to me about the
\nopportunity as the company was just getting up and running.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

4) What’s your work environment like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m in the lab most of the time – it’s a shared incubator space with
\nseveral other small biotechs. It’s very laid back, very collegial –
\neverybody has signed mutual NDAs, so if you need to bounce ideas off
\nof other people you can, or if you need a chemical or piece of
\nequipment for a one-off experiment, there’s a good chance that someone
\nelse has it. Occasionally I have to pop over to the corporate office
\non the other side of town for a meeting, which is a little more
\nformal, but a lot of those sorts of issues are handled via email or
\ntelephone.<\/p>\n

5) What do you do in a typical day?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s a changing mix of bench work, data analysis, and business
\ndevelopment stuff. I spend most of my time planning and executing
\nexperiments, but because it is a small company and I am the one with
\nthe most knowledge about the work, I get called on to participate in
\nconference calls with potential investors, help develop materials for
\nsaid investors, and keep my eye out for strategic partners (read:
\npotential buyers) and possible competitors.<\/p>\n

6) How does your science background help you in your job?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it’s still primarily a research position at a company of our
\nsize. The critical thinking skills I learned in my graduate career are
\nprobably the most important; the actual field that I studied has
\nnothing to do whatsoever with what our company is doing.<\/p>\n

7) If a current college student wanted to get a job like yours, how
\nshould they go about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hmm, this is tough, as I sort of lucked into my job, and I don’t think
\nyou could get a job like mine with just an undergraduate degree,
\nunless you were the original person with the idea for the startup. But
\nfor graduate students, I’d suggest sucking it up and attending any
\nentrepreneurship-type programs, classes, seminars, or workshops that
\nyour local business school might be running, and network like crazy at
\nthose events. Try to meet like-minded people, and don’t be afraid of
\nfailure – that’s kind of what startup companies are all about. If you
\nfind an interesting idea or company that you want to work on or at,
\nyou really need to reach out and show interest and express at least a
\ngood basic grasp of what they’re doing.<\/p>\n

8) What’s the most important thing you learned from science?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most important thing I learned from science is probably the
\ncritical thinking\/reasoning skills. If you can break down a problem
\ninto smaller problems, the approach becomes much simpler. Experimental
\nmethod applies not only to actual experiments, but to the business
\nside of things as well – if an approach you took didn’t work, ask
\nyourself why? Change your approach and re-evaluate the results. You
\ncan’t really run controls in your social interactions with people, but
\nsince business development at the startup level involves searching out
\na lot of potential partners and investors, you do have the luxury of
\nbeing able to tweak your approach.<\/p>\n

The second thing I learned is that given a good library and 2 – 3
\nweeks, you can become reasonably well-read on virtually anything, and
\ncombined with the critical thinking and reasoning skills, there’s
\nreally nothing you can’t do. Experimental techniques outside your
\nfield might take some time to learn, but don’t be afraid to make
\nlateral moves.<\/p>\n

9) What advice would you give to young science students trying to plan
\ntheir careers?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the important thing is to realize that if you can really learn
\nthe critical thinking part and not just memorize facts, you should
\nhave a good foundation to do whatever you want – be it staying in
\nacademia, doing research in industry, or switching gears entirely and
\nentering the business world. Try to figure out the direction you want
\nto go as early as possible, as it allows you to figure out what
\nmilestones you need to hit in order to get where you want to be, but
\nrealize that you can always change directions.<\/p>\n

Also, work on your people skills. Get a good friend to tell you
\nstraight what aspects of social interaction you might need to work on.
\nThe fact of the matter is that no matter what route you take, you’re
\ngoing to have to deal with other people.<\/p>\n

10) (Totally Optional Question) What’s the pay like? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I make more than a post-doc in biology fresh out of grad school does.
\nI could probably make more working for a big pharma, but I have
\nwarrants in the company (currently worthless to me, but if we succeed,
\nI’ll be doing OK for myself).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This… Continue reading PNAS: Dennis Lee, Biotech Researcher<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,57,58,59,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-jobs","category-non-academic","category-pnas","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}