My Industrial experience Pre-PhD

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

In my other blogs, I mentioned my journey at IITK and that I graduated from it in 2008. The interview leading to my selection in one of the biopharma was also fascinating. My association with NGOs in Kanpur and my own belief led me to sit only for Indian companies and that too in a biotech core company, which everyone despised then and even today consider not much of a great choice. But, I wanted to learn and be a witness to the local biotech functioning in India which was known globally to manufacture drugs for many parts of the world. My decision didn’t disappoint me at all.

So, herein I am writing about my first industrial experience, straight out of college, based on what I had written about biopharma in 2010 (Original post on blogpost). At that time, I was completely ignorant about the functioning of generic biopharma or even the term “biologic”! I am as clueless now as a lot has improved since my last biopharma job ended in 2017.

My journey began in the industry on the 14th of July 2008 with former students now employees flowing in from across the country for orientation post their selection. It was one of a kind scenario, that made me feel like I was in my college except that I was getting paid. During those 2 weeks of getting to know the company, we enjoyed a lot visiting different business units, celebrating birthdays, watching movies, etc. along with visiting the very famous Ramoji Film City.

My on-campus interview was conducted by a tech/biotech guru whom we have known since 2008 and who currently is spearheading a startup on a biopharma data management software. Being from a Bioengineering background, I was transferred to the Biologics Unit for my work. Herein, the unit introduced a new concept of lab rotation wherein different projects decided by the higher-ups were discussed with TT (Technical Trainees), as we were called. We had to choose 3 projects from a list of projects and work on them for a period of 1.5 – 2 months each to decide our final workplace. So, our fate was sealed by our own hands or heads!

I selected these stints considering my academic background, my interest, and how it would benefit the organization. Now that I think about it, those stints gave me enough visibility amongst the management and also helped me make new friends. Due to my involvement in cricket in the earlier part of my life, I also got a chance to play cricket along with CXOs of the biopharma.

Needless to say, I learned many things including new instruments such as Fluorescence Polarization, HPLC, TFF, etc., and got to solve practical problems. I remember vaguely but one of the problems was on “quantification of different excipients in a drug product”. As adopted from my original blog, “I worked on analyzing excipients in a given protein sample. Basically, a protein has its shelf-life and stability in a given environment. To increase its stability some other stabilizing agents termed “excipient” are added to the solution. I had to ensure that the excipient's quantity added to the solution remained there until the final drug was manufactured”. My other stint was focused on filter optimization for the purification of drug solutions. This project helped model the pressure-handling capacity of the actual filter used in downstream processing to capture only the protein of interest.

At the end of 6-months duration, I decided to continue working on my first stint which was based on identifying OPC connectivity to integrate various instruments with a unit-wise information system. For this stint, I interacted with engineering, R&D and Manufacturing higher-ups who enabled my entry into the R&D and Manufacturing units for identifying their OPC servers. Primarily, the IT personnel facilitated the backend and I used to check if the instrument tags were read on my PC remotely.

It was a one-of-a-kind project which was challenging from an engineering perspective, but the downside was that it needed backing from the top management to be scaled out successfully. In 2008, as things were still in infancy, there wasn’t much understanding of how automation would benefit Indian biopharma. Although as a TT it wasn’t my job to explain it to anyone thinking about my long-term career, it was a high-risk project.

Getting into the science of it, I was trying to pull out data from different manufacturing-level instruments into a software-readable format using instrument-imbedded connectors to produce real-time trends/charts. It was an opportunity to implement a universal window for gazing all data at once, just like how batman used video surveillance over Gowtham city. The only difference is, he had different views collated on a big screen, here it was one screen with an integrated view of different process parameters. More than understanding instruments, my responsibilities also included: 1) interacting with process-automation vendors (for e.g. Siemens, Rockwell, GE etc), 2) interaction with process engineers to understand the Human Machine Interface and 3) I use to interact with other stakeholders of the company to know their views on the project. As I was new to the industry but they in spite of having experience were not very confident about the direction a newbie was taking. But, alas, it was 2008 and I was 22!

It was fun all along as we use to interact with a California-based consultant, who helped us implement the software as he had done for an innovator biotech in the US. During the rest of my days, my group name changed from 'Production' to 'Business & Strategy' then on to 'Business Systems', and culminated in 'IT Systems'. My boss changed and we also started working on the implementation of wikis such as screwturnwiki, twiki, etc. I also got the opportunity to work on the COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) model using Excel macros. I think I did justice to the project and was able to incorporate different features into the model. By then, it was time to leave biopharma for further studies. I think I helped the organization to the best of my ability. My term ended on the 10th May’10 on a positive note where from I moved to pursue PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering at SUNY Buffalo.

NOTE: I think there are a lot of opportunities in Indian biopharma considering my experience from 2008 – 10. You have to realize which department you are good at and what kind of career trajectory you would like to build. At an early age it is not an easy task to understand, however, finding a role model or a godfather is something you should wish for. If even this doesn’t work out and you are not offered choices, just spend at least a minimum of 2 years in your organization to understand its functioning. Build your network and develop skills! Strike a balance between growth and peace. As someone said during our orientation, “Keep your ears and eyes open while working and you shall do well”!