How PhD shaped my Industrial stint?

PhD at SUNY Buffalo helped me earn a variety of technical skills, with some of my PhD years being spent on mass spectrometry and HPLC. I had a very good rapport with the Senior Mass Spectrometry Technician at SUNY Buffalo and this faith helped me get some mass spec insights later on in my career. After my PhD, I returned to India in Sep'15 due to personal reasons and landed in Hyderabad where my better half was waiting for me. Initially, as I had moved back after a long time, I use to explore the city on my bicycle and spend the remaining time posting job applications. I also spent time writing complaints to the local municipality which got addressed to some degree.

Finally, by the time it was December, I had found a job at one of the vaccine manufacturing firms in Hyderabad. Hyderabad supplies more than 30% of the vaccines to the world! At a later part of your life, you have to understand, job applications go through referencing mostly and since I had worked in biopharma prior to my PhD, it helped! Apparently, they were looking for an analytical science expert with expertise in LCMS and HPLC. So, the references and my skillset matched just perfectly.

I started working on Low Molecular Weight Heparins (LMWHs) in a small business unit at one of the biggest industrial areas, Genome Valley, across the country. I had a good start! Since I had worked on enzymes during my PhD, I proposed an alternative strategy to look at the various forms of Enoxaparin by treating them enzymatically to simplify their HPLC profile. The management agreed to buy those enzymes for me to test the hypothesis, which I think worked out fine. I also used some in-house data on LMWHs to perform PCA analysis, in my own free time, to explore if any useful pattern could be generated to prove biosimilarity. It was a friendly department where I learned many different analytical techniques. However, due to health and personal reasons, my stay at the company was cut-short as I quit my job after 6 months. Mind you! I had bargained for and was assigned a Manager position with the flexibility to work with different people in a comfortable and well-paying role.

My decision to quit job didn’t go down well as I became restless and anxious. Since my better half was working in her own startup in Hyderabad, I wanted to explore all options only to continue working here. I reached out to as many people as possible and, finally, a tip from my ex-boss helped me reach out to a contact. I was astonished to find out that this contact, someone just few years senior to me, had become the CEO of a major India biopharma. I never researched, but my guess is he is one of the youngest to become the CEO in a major Indian biopharma. Continuing further, I was interviewed at this company and the CEO was present. He told me, “You look familiar!” and I replied that we have interacted multiple times in our previous workplace. He asked me some questions to which I replied honestly, and offered me a job then and there.

NOTE: You need to understand that it is important to be honest during interviews, to gain the trust of your interviewer. They have ways to check your background, so being honest will only work in your favour!

I forgot to mention that the CEO was recruited to expand a biologics spin-off from one of the largest API exporters in the world. It was a new experience outside the domain of science as next door a huge facility was being setup and became functional in a matter of few months. There were days when we use to move instruments from one API to the Biologics unit next door, carrying the weight of heavy instruments inside the labs. Initially, I was assigned MSAT (Manufacturing, Science & Technology) department but during the employee reorganization, I was moved to the cell culture group. Just to be clear, a cell culture group in an industry is different than in academia. Here, your purpose is to synthesize a biologic, in this case a Monoclonal Antibody, using various cell lines. So, you start with basic lab-scale cell culture to further expand it into a bioreactor (5-Litre or 20-Litre Scale) and filter extract media for further “Downstream Processing”. This is also called as “Upstream Processing” with a variety of intricacies involved to make it work to perfection. Ofcourse, this includes things such as cell counting, metabolite analysis, hydrodynamic analysis, parameter control strategies, etc. so it’s an elaborate yet extremely critical part of the Biologic Development Process.

Working in this group came as a surprise due to career moves from my colleagues which resulted in me becoming the group lead. Lucky Me! Talk about being at the right place, at the right time! So, I got the opportunity to lead a team of 7 – 9 members. Honestly speaking, I was like a new PI who had two postdocs training juniors in his new lab. Inspite of such a huge responsibility on my shoulders, somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still a PhD candidate looking to satisfy my scientific temper. Needless to say, there were many nitty-gritty involved in running the show which included managing my team, my boss and other stakeholders in the company. I made a few genuine friends and learned a lot about working in a biopharma startup. It was a fun ride that ended after 1.5 years when I decided to satisfy my desire to do science and returned to the US for a postdoc. This was a major change in my life, as I was not only switching careers but also moving to another country without my family. Tough decision!

NOTE: If you have had a good education, you are bound to find opportunities at an early age. But as the CEO of this startup said in a town hall meeting, “Maybe you are thinking of working here for 2 years and then changing to other biopharma, believe me after a while you will run out of options and age will take over your career”. So spend quality time in a domain long enough for people to recognize your worth. One of my friends from the startup, who studied in a traditional college, stayed here for a long time and later recruiters from many firms started reaching out to him. They saw stability, flexibility, and adaptability in him which they didn’t see in many other job hoppers. This is my personal experience, you may choose to disagree as the world is rapidly evolving to various possibilities.