By: Chris Lowe
Some of our iJOBS participants have been able to complete an industrial internship during their PhD studies. In this post we sit down with Sarah Misenko, a 5th year PhD student in the Molecular Biosciences program, to learn about her internship experience and see what advice she would offer other students looking to transition into industry.
Q: Where did you complete your internship and what were your responsibilities while you were there?
Sarah: I did my internship at Celgene Cellular Therapeutics and I was in a Discovery Research Group. My project was focused on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) of their placenta-derived cell therapy, which is now in clinical trial. My day-to-day responsibilities were testing animal samples that they had received from an outside vendor that was performing their animal testing. We were trying to quantify how much of their cell therapy was remaining in different tissues of the animal at different days post treatment. That was the main project that I was doing and my internship was entirely lab-based.
Q: You talked a little bit about your day-to-day activities and you said you were in the lab a lot. Were there any big differences between working in the lab at Celgene and working here in your lab as part of your PhD?
Sarah: So there were some differences, but I think the lab itself was very similar. I did a lot of the same techniques that I do here and I actually learned some techniques at Celgene that I came back and apply all the time here for my thesis, which was great. I think one of the main differences is the projects are more collaborative. My lab at Rutgers is smaller and everyone has his or her own project that we work on independently. At Celgene it was a group of about five of us that were all working on the same project so tasks were split up. Different people did different things each day, and you could have someone help you out; it was much more of a team effort on the project as opposed to your thesis project that you’re pushing forward yourself.
Q: What skills from your PhD did you find were most transferable or translatable into your work at Celgene?
Sarah: I think since I was in a lab it was pretty easy to adjust. Specifically, I was in a cell lab and I do a lot of cell bio work here, so it was easy to transition the hands on skills. I did a lot of the same techniques and assays that I do now in my research, which was good, but I think that it was also helpful that we started up a summer journal club for the interns while we were there. Celgene had both undergrad and grad interns so the graduate student interns headed journal club, picking out articles and presenting while the undergrad interns and other employees would show up and discuss. It was nice having the background of reading scientific papers all the time because this wasn’t a field that I was knowledgeable about before I got to Celgene, but I picked a paper, read about it, and presented it for journal club. I think that was the one biggest thing, the presentation and literature review skills, so I could quickly pick up on things in the field through the scientific papers and present it or talk about it to others in the company.
Q: So you said that they had both undergrad and grad interns. Did you feel that your project was well suited to you as a PhD student?
Sarah: I think my project wasn’t super challenging at first. There were undergrad interns in my group and I think they were trying to find something that was universal. I felt that it could have been more challenging and so I did eventually talk to my mentor and said that I’m willing to take on more if there’s more to be done and they gave me a side project developing an assay.
Q: After you went through the internship experience did you feel like there were any skills or other techniques you wanted to further develop while you finish your PhD for use down the road in your career?
Sarah: I think one thing I noticed was just the importance of record keeping. I completed my internship pretty early during my PhD so I had only been in my lab for a few months. When I was leaving my internship and turning everything back in, I realized how much you could lose track of. I think that was definitely a good heads up coming back to lab, to keep good records of where everything went to make my life easier later on. Skill wise I think we learn a lot of hands on skills that we’ll need and what I realized at Celgene was that everyone was very helpful and team-oriented, which really emphasized the importance of soft skills in industry. They also had a good, broad knowledge base. What I noticed was that if you want to move up out of the lab, you have to be a real team player and know the overall goal along with just the day-to-day experiments.
"it was much more of a team effort on the project as opposed to your thesis project that you’re pushing forward yourself"
Q: How did the internship experience help to shape your future career plans?
Sarah: I think it helped me a lot. I did my internship early in my PhD and I knew coming in that I didn’t want to go into academia and that I wanted to go into industry. So this was good because I went into industry and I worked on the science end of things in the lab and I realized that it wasn’t for me. I think that eventually you could move up anyway even if that’s where you start, and I realized that that’d be OK, but it still wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. So since then I’ve put a lot of time into clinical trials in the pharmaceutical industry, learning about the setup, the design and everything that goes into it. I’m also doing my externship through iJOBS with a clinical trials operations team at Daiichi Sankyo, and I really love it! So I’ve geared myself more towards clinical trials after realizing that straight R&D wasn’t my thing.
Q: Do you have any advice for other PhD students considering doing an internship?
Sarah: Yeah I think overall if you can, you should definitely do an internship. One, it’s good to have that network. Two, it’s great to have the experience, both what we were just talking about, you know it helped me realize that it wasn’t what I’m interested in, but I think we all hear a lot about how it’s hard to get your first job in industry because they’re looking for someone who has industrial experience. Obviously three months isn’t a long time but it is better than nothing and I actually recently spoke to a recruiter and she said that even just a three-month internship will make a significant difference when you’re applying for jobs. This way you’re able to say that you’ve been there, that you understand the cultural differences, and you understand how things work. I think that it will definitely be beneficial overall and then it’s just figuring out the funding and getting your PI to let you out of the lab, which if you start early enough you can probably find a way to make it work.
If you’d like to learn more about Sarah’s PhD journey and hear other advice see has to offer, you can read some of her posts on the iJOBS blog here:
http://ijobs.rutgers.edu/wordpress/author/sarahm/#sthash.oWvbSel4.dpbs