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Episode 5 | Otter.ai

Episode 5

Lisa Shen1h 3min

Lisa Shen

00:05

Hello, and welcome back to so you got to lifesite degree. We're your host, Lisa and Frieda to life sigh undergrad students trying to navigate our future careers. This is Episode Five and we're talking to Dr. rizwana Islam about her role as a director at two kita a pharmaceutical company. How are you doing Frieda? I'm doing pretty good. I got to go home last weekend for Thanksgiving weekend to see my family. That was very nice. Yeah. So it was also my birthday on Saturday, which is extra nice. Oh, that scared me for a second. I was like, wait, I got her things. Right. I got her. I did. Yeah, I got a Sarah Anderson calendar. Yeah, I have no no memory. So yeah. Yeah. What else? So yeah, for my birthday, my sister. She has like a paper route, as she's like, in her hand as a paper route. That's her job. Yeah. And she basically so she puts away a certain amount for her savings. And then she has like a certain amount. Yeah. And she basically saved up her spending amount and bought me a pair of really expensive earrings. I was like, what, like, why would you do that? What kind of 13 year old does that?

Lisa Shen

01:14

Wow, that's that's really sweet. Yeah. There's like part of me that's kind of just like annoyed. But I don't it's like not a similar type of annoyance of like, when you miss the bus or something. I'm just like, confused as to why I'm annoyed. But like,

Speaker 1

01:28

generally has to do with her being like, way too nice. I was playing. Yeah.

Lisa Shen

01:34

Right. That is that is so annoying. Yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, so I don't have I don't have much to talk about this week, mostly because I used all my stories on our mini gas slashes saving them. Um, but I do have a little announcement that I want to make to the listeners. So I listened to a podcast called Hello internet that is currently on interim. But they have several seasons, and they do wacky things. Like for example, having an official animal of the podcast, like how the official animal animal of Canada is The Loon or the beaver and how we have an official flowers. So you can have an official animal, the podcast, and lo and behold, the official animal of our podcast is officially the squirrel. Now what species of squirrel? Lisa, do you ask? The answer is I do not know. This is a purely wacky endeavour it is it is not backed up with a species definitions. So yeah, that's just, that's gonna be a thing. So if you want to exercise your full patriotic potential, you can check out the other squirrel stories that we have, which are littered around our mini cast episodes. And to access those you can become a patron for $1 a month. Yeah. And if you Oh, fellow listener have any suggestions? For which species? Oh, squirrel, we shouldn't make her No. No, we should do that. We should have a voting thing for like, what species of squirrels? Should it be like? Should it be like the North American grey squirrel? Should it be like the Asian red squirrel? Like

Unknown Speaker

03:06

what do you think? I think it should be the North American squirrel.

Lisa Shen

03:11

Yeah, besides the squirrel update any other updates? Lisa? Again, not really, because I'm like saving all my stories. But I have been playing among us, which is this game that's based on your phone. It's an app, you download it. And you can play online with your friends by creating your own. This episode is not sponsored by them. I don't know why I'm reading this, like a sponsorship is just like so widespread now that anyone who's like under the age of 25 is also playing among us. I know. Yeah. I mean, honestly, most of the people in the online servers are under the age of 14. Like, it's just so strange when you're like, Oh, I made a friend. And then then someone asked your friend their age and they're like, I'm 12. You're like, Oh, boy. Yeah. The floor follows. We have like duty shifts, or we have to stay up on Thursday, Friday, Saturday night until 2am. Just in case anything right? Students, but yeah, basically like every duty night in the floor, follow chat. It's like here's the among those code come play with us. I'm glad that you're staying vigilant. Yeah. I mean, I guess that is a game where you can drop out good distance that people do it online all the time. Yeah. Okay. You ready to talk to rizwana? Yeah, let's get into it. rizwana is a director at takita, a pharmaceutical company in Boston, Massachusetts. She completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She then completed a PhD in biochemistry at Harvard University, followed by a postdoctoral position. In 2012, she started working at a biotechnology company called Shire, which was eventually acquired by Chiquita. Thank you for joining us today. rizwana. You're very welcome. So this is a heads up for our listeners that rizwana works in the United States. Boston specifically, as we mentioned, and on this podcast, we usually talk about Canadian industries. But rizwana is super cool. So we just had to talk with her. And with that, we have our first question for you. To start with, we were wondering if you could give us a brief description of your job and what the main responsibilities are. Absolutely. So

Speaker 2

05:17

before I do that, though, thank you so much for inviting me to talk to you guys. Sounds like a lot of fun. So yeah, let me tell you what I do right now. So I'm in our research at a pharmaceutical company, based out of it's a Japanese company, but there is a large presence in the US with offices in Boston, and also in the West Coast. They're actually offices, not not research. So in Canada as well, it's a global company. It's actually I think, the ninth largest pharmaceuticals in the world. And what I do is, so Takeda has many different focus areas where we work on, and my focus area is rare disease research. So a group of scientists and we focus on rare genetic diseases. So I work in the preclinical side of things. And my job description would be taking a project all the way from ideation to proof of concept in the clinic.

Lisa Shen

06:16

Right? Right. That's, that's really cool. Wow. Yeah, that's very cool. Just digging a little bit deeper. And what do you work on specifically, maybe in a day to day context? Or like,

Speaker 2

06:27

what is your week look like in general? Sure. So I have about nine or 10 people who work with me in the lab, I have multiple projects, as I said, My job is to basically come up with an idea, final indication and then find a target for that indication that we can basically drug this decide on the modality, which is, you know, should we target that, say there's a protein that was aberrant in patients that causes the disease? So you want to either put in the correct version of the protein, then what do you do? Do you can you pick gene therapy is gene editing, the best way is just in time replacement therapy? Can you have like a small molecule that people will just take orally, so decide on the best modality and depends on the disease and the kind of the way it impacts the patients. And then we run experiments, the initial experiments are coming up with a subset of two molecules, setting up, say, cell based assays and so forth. The next step is once you have more of a concrete idea about the pathway, the biology and understanding of the molecule itself, then you run many experiments and animals to test out how long the drug will last for its clearances, how efficacious is this? And then if then you put together a data package, you file an ind, and then goes into clinical trials. And then after three stages of clinical trials, if there's benefit in people, the drug gets approved, and then it's marketed as a as a drug that's accessible to patients?

Lisa Shen

08:08

Yeah, that sounds like a lot of responsibility. So again, super cool to be chatting with you. Because you're someone who is actually like a director at a pharmaceutical company, free to actually didn't mention to me that you were so involved in the research aspect of it. That's really interesting to me, because I'm probably interested in pursuing research as a career. And yeah, so we were wondering if you could walk us through because what you just described that was, you know, like long term months and possibly even years of work, we were wondering, what would it look like, if you just walked into work on a Monday, like, what would your day look like from I don't know, 10am to 4pm, or whatever

Speaker 2

08:45

it is, that would be very boring to hear, because after meetings after meetings, so my wedding day would be, I would say, 80% meetings, and the rest of it would be planning our projects, some of it would be planning our presentations. And then a lot of third would be interacting with other scientists outlining what I would like to see for it to be done for a project. And then making sure that my projects are on track. For as well in terms of timelines, as well as as well as for budgets. Yeah, that's

Lisa Shen

09:22

actually sounds following up your point about it being very research heavy, Lisa, it actually sounds very similar to like a PI roll in like a lab. Yeah, you're very much overseeing these kind of research projects, like directing, you know, what's going to happen next. But yeah, just like how much of your time is directly interacting with the scientific literature or things like that? Or just like do you usually hear about what's going on in the science from other scientists and get like an overview of decisions that you should be making?

Speaker 2

09:51

So let me walk a step back and tell you about so when I described the whole drug making process, I don't typically see it all. All the way through. So my job so I'm basically in preclinical research, I support projects all the way into phase one clinical trials. And even for phase one, there's a lot of support up until a project goes into certain Stage Gate. That's all the preclinical work the animal work the in vitro or the cell base work, that's my group, once it starts to go into the clinic that once we are ready, then I take on a secondary role, and then a clinical team will take on that project. And then clinicians will come in design the trial, and then it will go into trial, I will still keep on supporting the group, but not as a project leader anymore. All right. And then when it comes to interactions, as you say, as you can think about it, so I'm not in the lab doing experiments myself. So I need a lot of help and support. We do a lot of work internally, we have labs and we have a barbarian applicator in the building that we're in. But we also do a lot of work with external, what we call contract research organisations crls. And then we also do a lot of work with academic labs as well. And, you know, there's always crosstalk there's always conversations, if we are there's always talk with clinicians as well, to make sure that whatever drug we're designing is safe, it's efficacious, it is what people would like to have as the best solution as the best in class therapeutic.

Lisa Shen

11:34

And it's interesting hearing to talk about your involvement in the creation of a new drug from you know, in vitro to cell based all the way to stage one clinical, because our very first guest on this podcast, Kara Griffiths, and she actually works at Gilly ad, and she works in like in market access. So her job is basically to get drugs insured under whether it be like the Canadian government's like health insurance plan, the Ontario health insurance plan or private insurance plans. And so yeah, now it's like interesting, we almost kind of did it backwards. Maybe we should have spoken to you first. But yeah, it's interesting that we've gotten kind of both ends of the process in truck development now. So yeah, that's that's kind of cool. One of the things that we were wondering if you could speak to is like, because you describe a lot of responsibilities like having to oversee this project. That's, that's no small task. And so we were wondering if you could describe to us your progression through the different levels at to Quito and kind of how you acquired the knowledge that you need to have all these major responsibilities.

Speaker 2

12:43

So I, I did my PhD in molecular biology. And then I actually stayed on in the same lab, finishing up some of the work. So I, although my resume says there's a postdoc in there, it's actually I went, I finished up my graduate work, did a little bit of work to finish up what I was doing during my degree, and then from there straight on, moved to Shire. So I actually didn't do an extended postdoc. And I would say all my training when it comes to learning about the industry, and training, and all of that came from Jackie being thrown in the fire. So I learned as I went, I started as a scientist, that Shire and my first project so Shire has been working on rare diseases for a while they, they were the industry leaders, they had a very strong focus on rare diseases. And I worked on various different areas of drug development. You know, I, I lead my first project, maybe in the second year, I joined Shire, I was fast. Yeah. And we there are certain stage gates into drug development. And then I thankfully was able to push that project to a certain stage gate to get it ready for ind filing. And although it didn't go through, because there was for strategic reasons, not for efficacy reasons or any, any other biology related biology of the therapeutic itself, but I did get a patent out of it, which is great. And, and so you know, to know that I'm thankful to have gotten that and it was interesting work. So basically progress from there, the responsibilities grew. And then I started handling multiple projects, and then started getting a smaller group which expanded to the group that I have right now. And then, yeah, just basically took on more responsibilities once Shire was acquired by Takeda. There were a lot of changes in leadership and then that also actually created an opportunity for people who are who are still there. And I took on a bigger role after we were acquired by Takeda.

Lisa Shen

15:05

Cool. Thanks for running us through that. Yeah, very nice. I kind of have two follow up questions. I guess you said that the company didn't launch it for strategic reasons. Is it possible for you to maybe like kind of outline in general, what that might look like? Sure. So

Speaker 2

15:19

honestly, we were scooped right, just like it happens in India. If some the we were not the only ones with a certain idea. And by the time we got everything together, there was another company who just published their patterns. Although it was different enough that we were able to get a patent out as a drug, we would be competing for the same market. And then like I said, our focus is to try and get therapy for people who do not have any option would not have have any current treatment. So it didn't make sense for us to go into the same disease, because there were already people there who are doing the same thing.

Lisa Shen

16:02

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And part of our motivation for asking you the question about how you progressed through the hierarchy of roles at takita was just that the like, what kind of roles are available in a pharmaceutical company is very hard to understand from the outside, I would say, and especially just even hearing you the work that you do as a director, like that's not what I would have thought at all. So can you speak a little bit more about like the different kinds of roles that are available within a pharmaceutical company or within Chiquita in like, specifically?

Speaker 2

16:31

Sure, honestly, even I don't know how many different types of roles, right? research, and I'll tell you a little bit about research, and then we can expand from there. Well, what does a project team looks like? I mentioned that I've been leading projects, what is that? What does that really mean? Right? So a project team would would involve people from the research group, but there's also people from dmpk, who do PK PD analysis, there are people who look at safety, so toxicologists, there are people who look at patent landscape, so legal, there's people who look at the commercial aspects, there is people who would look at regulatory aspects, there will be people who look at what am I, what am I missing, or manufacturing, which is very, very critical. And all of this is just still research. Right? So and this is preclinical research. And then when you have an advanced project, you need the doctors and the clinicians to tell you how to reach the patients. And that's another group, then you have the strategists who tell you what diseases to work on. Where is the most unmet need, at least that's, that's, you know, very, very important for us to go after indications where there's a lot of unmet need. And there are, you know, events supporting research, there are people who work with the animals, so they're they're pharmacologists, but in vivo support, there are translational scientists, they're histology lists, it's it takes an enormous group of people to support all of these. And then depending on so I mentioned modality before. So when we think about drugs, typically what comes to mind is an oral pill, right? That's can be given lots of different ways. drugs can be a lot of different things. They can be small molecules that can be large molecules, they can be proteins, they can be gene therapies, they can be whatever, right? So usually, a project lead would partner with a mortality lead, if it's a small molecule, for example, they would partner with a chemist, if it's a gene therapy project, they would partner with a person who is expert in gene therapy and so forth. And then of course, there are functions outside of research, you know, marketing, sales, people, HR leader, other leadership, and then telling you a little bit more about Takeda itself, how its structured is we have different units that are divided by therapeutic areas that people focus on. We call them DD us drug discovery units, ours is rare diseases, rare genetic diseases are there is our neuroscience. There's another purchase gi, there's another which is oncology and so forth. Does that question? Yeah,

Lisa Shen

19:27

for sure. Well, that's definitely a lot more than I could have even thought of it. Yeah. And I guess thinking about it kind of makes sense when you think about how certain drugs can have a high cost because there's a huge team behind these things from the people who are taking care of the animals to you know, all the different teams involved. You described a lot of different kinds of roles. And one I was wondering, are there different levels of educational requirements like masters versus PhD versus a lot of industry experience and then to some of these levels seem like they could lead into others like for Example, you yourself, you mentioned that you kind of took on more responsibilities over time and eventually became a director. So I was wondering if that's common in pharmaceutical companies, if people often move up towards the company, or if it's more off, at least had to kita for them to find a new hire for those kinds of roles.

Speaker 2

20:15

I wouldn't say anything is scripted. If there are people at the company who want that one particular job and are well qualified for it, there's definitely room to move up if there isn't a good fit. And there's a definite need for a skill set that the current group lacks, than it's an outside hire. It's actually as simple as that. It depends on the size of a project, it depends on the needs of the company at the time, and what are some Sorry, I've missed your

Lisa Shen

20:44

apology, that was kind of my bad for asking two very different questions in one question. The second question I had was actually a little teaser. I think this episode is Episode Five, that's going to be coming out. And so Episode Six, we're actually planning on releasing this thing where Frida made this case to me about why it can be disadvantage, a disadvantage to your career as a whole to get a PhD sometimes, and so content on time in specific circumstances yet, etc, etc. And so I was wondering, yeah, like, just like, what are the educational requirements, generally speaking, like to be able to get Yeah, right. No, no,

Speaker 2

21:21

thank you for that. And it's actually a very important question. So I would for people who are thinking about the career choices and thinking about going to grad school and spending, say, five years on a PhD degree, do it only if you love it, okay, it's not worth your time or your effort. Spending that amount of time doing something just for the sake of something you might not even really like, I really enjoyed being in grad school, I had an I had an absolutely amazing time. It is, it is probably the only time you can explore your own scientific interests, and have the freedom to do go in the direction and probe as much as you want. or as little as you want, go the direction that you want. That is unless you you know, you pursue a career in maybe academic research that where you expand onto these ideas. If you are thinking about going into industry, do pay do a PhD absolutely recommend it. But do it for the right reasons. Only if you're interested in really, really interested in it, don't do it because you think you might get a certain title at a certain company

Lisa Shen

22:27

that does music to Fritos.

Speaker 2

22:31

Right. But honestly, like I said, I would not argue against that either. I mean, like I said, it's very subjective. If you enjoy being in the lab, if you you know, the work life balance can be hard to maintain, you have to be very dedicated, you have to probably work 7080 hours per week, is not very uncommon at all. Some people will put you numbers that are even higher, so you have to be dedicated. You have to want to do it. Right. Can you get into pharmaceutical companies without a PhD degree? Absolutely. Is there a ceiling to how well you can get without a PhD degree on paper? Absolutely. Not in reality, I would say. So I would say that without a PhD. Can you really progress quite a bit? Yes. The answer is not No, you definitely can rise, rise to a very high position. It probably will take you additional time. But the additional time would have probably spent doing your PhD anything. Not to give you a straight yes or no, that is a straight yes or no answer.

Lisa Shen

23:40

Yeah, I appreciate that. Honestly, I feel like I've been getting a lot of straightforward advice recently, I find that you know, as a young person, I get a lot of advice from my school or from other places, like, you know, like, the sky's the limit, like companies don't discriminate, but yeah, like I genuinely appreciate the more realistic advice about Okay, this is like what the world actually works like, and just not just the pretty things we say.

Speaker 2

24:01

So don't don't be discouraged either, right? So if you if you like studying, if you like your science experiments, go for it. Right? You know, what I'm saying is don't do it because it might get you a certain title at a certain company, because you love doing it. And then but I'll give you the other side as well. So think about you know, we talked about the research and what the different hierarchy levels are, what the different titles are. So in my group, there's me I'm my other than it being a director. My other title within the company is a pathway head. So I'm in my group, I have a couple of project leads reported to me and then these project leads have scientists and research associates who report into them. So for hire as into a research scientist position, you would need a biology degree a bachelor's degree would not need a graduate degree. And then as a scientist, which is a couple of steps above, we would typically request a person with a PhD, or a bachelor's or a Master's with a certain number of years of experience. Okay, you can bet it either way. I mean, you just need to gather the experience so that, you know, you know, what you're being pushed into what the PhD gives you is, basically it helps you ask the right questions, you're given a project, I've worked in such diverse areas that I've had basically no training in, that I'm not a biology expert, what I do is basically try and answer the questions that will get me the correct solution, right? The PhD helps you think, and probe problems and answer and find answers to the solutions. It's just developing a way a certain way of thinking. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, right? And what I did my PhD was in memory, formation of memory has absolutely nothing to do with what I do.

Lisa Shen

26:04

Yeah, it's surprising how much we've heard that before. Right? Yeah, I guess probing the, you should do your PhD. If you absolutely love science type of that statement a little bit more. You know, we're all lovers of science here. We generally like empirical evidence, or just finding more objective ways to look at things. So I think there would be a lot of people who are kind of interested in doing a PhD, maybe just for the title, but maybe kidding themselves about like, Yeah, I do like science enough, like, what would you a good way to kind of? Like how, like, how do you Yeah, like, how do you gauge if it would be a good fit for you? How do you know exactly?

Speaker 2

26:41

All right, let me let me put it in a very different thing. So I gave you the makeup of my group to tell us something else. So in my group, there are two pathway heads, there are I would say, I don't know, 20 scientists, and there would be that many more research associates, there is more number of people who are hired on at an earlier level, there's just more number of positions available. Right? So if you don't have a PhD degree, you started as a research associate and build up your experience that way. And it's put up, I'm not saying it's it's easier to get those jobs, but there's more of those jobs available. So there's more opportunities, if you start at that level, with a PhD, or what a lot of people probably get disheartened by is that you do a PhD? That could be five years, do you do a postdoc that way another five years, and then you become so specialised, there might not be a good market for them. So that's the flip side of the same argument. Right? And nobody's journeys the same?

Lisa Shen

27:49

Yeah, that's really interesting to hear. And I'm glad you shared that kind of in line with, you know, maybe not getting we dreams in the sky kind of advice and getting a little bit more realistic information. We want to ask, like how much you think that name recognition matters for like, maybe institutional name recognition? Because obviously, you went to Harvard, which is super cool. But yeah, like, what are your thoughts on that? also feel like if you don't feel comfortable asking, no, I'm

Speaker 2

28:16

happy to answer that. Yeah, I don't think it helps only a very tiny bit. Honestly, rather than the university, I think what matters is what your experiences have been. And if you are working with say, a lot of you would do go on to do thesis, right, right thesis. And then you're working, say, with a poi who already has a partnership, or some sort of a collaboration with a pharmaceutical company, for example, and you've been working on their project, you would be the perfect person for that company to hire because you already know what to do. So I think those experiences when I hire somebody, what I look for is that how much of if I'm hiring for a lab position, I look for how much of a lab experience they've had, rather than which institutions that they come from. But you're but I wouldn't absolutely discard the university as well, if this is an institution is a name that I recognise. Of course, I'm going I know, you know, their standards are so I would look at them with I guess, I would know that they have been evaluated to a certain level. Yes. Right. So that's definitely there. But I honestly think it's like what kind of work have you been doing in the past that really helps to understand and get your position?

Lisa Shen

29:40

And then I guess, kind of talking a bit more about your other education. Um, usually with our guests, we ask them a lot about, you know, like, why did you study this for undergrad and etc, etc. But you are quite like further along in your career. So we're just going to pose this to you all in one question and ask If you can give us a brief overview of your educational path and your thoughts at each stage as you were progressing from undergrad to PhD to etc.

Speaker 2

30:09

Sure. So when I started undergrad, I thought I would do environmental studies, my took a lot of courses and my after my first course, I realise environmental studies a lot is a lot about policy and not as much about science and I was very happy. And I had taken a biology class just because you know, it filled one of the science requirements or something like that I was not really interested in before my undergrad, I was really, I loved math and physics, not biology or chemistry as much. After my first intro, molecular bio class, I think the experiment that they had us do was collect cheek swabs and run the DNA sequencing or something like that. Oh, cool. And that had me so hooked. Okay, this is what I'm doing. And yeah, that just took off from there. I was very, very excited and interested by the all the biology because that excellent professors, I actually spent a year and Cambridge University in England, doing biochem. So that was really great, too. It was a very nice experience overall. And then why a PhD, honestly, at that point, I didn't really think I was young, in a different country, I did, I came by myself for my undergrad, my family was still in Bangladesh. I honestly didn't think I didn't even want to go out look for a job when I had when I was about to finish my undergrad. And the thought didn't even occur to me to look for a job. Confidence. I find it very natural progression would be to go into grad school, right? And then grad school, I knew I didn't want to do an extended postdoc. And I didn't want to go back into academia, I really, really wanted to go into industry. I knew that from the beginning, I wanted to work on translational science, I wanted to see, you know, I wanted to work in drug discovery. And at the first opportunity I took, you know, I took on a role in industry and basically stayed stayed there for ever since

Lisa Shen

32:23

that's really cool. And I think usually we hear it the opposite, where people are very much clamouring for positions in academia, can you speak more to like what your thought process was in wanting to go into industry, I don't like teaching. Thank you for your honesty.

Speaker 2

32:41

I've taught as an undergrad students have taught as a grad student, I did not enjoy teaching graduate. I loved the research part, you know, something I wasn't I'll be very honest, I wasn't great at teaching either. You people generally enjoy, you know, you like what, you know what you like you do what you what you're good at as well. I like the research part, I thought I was fairly good at it. I wasn't good at teaching. I didn't enjoy that. And I basically, you know, that helped me decide I wanted to be in industry, the other reasons where I'll be very pragmatic. So I got married right after I got my graduate degree. You know, young family didn't want I work wanted a good work life balance, I did not do 80 hour weeks anymore. The pays, you know, in the industry, the starting pays quite a bit different. It's not a universally true, but typically, the pays better starting out in industry as well. So for very practical reasons. I, I always wanted to go into industry. The other thing is something scared me off of academia. And I had seen postdocs at my university, who had been at their positions for five years, 10 years without an end in sight. And I didn't want to be in that position.

Lisa Shen

34:13

Yeah, I've definitely heard stories of people who have been doing their PhDs for eight years.

Speaker 2

34:17

Yeah, but it's not just the PhD, right? So you can for an academic position, you definitely would need

Lisa Shen

34:25

at least for biology positions, you would need a postdoc, so I think it's getting probably worse as time is going on. But yeah, I feel like this is such a good primer for our upcoming. Yeah, I know. I can hear the smile. I guess something else that we were wondering about because you mentioned and a lot of our guests have mentioned how it's really the skills that they've gained through previous experiences that have allowed them to get the job that they did as a director, what do you think are, you know, maybe two to three of the main skills that You use that make you successful at what you do. I feel like I'm like interviewing you for a job?

Unknown Speaker

35:04

No.

Speaker 2

35:06

No, it's actually very simple. You know, as I mentioned, are there am I, so when I'm given a new indication, my first thing to my first task is to understand what the context is with the diseases and basically ask the right questions, right? So every disease is like a mystery. And the task we have we are given is how do you solve it? What would be the best answer? And, you know, you have to ask the right questions as well. How you pose those questions, and how you come up with that answer essentially defines how you go go about getting a project started. And it's also about finding the right people. Like I said, I'm definitely not an expert in all the different disease areas that I currently work in. So reaching, getting the right people to help you is also critically important. Getting the right resources is also very important.

Lisa Shen

36:05

Yeah, I think kind of related to that. You mentioned that part of it is like going to the right people to get the information that you might not have. But you said you also do some hiring. So in new hires, they aren't actually part of the company yet. So what would you look for in that

Speaker 2

36:21

depends on the position, right? Sorry, I'm not giving you a straight answer. So if you are a person who's just starting out in the lab, I look for at least some experience in the lab, it doesn't have to have been another industry job. But it could be you know, a person starting in have they worked with a professor, have they done their thesis? Have they been in the lab? How many hours have they spent in the lab? Can they think independently? skills, you can teach technical skills, you can definitely teach a person that is a person, you know, really interested? What motivates that person, or the questions that I would ask a person starting out. And, you know, it's always helpful to have you know, I, my advice to people still doing their undergrad is try and get as much research experience experience as you can. Now, that's only going to help you use your summers, at least, you know, one month out of the three, if you can spend in a lab doing some independent research work, or even supervised research work, that would be super helpful. If you want to go into research later, whether academic or industry.

Lisa Shen

37:30

Yeah, definitely. You mentioned that when you're looking to hire people, one of the things you kind of look for is what really motivates them to obtain this position. And so I kind of wanted to throw that back at you, and ask you like, what really motivates you to work in the role that you do?

Speaker 2

37:45

I like the challenge of it. I like you know, the biggest motivation is, of course, when you listen to the stories the patients have to share, and the thing that they have absolutely no treatment available to them in this day and age. And if there's something you can do to help help them, I think that's the biggest motivator that there can be and from their own, basically, the the scientific challenge, I will not belittle that either. I like the hunt the you know. Yeah, absolutely. Can we do to make things better? Can we come up with a solution that people haven't thought about? Can we do this? Can we do that? What will work best? It's it's solving a mystery. It's as exciting as reading a mystery book.

Lisa Shen

38:35

Very nice. Yeah, I feel that too. I think when I actually went first started studying biology and thought that I wanted to do research. I actually wasn't thinking about it from the aspect of Oh, I can help people. For me, I was like, oh, wow, I just think it's really cool to be able to overcome this virus that has all these Trixie ways to attack yourselves. And it wasn't until more recently that I've started to think like, Oh, yeah, breast cancer is really horrible. Like, maybe we should fix that. Yeah. So yeah, I definitely understand where you're coming from, in terms of that response. And then another question we were asking is that looking back? What are some of the things that you wish you had known maybe, before you went into pharmacy? I mean, listening to you talk, it doesn't seem like you really have any regrets about what you did. But maybe just what are some things you think would be useful to someone who's going into the pharmaceutical industry today?

Speaker 2

39:28

So I absolutely love what I do. I have to say that? No regrets at all. I really enjoy and I consider myself What would I have done differently if I had known about this

Lisa Shen

39:42

or anything you'd like? wish you'd known before going in? Sure.

Speaker 2

39:45

Yeah, I knew nothing about the pharmaceutical industry before starting out. I mean, I coincidentally ended up in drug discovery. I dabbled in a different group. It's it's a different group in the same company. Actually, they they did a lot of assay development, which is very important, very precise critical work, but I didn't really enjoy that as much. And I'd switched over to that this drug discovery process as quickly as I could. So when you go into industry makes, you know, try and learn as much about the company the kind of research that they do, or if you know, a lot of company, there isn't a lot of heavy emphasis on research. So if it can be is often, you know, internalised from external sources, right? So try and read up as much as you can about the different kinds of positions that there are, I think what you guys are doing is perfect. talking to people learning, different roles that there are, I think, understanding that the roles can be very, very different. There's so many different avenues that even you can go into within pharma, like people who are in manufacturing, say, a person who does formulations work there, their job description would be very, very different from what I currently do. So what motivates you What drives you, what excites you trying to stick to that would be, you know, would ensure success for people? I think people do best at what they like to do.

Lisa Shen

41:20

Nice. Yeah. And just before we kind of wrap everything up, is there any other paths that you think you can see yourself having pursued and being successful at or any other paths that you've wondered about before this? Absolutely. So

Speaker 2

41:32

in grad school, besides, so I knew I like I said, so. Typically, when people think about biology graduates, they typically think of maybe research and then or teaching, and then it can be for teaching or a combination, or something like that. But in grad school, it was surprising to see that I think about a third of the of my fellow students went into consulting. Okay. Oh, so and then I would say a good number would also go into patent law.

Lisa Shen

42:07

Oh, wow, that was unexpected.

Speaker 2

42:11

Right. So again, consulting is a skill that is, you know, you're well prepared by doing a PhD in science, probably. And there's a high demand for people who can basically solve problems. That is what a PhD teaches you. It's not diving deep into, say, a certain area, it's, it's how to solve problems. And that's the, that is a trade that's, you know, very well priced, I guess, by consulting companies as well. So they would come recruiting, I joined a consulting club was, you know, tried it out, it was fun, but I'm more of a direct math person. I love math, as I said, and then I didn't think it was fun, but it was not quite the right fit. I thought about patent law, and it was very attractive for a while. Basically, you'd have to do a JD, after your PhD. But typically, your JD would be paid for by the company, you'd be signing on. Oh, wow. Interesting.

Unknown Speaker

43:15

What

Speaker 2

43:16

never heard of that? Yeah. Right. So but, you know, again, you'd be working while you're doing your JD, it will take two to four years to complete and get your degree, it pays very, very well. But again, the work life balance is great in the beginning. So with all of that I, you know, those are the other two options that I had sort of thought thought about. And again, if you like, if you're somebody who likes reading patterns, yeah, that's something to think about as well. Cool. Yeah.

Lisa Shen

43:45

I mean, it definitely sounds like you have tried out a few different paths before you're like, Okay, I'm gonna go with this one. So I think that's something for us to take away from this is that it's good to try out your options early on, before doors start closing kind of thing

Speaker 2

43:58

for sure. But I wouldn't say I tried them out. I considered them I joining a club isn't really like being in a job, you know, for for a year trying out. You know, I wouldn't call myself trying out I would say I expressed some level of interest. But I just I didn't actually try it out in the way that in practice.

Lisa Shen

44:21

Okay, well, is there anything else you want to add? Before we wrap up?

Speaker 2

44:26

No. Good luck with all that you're doing? I'm glad you're thinking about your career choices, even though it's great. I mean, what you're doing is perfect. And good luck with you know, the rest of your talks and it was great talking to you both.

Lisa Shen

44:39

Thank you very much. So we wanted to take this moment to tell you about our Patreon. We're raising funds in order to help pay for a podcast hosting service equipment, upgrades and our own website. If you head over to patreon.com slash so you got a live side degree, you can view our three membership levels and the cool perks that come with them for $1 a month. You can actually Bonus mini casts, which are five to 10 minute episodes where we talk about the interesting shenanigans in our lives, including weird animal discoveries, like the truth behind blobfish. To check out this and our other perks, click on over to patreon.com slash so you got a lightside degree. So Lisa, what did you think about that interview? I think that I'm a bit more inclined to not do a PhD. Oh, really? That's not what I was expecting at all.

Unknown Speaker

45:28

Really? Yeah,

Lisa Shen

45:29

I guess it could go either way from that conversation where on the one hand, you were kind of like, I feel like we both learned that being in such a higher up position in pharma still involves a lot of research, which is kind of cool. So I thought that would incline you more towards wanting to do a PhD. But on the other hand, we talked about how like, you can still get pretty far. Without Yeah, PhD, and it'll be almost equivalent in time to doing a PhD sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. Yeah. The work life balance thing is rough. I mean, aid, like, come on, like, 80. I don't even do that for school. I mean, were you not aware of that before though? That's like, that's kind of the standard. So listen, man, like I'm like, in my penultimate year. This is things for ultimate years. She says to the ultimate years, yeah, to the ultimate, your student who's been freaking out every week about what they're gonna do. I feel like a degree out to five years just makes such a big difference. Like I would be freaking out right now, if I had to decide if I was out here a gap year or do grad school or whatnot. But I feel like five years I'm like, okay, like, hurry it up. Yeah, I feel like for me, like, it's not really an extra year that I feel like I need. But I think the biggest difference is like taking four courses instead of like, just taking one less course gives so much more room to actually do like career exploration. does things yeah, yeah. So definitely would recommend to anyone who's thinking about doing that? Yeah, I feel that in doing summer school, although it depends on the person because some people have to work. Yeah, there's definitely different things going on. This is kind of on an aside, like not directly related to our chat. But I've actually started thinking concretely about what would my work life balance look like if I was actually joining the workforce, and if my personal health conditions don't get better, and I was thinking, if I was in some kind of lab associate position or scientist position, I might have to look for jobs where I have to work like only 20 hours a week, like part time work. And then I can maybe tutor for like, 10 hours a week, and then do poetry on the side. Like that kind of thing. But I don't know like, That's crazy. Like, people say, Oh, I want to work like a 40 hour a week job cuz I want to have good work life balance. And I'm like, that's already

Unknown Speaker

47:45

so much.

Lisa Shen

47:48

20 we still work this much. Yeah, it's kind of funny, because usually, in most jobs, you get paid for 40 hours, but really like the standard to do well is like 50 hours, I think in general. Yeah, but also like, okay, like the 7080 hour week that you're talking about with the PSU before, like, yes, some people work that much. But I think like, to some degree, it's a little bit inflated, because we have this culture like. And also like, if you sleep well, and eat well and take care of yourself, you can be way more efficient, and just cut that time a little bit more. So I feel like it's a bit of an inflated number. Yeah, I feel like this year, especially like, when I take a break, and I come back to work, like I'm so like, I can just do so much better. Like, it's ridiculous. But it's like, the mindset to go and take a break is so difficult. Like, if feels like the last thing you should be doing is to step away from your computer and like go workout or just like, take a nap. Whereas like, it makes such a big difference in like how much you can actually get done. Yeah, I feel that for sure. Like the other day, I was stuck on my resume. And I was like, I just couldn't decide what to take out like it. I just need to make the decision. And yeah, and then I just gave up on it. And then went back the next day. And it took me like 10 minutes. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I was really influenced by her saying, only do a PhD, if you love it. Because if I was doing a PhD would definitely be the mindset of this is a means to an end. Like, I don't want to be here for five, six years. I don't know, I think I'm just excited to be an adult and just join the workforce and not be in school. Yeah, I think that's very fair. I think also, like, if you're the type of person who is going to love doing a PhD, you will probably also do very well in industry, because you will be able to like do well in your position do well in the science and she was saying that one of the key things that a PA she teaches you that they value in their hiring process is like the ability to ask good questions and know what to look for. So I mean, if you're really into the science, like in industry, you will also pick up those skills very well. So I think there's a bit of like a, I don't know, like confounding factor maybe. Yeah, I thought it was interesting as well when she briefly mentioned that, you know, like people will tend to do what they're And like that's so true. Like, when you ask people, what are the sports, you're like, people list the sports, they're good at, like, that was me. Like, we don't like things that we're not good at. Like, that's why, like, part of the reason i think that i really latched on to poetry is that it was something that I was just like, you know, kind of decent at starting out. Yeah. So yeah, I wrote that down, too. And I think that really is a main point that kind of makes me question the whole follow your passion thing. Because a lot of your passion just comes from like, what you're good at, like you enjoy doing things that you're Yeah, and the positive reinforcement you get from other people like, Wow, you're so good at this thing. And you're like, Oh, seratonin Yeah, sounds like part of your identity. And then it's like more of a thing for you. Yeah. And so I think like, you can just try more things, get better at them. And then you will automatically have a function like, that's different, though. Like, no matter how much math I do, I'm not gonna like have be passionate about it. I'm so I'm not saying you'll enjoy everything. I'm just saying, like, once you get to a point where you're like, I'm very competent at this, like, it definitely increases your enjoyment, which is great news, because you don't need to go out there and be like, what is the one thing that like, I was pre determined to do? And then let me go find it out of all these hundreds of careers? Yeah, yeah. And there's also the concept of like, you don't necessarily need to be over the top passionate about like, you can Oh, yeah,

Unknown Speaker

51:19

like, we've

Lisa Shen

51:19

talked about that before. Just be like, yeah, your means of income. Yeah. Yeah, that's like, with the pretext of like, you know, you want to be someone who's passionate about their job, or at least thinking about that. I think also, like, if you're listening to this podcast, and scouting out your career options ahead of time, you're probably someone who like, wants to enjoy their job. Something else that rizwana mentioned, that I related to was that she doesn't like teaching now, hang on, because I actually like teaching, I enjoy explaining concepts to people. What I don't like is I don't like all the institution, and all of the barriers around learning and doing well in school. Like what I don't like, for example, What I don't like is how getting good grades has become so almost gamified in high school, especially in grade 11 and 12. Because it's a precursor to university. And I feel like there's a lot of barriers there that kind of exclude certain, you know, kinds of people like low income or like, you know, first generation student from doing well. And yeah, just like the whole process of having to grade kids and, and then kids are always like, oh, like, you know, are we going to be tested on this? Yeah, I do that too. In University, because I have to play the game.

Unknown Speaker

52:27

Yeah.

Lisa Shen

52:27

I don't want to run the game. Yeah. For that reason. I don't think I could ever be university professor. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I definitely agree with some of that. I was talking to my lab pa like a few, I think like two years ago, and I kind of was going on one of my known tangents about how U of T scams students in first year because they they intake a lot of freshmen with GPAs, that maybe aren't up to par, and then a lot of them flunk out. And it's like very much just because of the system they were put into, she was kind of giving an a counter argument of like, maybe in high school, something bad happened, like you could have had a tragic, you know, death in the family, or like, maybe you just went through a really bad breakup and like had bad grades because of that. So like by this UEFI system, like you're getting a second chance to like, actually establish yourself in university as well. Right. Yeah, that's very interesting to me. Yeah, I think one of the biggest things we were surprised about in this interview is how much being a director is very much like being a PI in a university. And just like how much science is involved? Yeah, I just thought that was really interesting to me, and not something I knew before. Yeah, I mean, it would have been helpful to know that she was director of research

Unknown Speaker

53:32

director, like, I

Lisa Shen

53:33

didn't know what that meant. Yeah, even director of research, I'm surprised by how much like she interacts with the science itself, though, you're kind of talking a little bit at the end of the interview about how you're getting your first kind of research experience for your thesis and feeling a little bit worried that you hadn't had experience before this. I think if you are someone who is like really interested in research, just in general, like for our listeners, I guess if you're in high school right now, definitely consider going to like a very research intensive university because I think like being at McGill, like there's pretty much no way you can finish your undergrad without doing some research. The opportunities for research are literally so limitless like there is they really shove it down your throat. And it's like, it's actually good, because like you get to try it out. And I feel like in a lot of other universities, it's really hard to get a professor to agree to Yeah, in their labs. Yeah. And I think like you expressed this before to me, Lisa. Yeah. But at McGill, like it's literally so easy. Like there's just so many ways it's supportive for students like for undergrads to be in the lab. That's crazy. I mean, I always see McMaster with these huge ads on their buildings saying like the most research intensive University in Canada and what that actually means like is that based on number of publications per faculty members are I don't know what the metric is. But it's it's definitely difficult, especially for a project where it's one semester the equivalent of one course it's really hard to find a professor to agree. I think I emailed like 20 professors and I got one professor who interviewed me and said, Yeah, And didn't have because of COVID. And then one professor who said let's do an interview, but then never responded after that damn. Another thing that I was kind of surprised by which I really feel like I should stop being surprised by is how much she felt like she was unprepared for the job when she got in or like, she learned a lot on the job. That was the thing I was going to talk about, but I decided not to talk about but here we go. Yeah, I was gonna say like she mentioned, she learned a lot on the job. Yeah. And I had like a very kind of full blown conversation about this with my friend yesterday where I was kind of he was asking me if I'm considering applying for jobs and maybe gonna take some time off to just worked it before maybe returning to grad school. And I was kind of telling him how I feel like so unqualified for kind of any job. And he's someone who like, has worked in internships and has taken a semester of school to work. And so he was saying, like, yeah, like basically the same thing when I applied for jobs. And here I am with like, you know, job experience, and you will never feel qualified for a job. So you should just apply anyway and learn on the on the job, right. But yeah, it's just like, for me, that's a really difficult mentality to like, actually walk into to be like, you will never fully feel prepared. And you might not feel like you should be hired. But you actually have like one of the best skill sets for this job. Like, I think another way to think about it is that there are a lot of people who are applying to this position, who are the same as you more or less, who equally don't have the skill set for this job? No, like, it's not like everyone you're competing against is like, yeah, I have like five years of experience, especially for an entry level position. They're expecting that they'll have to train you. And actually, for me, it was really reassuring to hear her say that you can train people on tactical skills, because that's kind of what I don't have, I don't have experience with like mice, ie none, or how to run a gel kind of thing. But I'm hoping that my thesis supervisor will just be like, I can teach her that she writes great. summaries. Yeah, I know what she was saying. Like, also was just like, well, one is like just your scientific enthusiasm. But then the other side is also like, how great that logic in your brain is of like, these are the questions I should be asking, this is what we don't know, this is what we need to find out to actually have it be a legitimate experiment. And I think like that is so strong for you. Like you definitely have that. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And so I think like, why I was surprised specifically in this interview context was that she literally did a PhD. She knows how to do like, very thorough experiments and research. So yeah, I was just still really surprised to be like, Wow, she still doesn't feel completely prepared in this trial context. That's true. Yeah. So that kind of made a greater case of like, you don't ever fully feel like, prepared. Yeah, yeah. Okay. random thoughts. So basically, yeah, this is a lightning round of random thoughts of mine. One, I didn't realise that like industries worked with, okay, well, I knew this in like a physics and like, calm sigh context, but I kind of forgot that industry companies work with academic labs as well. So yeah, that was a good reminder slash thing. The note also kind of kind of ties into our interview with Seba about Yeah, professors need to commercialise their research. Yeah. Except he was also working for the university. So yes, yes. Yes. And then yeah, I guess second I have written here is that she was saying she wanted to environment originally, but it was a lot about policy, which was like terrible for her. But it's like what I enjoyed hearing. Like, oh, that's actually really cool. That's what I like. Something down. So yeah, that was encouraging for me, I

Lisa Shen

58:32

think. Yeah, third, I just found it funny that she, like was really enjoyed math and physics, whereas most people who go into bio are like, that's why. Yeah, fourth thing, she was saying how in her undergrad, like her biology and lifestyle professors were so great. And I'm like, this just keeps coming up again. And again, were great professors really just makes such a big difference to how you interact with a subject. Definitely.

Unknown Speaker

58:55

Yeah,

Lisa Shen

58:55

I think like, you can't really underestimate that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like, I think part of the reason why I went into science and went into biology is I had great science teachers in high school. Like, I just love that science office. Man, I love each and every one of them. They're all great. I still love all of them. Like one of my best teachers in terms of explaining things and giving clear criteria was my grade 11 chemistry teacher, she was just yeah. And then lastly, it was just funny that I feel like she liked all the office stuff from what I like, which makes sense because she has the similar tastes as me and you and I have a similar taste. So the enemy of my enemy is. Yeah, but also just like the fact that she does like teaching and she likes the science stuff. I don't know. I thought it was funny. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that is a bit different. Yeah. I mean, I don't like again, like I don't like the administrative and the politics are on teaching that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then the last kind of bigger point I had was that she kind of claimed that she didn't really fully test out her career where she did consulting. As part of a club, but not like working in that for a year, but I would argue that's actually kind of like a good way to test things out. And I think we've talked about this in previous discussions where like, I think even for small from small experiences, you can gain a lot of understanding. It's kind of like we're going from zero to one is like, very informative, but after that, it's a little bit less informative. diminishing returns. Yeah, yeah, I feel that as well. I mean, I wasn't about to go. Are you with her? Like, no, you did this? Totally. But yeah, like, I don't think you have to necessarily get a job in something. Yeah, experience, kind of what it's like. And I think especially earlier in career where the different options are very, like vastly different from each other, you can get a lot of information about if that workflow is even how you want to work or just like the setup of that job. To be honest, this is almost kind of making me consider taking two years off to work after undergrad instead of one, at least until I know with some certainty that I want to do this certain grad school instead of just kind of having an idea then going to grad school. But I mean, at the end of the day, you know, two paths diverged in a yellow wood, super pompous. And if you're not super pompous, that basically means that you know, whatever path you pick, it's gonna be okay. We're the same. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's so funny, because that's like, there's like a layer of like, where that common interpretation, and then the interpretation of the poem, and you're going by the actual interpretation, so you're super pompous. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker

01:01:25

Thank you. Thank you.

Lisa Shen

01:01:27

Really cool. Kids. Look at this one. Yeah, of course. Okay, I have a personal question for you is, um, yeah, we kind of got into this at the beginning, but how far are you leaning towards the no PhD? And maybe you just join industry and work your way? Oh, my God. I mean, I'm basically 85% I don't want to be a professor at this point. Okay, largely for the reason that I don't like all the institution and all the gamification surrounding grading and creating courses. Okay. And then the other part is that it's just a lot of work. Like every professor works more than 40 hours a week and that's not a life I want for myself. So I think I'm definitely leaning towards industry if I'm going into research. Okay. Yeah, but counterpoint lead scientists in industry also work like pretty Yeah, but they get paid more terrible. Yeah. Okay, fair. Boy. That makes sense. This has been another episode of so you got a live site degree with rizwana Islam about the pharmaceutical industry. You want to give special thanks to our crew of lovely patrons, including our little leaf patrons, not him and if you would like to become a supporter of this podcast, you can visit our Patreon page@patreon.com slash so you got Alexa degree. Music you're hearing is no regrets from audio hub.com Thanks for listening and see you next time.

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