My experience with Indian Biopharma - Part II

First Stint:
It was an eye-opener to me as I did everything other than biotechnology.I worked in a group of 3, under the guidance of a senior manager who had an experience of over 10 years while working for Singapore and US based bio-pharmaceuticals. Apart from the rich experience, he had very different style of working with his subordinates which was critical in driving along individual's and team's efforts. My colleague was working on technology implementation by understanding how different pieces in an IT industry works to build a software which serves bio-pharmaceuticals. I was working on a layer which would then integrate this software with the machine to produce real-time trends/charts to consolidate business-decision making ability. My job responsibilities involved interaction with process-automation vendors (for e.g. Siemens, Rockwell, GE etc), interaction with process engineerings to understand the Human Machine Interface. I use to interact with other stakeholders of the company to know their views on the project and how they could get the best out of it. At the end of 2 months, I learned a lot starting from ground ZERO.

TAKE HOME:
1. Identify people in company with whom you can grow both personally and professionally.
2. Your initial days in company define how you are going to move ahead in the system. Either you work hard on conventional/ routine problems and try to make a niche for yourself or innovate and implement keeping in mind the existing corporate culture.

My second and third stints were more of laboratory projects, which were critical in their own way. In-fact, anything and everything which is done in a company has to be critical and that's how companies run. right!!
I worked on analyzing excipients in a given protein samples. Basically a protein has its own shelf-life and stability in a given environment. In order to make it more sustainable some other stabilizing molecules are added to the solution. I had to make sure that the excipient's quantity added to the solution remains there until the final drug is manufactured.
My last stint was focused on optimization of filter for purification of drug solution while moved along different downstream stages so that the final sample contains our protein of interest.
These stints served the purpose of exposing me to the bioprocess followed in industries. I worked with young managers who were not well directed in their approach and lacked long term clarity but were somehow managing the system with the guidance of senior management.

TAKE HOME:
1. If you find that the research work in industries is not very appealing then try to understand the high-level process in order to have a feel of how your work will benefit the organization in long run.
2. Do listen to your managers even if they are wrong. But do what you feel is right. You will always get/ make chance to explain 'why you did what you did'.

I completed my stints in Feb'09 and then had 40 days of time to decide on area which I wanted to grow along in the company.
Mind you!! 40 days is a lots of time in a company and so I utilized this time by understanding the 'Hydro dynamics of fermentation technology'. It was not an official project but helped me personally in fulfilling my future endeavors.
Later I chose to continue working on my first project which was focused on implementing technology in the manufacturing facility. During rest of the days, my group changed from 'Production' to 'Business & Strategy' then on to 'Business Systems' and culminated in 'IT Systems'.

It was a total joy ride with stomach aches once in a while.

My 22 months in Biopharma ended on 10th May'10 on the positive note when I decided to pursue PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering at SUNY Buffalo. Well, when you leave any organization it got to be on a positive note.