Moving from Academia to Industry - Podcast Highlights GSK’s Graduate Researcher Program

15 December 2023

How do you transition from the lab to the pharmaceutical industry? And can academia provide a solid foundation for a rewarding career in the pharmaceutical industry?

The GSK Australia Graduate Researcher Program (GRP) is a three-year program for PhD graduates supported by MTPConnect's REDI initiative, providing opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry for hands-on experience for postdoctoral researchers to apply their skills to the translation and commercialisation of new medical products.

With the Graduate Researcher Program coming to a close, the MTPConnect podcast team headed to GSK Australian headquarters in Abbotsford, to find out more about the impact of the GSK Graduate Researcher Program (GRP) from graduates and staff.

The paid 12-month placement has helped post-graduate researchers gain practical experience in the medicines and vaccines industry. For Dr Niloufar Ansari who is taking part in the 2023 program working with the Medical Affairs Specialty Care – Oncology team, it has been a career-changing experience.

Before transitioning to the industry, she spent over a decade working in various research fields, including cancer, bone biology and disease, biomedical engineering, and targeted therapies. Her background is pharmacy (Doctor of Pharmacy) and she worked as a pharmacist for 4 years, before starting her PhD in bone biology and diseases.

When Dr Ansari decided to pursue a career in the pharmaceutical industry, she didn’t know about the roles available or where to start. Now, her advice for those in academia looking to move into industry is to firstly build your networks -reach out to people on LinkedIn, have coffee catchups. Do it early as it takes time. She also says, find a good mentor to help you with your choices and be open to new opportunities. Be open to different roles as it gives you new experiences.

There have been many opportunities to learn new skills, and put others into practice such as science communication, which she learnt during her PhD and postdoc years.

“A big part of Medical Affairs is science communication. We try to communicate what a study outcome means for the patient, to healthcare professionals and key opinion leaders in the field and we get develop actionable insights. So, what I'm doing here is supplying the team with medical materials to make sure that they are balanced and accurate.”

Dr Ansari was keen to share her perspective for the MTPConnect Podcast, to help others like her who may be wondering how to make a career change into the pharmaceutical industry.

“Since I made the decision to join this industry, many friends have reached out to me to ask, ‘Where should they start?’. How can they join the industry? What roles might suit them? What is Medical Affairs? I understand this need to find out more about the industry and the different roles it offers, because last year I didn't know about any of this either. So, I thought that as a legacy of the GSK program, and with MTPConnect's help, it's great that we have this podcast to give people who are interested, an overview of the roles on offer...and explore what's available because it might change their life,” said Dr Ansari

Pictured: Dr Niloufar Ansari, on the left, who is taking part in the 2023 Graduate Researcher Program, being interviewed by MTPConnect's Media and Communications Director Caroline Duell.

Dr Terence Tieu is currently an Associate Brand Manager at GSK. Before his move to industry, he completed a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at Monash University and worked researching cancer treatments before he decided to shift his career focus. He was accepted into the 2021 Graduate Researcher Program, working in the New Products team, and the program set him up for a future career in the industry.

“Throughout the year of the GRP, I was in conversation with my manager on what I wanted to develop after the program. I met with doctors to understand what it felt like to be what we call an, ‘in field’, which is either going down the medical route as a medical science liaison or going down the sales route. I chose the sales route because I wanted to understand the commercial side of the business.”

Dr Tieu moved into the marketing team at GSK, which allows him to be creative and think outside the box. His advice to PhD graduates who are unsure about whether to pursue a role in industry is to give it a go.

“Industry sometimes gets a bad wrap when you are working in academia. People aren't enjoying what they're doing and want to escape to industry roles without really knowing what it is about. Until you throw yourself into the deep end, I think you'll never know. So, just give it a go. And industry is so wide. It's not just the pharmaceutical industry. You won’t realise how many opportunities are out there until you start actively looking and networking,” said Dr Tieu.

Pictured: Dr Terence Tieu, currently an Associate Brand Manager at GSK, completed the Graduate Researcher Program in 2021.

MTPConnect’s Jarrod Belcher, Director of the Researcher Exchange and Development Within Industry (REDI) initiative, says that supporting programs like the GRP allows talented STEM researchers to get a foot in the door to gain real world experience and better understand industry, which can then help with their transition from academia to industry.

“It is a difficult jump from academia to industry. Companies want experience but how do you get experience? We need a thriving academic sector in Australia, but we also need a thriving industry so we’ve got to look after training and roles in both parts of the sector.

“With this program, we're hoping to show a proof of concept for industry to learn from, that by getting postdocs, people with a PhD into industry, that they can have an impact very quickly. There are a lot of programs for undergraduate graduate programs. This is a space that's missing. REDI and MTPConnect recognise this and we wanted a quality partner to go through that we could highlight as a proof of concept and GSK was an ideal partner for that,” said Mr Belcher.

Pictured: from the left, Dr Niamh Mangan, GSK Associate Brand Manager, MTPConnect's Director Media and Communications Caroline Duell and MTPConnect’s REDI Director Jarrod Belcher.

The 2-part episode of the MTPConnect Podcast connects with other GSK staff who have travelled a similar career transition, including GSK Associate Brand Manager and GRP Lead Dr Niamh Mangan, GRP intern Dr James Cooney (New Products Specialty), GSK Specialty Care Business Unit Director Katrina Vanin, GSK Health Economic Lead Simon Barnfather, GSK Director of Clinical Research Carrie Bloomfield, ViiV, Clinical Support Specialist Amy Dearsley, and GSK Australia’s Head of Communications Angela Hill.

The Graduate Researcher Program has been an overwhelming success with 19 researchers having completed placements with GSK Australia, and experiencing a range of development opportunities and exposure to what it takes to commercially develop new medical treatments for patients.

As GSK’s Carrie Bloomfield says on the MTPConnect Podcast, “There are so many roles that you can get involved in or walk through during your career in the industry, which really brings a lot of value to patients. I think, working at GSK, where every day there is a conversation about a patient and the importance of the new medicines we're bringing to them, whether they be in the clinical trial stage or whether they've made it all the way through registration. Every day there's a conversation about a patient and the importance of our medicines to those patients. That's really rewarding.”

Listen to the MTPConnect Podcast.

The $32 million Researcher Exchange and Development within Industry (REDI) initiative is delivered by MTPConnect for the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund. REDI is providing industry experiences and skills development for students, researchers, clinicians, MTP (medical technology, biotechnology and pharmaceutical) sector professionals, entrepreneurs, and innovators. The initiative is building an industry-ready workforce with the skills and capacity to keep pace with the demands of a rapidly changing sector - for now, and the immediate future.