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Name: Greg Connelly Brown Affiliation: Coach of the Women's Ultimate Frisbee Team Company: Synchrony Biosciences, Inc Position: Director of Research Degrees Earned: BS Physics and Math Ph.D. Molecular Biophysics
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Is your educational background a must for what you do? must? yes - although
in some start-up biotechs, where a hierarchy of positions/levels may not
be as well-defined as in big pharma, it is possible for someone with a
bachelor's to rise fairly high Four years of
post-doctoral research (biochemistry lab at University of British
Columbia), six months with a structural genomics group in Toronto, 3
years at an early-stage drug discovery company (Althexis), and finally 2
years starting up Synchrony with one other co-founder. I get to work on almost every scientific aspect of our programs - from identifying target proteins linked to specific disease states, to synthesizing potential inhibitors and testing them in vitro and in cell-based assays, and finally relating those results, both in-house and to the larger scientific and investment communities. The main drawback is
that there are only 168 hours in a week. During college,
figure out if you like working in the laboratory or not.
Science departments usually offer some kind of senior-year
research program - you get to interact with a faculty member and the
people in his/her lab, and you gain the experience of having to perform,
write-up, and communicate your work to your scientific peers.
If you apply to grad school, they will look closely at your
previous research experience. Larger,
more-established companies usually look for people with specific
laboratory skills to fulfill a particular function they have identified.
For our biotech company, we look for people who have generally
broader skill sets, as they will often have to wear many hats.
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