Welcome mixers are great events at conferences. To introduce myself, I generally shorten my name not only for ease of communication but also to save 1-2 minutes in getting the pronunciation right. However, when I met Mark and introduced myself as Abhi he was quick to ask if I am Abhi or Abhinav. I realized my nametag gave that away. We happened to exchange several notes and by the end of the conference he was nice enough to agree to talk about his career transition to pharmaceutical research for ClubSciWri. It has been a pleasure to know about his work and career. – Abhinav Dey (AD)
Mark MUSTERS, PhD
Mark W.J.M. Musters (born 1980, The Netherlands) obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology, followed by a PhD degree in computational systems biology at the same university in 2007. He continued his career at Wageningen University as a postdoctoral researcher by constructing detailed mathematical models of the central metabolism. In 2010, he started as a scientist at Lead Pharma, a small pharmaceutical company that develops innovative medicines to treat cancer and immune-related diseases. He is currently a project leader of an oncology and an immunology project.
AD: Can you briefly describe your role at Lead Pharma? What does a normal workday look like?
MM: Lead Pharma is a small pharmaceutical company (about 30 employees) that develops small molecular compounds to treat cancer and (auto-)immune diseases. I am a project leader of an immunology (atopic dermatitis) and oncology (metastatic melanoma) project. As a project leader, my main responsibility is that the project team develops potent and selective small molecular compound within a predefined time frame. A normal workday consists of structuring and coordinating all activities between the different groups (chemistry, molecular pharmacology, cellular pharmacology), informing team members and management about the progress, communicating with external parties, writing grant proposals and troubleshooting (if necessary). Besides being a project leader, I also analyze large -omics data sets to search for novel biomarkers and new targets that we could work on in the near future.
AD: What made you decide to move into industry rather than stay on the academic track?
MM: After completing my post-doc, I felt it was the right time to move to industry: I only worked for universities and research institutes and I was curious how working at a company would be. It turned out to be an excellent decision. The work at Lead Pharma is diverse and we collaborate in multidisciplinary teams towards a common goal. However, our fundamental research activities are limited compared to (top) academic groups and we do not publish our data either. That is certainly something to keep in mind.
AD: How did you prepare for your current interview? Which skills were essential apart from your scientific skills that helped you make the cut?
MM; I gathered information about the company (history, background of founders, mission, etc.), such that I could ask some questions during the interview as well. Personally, I think that I was hired because my personality matched very well with the company profile and I was honest in answering all questions during the interview. In addition, my pragmatic attitude and pathological optimism might have helped as well.
AD: How did your post-doc experience at prepare you for your position today?
MM: During my post-doc experience, I collaborated much more with “wet lab” experimentalists. Because I had a background in mathematical modeling, this trained me to communicate and understand biological research.
AD: Did you use any of the resources at your postdoctoral institution to prepare for your job hunt?
MM:Nope.
AD: How do you achieve work-life balance?
MM: Fortunately, our company offers its employees some flexibility and the management recognizes the importance of your personal life, which makes it easier to achieve a healthy work-life balance. This means that sometimes my workday is shorter, but a week later I work the whole weekend to finish an important presentation.
AD: Do you have any advice for postdocs considering careers in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry? What can they do to make themselves competitive?
MM: Prepare yourself! Read about how the pharmaceutical industry operates. There are some good books available about drug development (and I don’t mean books like “Bad Pharma”). Ask yourself the questions: what would you like to do at a pharmaceutical company? And what unique expertise do you have that could help the company? That would be a good start.
Mark Musters was interviewed by Abhinav Dey. Abhinav is a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University and a Young Investigator Awardee from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer. He is also the co-founder of PhD Career Support Group (CSG) for STEM PhDs and ClubSciWri
This work by ClubSciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Featured image source: Pixabay
