Hi Everyone, I am an international student studying pharmacy and an MS in health outcomes. The MS will give me the Stem OPT extension. I am pursuing the Biotech/Pharma industry and I’m particularly passionate about Market Access and HEOR. I have just landed an amazing internship in Global Access and Value. I can’t wait for this experience and to learn more, but I wanted to post here and gather some advice/opinions about the this field of work and the internship. From my understanding, this is a super crucial field for industry and there is opportunity to really grow in it and ultimately reach C-Suite since it is very much on the business side of the industry. Is there any international students in it or possibility for future sponsorship? What’s your general knowledge or opinion on the field? General advice on how I can succeed in my internship? Thanks everyone:)

We're working to build up an integrated system that includes liquid handling capacity. We currently have both an Echo acoustic dispenser and a Multiflo strip dispenser/washer that will definitely get rolled into our auotomated platform.

Where we're currently struggling is what instrument(s) make(s) the most sense for the sort of "traditional" liquid dispensing that lies between our existing instruments, i.e. moderate volumes in the 0.5-100 µl/well range, typically handled by a Biomek or similar. We're considering the typical options from Beckman, Tecan, and Hamilton. However, we're also intrigued by the SPT Firefly, which is basically a blend of their multichannel Apricot head and their Dragonfly positive displacement instrument.

We're interested to hear of others' experience, especially with the SPT devices vs the other big names in liquid handling, and any experience integrating these instruments with an arm and a third-party scheduling software.

If they could predict and time it, they could just buy and sell stock at the right time and become extremely wealthy. I doubt anyone knows. We all rolled the dice getting into this and there is risk as well as reward. If you are a student graduating in a few years, there probably isn’t anyone here with level of market knowledge and insight to tell you if the jobs will be there. Warren Buffet would probably chuckle at the question and say I don’t know.

I'm an Indian student on an F1 visa doing my PhD on CAR-T therapies/CRISPR/mRNA stuff. I graduate in 2026 and while I'm super excited to be done and out in the real world, the real world seems like such a mess at the moment what with all the layoffs. It's making me super nervous, especially as an international student who probably won't get a green card for several years, thanks to US immigration. I'm trying to stay as relevant as possible with my work, but it doesn't really seem like that matters these days...

hopefully things will start looking up a bit in 2026. If anyone has any advice for stuff I can do to prepare myself till then, I'd really appreciate it!

Over the past decade, I've been fortunate to work in commercial analytics for a successful pharmaceutical company. While I've enjoyed my time there, I'm now eager to explore new commercial-side opportunities within the industry, particularly in the city of Philadelphia (not its suburbs).

I'm interested in learning more about the pharmaceutical companies with commercial operations in Philadelphia, especially GSK and Merck. I know GSK has an office in University City's FMC Building, and Merck has a satellite office in Market East through a partnership with WeWork. That's about all I know about their respective operations in the city.

I'm curious about the functions and departments operating out of GSK's Philadelphia office and the overall culture there. Additionally, I'm intrigued by Merck's WeWork office—how does it function, and who is eligible to work there? For those who have experience, what is it like working in this satellite office?

Any insights or information you can provide would be immensely helpful. Thank you in advance for your input!

PS: To be clear, I'm open to other companies that might have commercial roles in the city. I know Jazz and Spark Therapeutics are in Philadelphia, too. I'd like to hear about them as well!

Despite a recent big cash raise ($254M) back in February, the read out of their colon cancer screening test was disappointing 😭 Brutal conditions these days for liquid biopsy and NGS diagnostics startups.

I'm currently a contractor at a midsized biotech and have been for about a year. I like my job, but the company isn't currently hiring and has not given any indication of when they'll have the headcount to hire me.

I've been casually browsing/applying for FTE roles at other companies, but am only hearing back from CROs/CDMOs.

Would it be worth it to consider jumping from my current company to a CRO if the job is full time? Or should I just try to stick it out with the contract until I find something better/ until they can finally convert me?

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I am feeling stuck in my career in biotech. I went into school wanting to do genetic counseling and I didn't get into graduate school last year and decided that I was no longer interested in the career but love the field of genetics. I currently work at one of the largest genetic testing companies and got into this position that is feeling like a dead end and am feeling daily dread.

I am applying for clinical research, quality assurance, customer success, product management and even marketing roles and no one is getting back to me. I think that the specific job I have now has no transferable skills (since its so company specific) and my managers don't make many attempts to help their employees grow. It took me 2 years to be trained on it so I am not even getting responses from internal positions, I feel like I am being blacklisted.

Based on my resume, does anyone have any ideas of positions to apply for? I have a lot of experience in clinics that I don't have listed on my resume because it was pretty early during college so really my only professional biotech experience is what I have gotten at my current company. I worked at two labs after college but they were short term jobs so I also don't include that.

I am interested in product management but I don't think that's something I could get with my current experience. So if there are any intermediate positions anyone could think of that could help. I would love to be more patient facing/client facing, traveling for work would be great if that means I get to interact with people more, preferably remote as I have been working remote since I graduated school. I am thinking that my best next step would be going back to graduate school for something else.

Thanks for any insight.

Asking for a friend: a friend that is currently on vacation told me that Tessera was laying off people today, but she is currently off seas and have limited access to her email. Did anyone hear more about it? All she knows is the co-founder was laid off

Do companies actually ask for references anymore (director role and above)? Seems like some companies ask and others don’t.

My first job after undergrad (B.S. in Biology) was in a manufacturing production lab working with plasma samples. My current role is still in manufacturing but my title is Quality Analyst 1. My day to day duties include batch release and it’s starting to feel repetitive. I want to grow my salary but moving up in my current role will take too long as there are level 1 analysts who have been there close to, if not longer than 10 years.

Has anyone moved from QA to other areas? If so, what roles did you apply for and how was the transition?

I am not too worried sounds like they dont want to totally upend our company and the ceo has visited us. Just want personal experiences with these things

Hi everyone, I have my first in person interview with a biotech company. I have already had 3 previous interviews with this same company, and this final interview will take place on site as multiple one-on-one interviews with several members of the staff (it seems like most would be coworkers, so I'm assuming that this is more of a 'personality assessment' to see if I will get along with the team?). I have been working in academia for the past 3 years and am very unfamiliar with the interview process for biotech companies..

I am wondering if anyone has any advice for the interview process at the point I am? I am planning on bringing printed out copies of my previous work for each of my interviewers, since they have yet to physically see my work aside from me explaining it in previous interviews. I have 3 posters from my 3 years of experience and was planning on printing them out and giving them a copy for their records... Is this sufficient? I have thoroughly researched the company, the background of the research, each person I will be interviewing with, and have a list of questions that I plan on asking each person. Is there anything else I should bring or prepare for? Thank you!

I'm in the process of applying for a new role (SynBio) after being in the same company for 5 years.

Having interviewed with almost 15 companies now, I cannot quite believe how awful the interviewers are.

• Distant
• Interrogating, as opposed to a normal conversation.
• Boring, and doesn't inspire me to want to continue with the process.
• Dominating the conversation. Speaking at me rather than with me.
• Poor time management / lack of preperation.

Has anyone else had this experience? Why isn't interview training a priority given all the hiring issues going on?

Hey y'all so a quick question. I got hired as lets say a manufacturing Associate but our manufacturing is at a stand still due to validations. As a result I have been trained in QA stuff and am currently doing QA things. May I put on my resume that I was doing QA stuff even though I was a manufacturing Associate? I have not done anything that's on my job description

Hi fellow biotechies!

I have a quick question regarding a job offer. It includes a X% LTI incentive that is provided on an annual basis and can be vested or (encashed?) every 3 yrs. How does this exactly work? It is basically extra cash that you get every three yrs or is it stock options that I can exercise every three yrs? If it is stock options, how does the X% work?

Any insight will be great!

*EDIT: Thank for the info. The HR was a bit vague about the LTI (cash vs RSU vs options). I will ask a bit more about it.

I'm officially getting let go after a long battle with my employer over my needs due to my chronic illness (not looking to get into the legality - I've already tried to look into it and frankly don't have the energy to fight this fight while recovering from my condition). I'm figuring out where to go from here and I feel so alone in that I haven't met a single other person in this industry with similar struggles. Based on my experience it feels like we probably all get pushed out, which is super demoralizing. Has anyone here navigated severe chronic illness or disability while being able to have a successful biotech career? Would love to chat about the career choices you made to find stable work in the industry, or at least know that there are people out there who have complicated chronic conditions and are able to make it work in this field

Despite "Great Resignation" and boom in hiring three years ago, it seems we're now in the slumps in contrast to the surges in a couple of big pharmas and the optimism of the overall economy. So, how long before the industry turns around? How long is a "cycle" in biotech?

Is it a declining business in the next 15-20 years or is there a future for this area? I think the EPA wants no in-vivo testing in preclinical studies by 2035. I would like to start a small cro where we can do this. Do you think it would be impossible to set up such a company? I have cro experience, I do such studies at the moment and I see a lot of potential in this. But what is your opinion?

Hey everyone, my lab just bought the dasgip system and we have a tiny problem regarding pressure build up during our fermentation run. Due to safety we decided to add a T piece where the exhaust line is, so we can’t measure OTR any more. I was wondering if someone has encountered this issue and how did you solved it. Thank you from a scientist to another scientist

I'm writing about mRNA-based tuberculosis vaccines in a vaccine development course. I've chosen the Antigen 85 (Ag85) complex, but I'm having difficulty finding its sequence. I'm not very familiar with the UniProt website.

Regarding the antigen, is it correct to choose the whole Ag85 complex instead of one of the individual secretory proteins A, B, or C?

Could someone please help me with this?