Oh, well, where to start. My job is mostly office-based, a lot of writing (mostly emails!) with plenty of internal and external meetings. I am responsible for keeping our members up to date and engaged: that means I decide on the calendar of activities we will do, the format they will take and organise them. These events tend to be workshops, conferences or webinars. I usually have someone else to help me with the admin side of it. I do a similar thing for Public Engagement - deciding on what we (me!) want to do and getting it up and running. Last year I did assemblies in schools, I organised visits to labs for our patients, I run a project with patients to understand what kind of language, images, and metaphors, facilitate the understanding of genome editing.
Besides having a Ph.D., what skills do you need to get thatjob?
As an Associate Consultant, I conduct primary qualitative and quantitative research as well as desk-based secondary research, analyze and develop powerpoint reports and presentations, attend conference and in-person calls/meetings with team members or interact with clients, which can include some travel for face-to-face workshops or ad boards. Recently, I have also been managing projects and teams in this process. Over the past 1.5 years, I have worked in projects focused on medicines and in vitro diagnostics across Oncology, Alzheimer's Disease, diabetes, respiratory diseases and rare disease indications for more than 5 top pharmaceutical companies. I have worked mostly in questions related to pricing and market access, commercial and strategic planning, organizational and process optimization and new opportunity assessments. Happy to share more about what I do, should you have a specific interest!
What advice would you give to someone looking to transition to your field?
Network with people in the companies you wish to apply for. Understand the culture, the organization, the job requirements, and the types of problems they deal with. Also, take a focused effort to start exploring what you would like to do early on, in parallel with your day-to-day activities. Don't hesitate to reach out to me and other GABBA alumni members. Be bold and schedule coffee break catch ups with people - you will be surprised by the positive responses!
Software Developer
Luís Filipe Cunha
Senior Machine Learning Software Engineer
What are your day-to-day duties/responsibilities?
A Machine Learning Software Engineer is a mix of a data scientist and a software engineer, and my daily routine looks like a combination of both. I build software for training and deploying mathematical models at scale, as well as developing some of the models that the business (a bank) uses. Most of my days are spent writing computer code, researching a new problem, or in planning meetings with my teammates. Occasionally, I participate in conferences.
If anything, what do you miss the most about academic science?
A lot of what I enjoyed about academic science is still part of my current job, such as researching the unknown and creative freedom. I mostly miss being current with advances in the biomedical field.
