Entrepreneurial Moments: Part 3
How about moving to academia after a career in Big Pharma? That's what a long time friend of The LabMan did! Dr. Sitta Sittapalam spend 23 years in industry before heading to the University of Kansas as the Deputy Director of the Office Therapeutics, Discovery and Development. He offers some advice about making such a transition.
1. What interested you in making the move from industry to academia?
Mainly four reasons: 1) The NIH RoadMap initiative (2003) that stimulated increasing interest in academia to move into drug discovery and development. I saw an opportunity to contribute in this new scientific niche with the experience I have gained in pharmaceutical industry. 2) The University of Kansas Lawrence has a strong pharmacy school with distinguished pharmaceutical chemistry and medicinal chemistry programs. This provides a favorable environment to set up HTS and lead generation for drug discovery and development. 3) A desire to be in a stimulating, academic environment with young and experienced faculty, students and post-docs with new ideas. 4) Lastly, I was simply tired of industrial environment that was very much profit driven (for obvious reasons), risk-averse (and not risk-aware) and increasingly reducing innovative research opportunities. I wanted to be in an academic setting that would provide an opportunity to work on new life science projects, technology and rare and neglected diseases, that are equally devastating, albeit to a smaller group.
2. For someone considering making such a move, what are some of the adjustments you feel they should be prepared for?
The challenges are many and can be intimidating. A major learning is to enter a world where it is necessary to procure increasingly competitive grant to support research. The grant support is mainly from Govt. agencies (NIH, NCI, DARPA, DOD etc.), non-profit research foundations and in some cases from industry. It’s a shock to learn that the current successful NIH funding rate is <10% while it was ~30% 20 years ago! One’s “socio-scientific” status in academia is solely judged by how much research funding one has! Secondly, one has to adjust to the “publish or perish” culture, in addition to teaching duties, student interactions, and other academic committee participation. Finally, we the “industrially experienced” scientists are hired to develop a drug discovery and development program internally, but do it with grant $$ or attract industry funding!
However, one realizes that this is a new paradigm: the “.com-to- .edu” community is creating an entrepreneurial and translational culture in the academic environment. High risk-high intellectual reward environment, if it works. The experiment is on in many universities and the jury is still out! The scientific project and personnel management experience from industry are highly valued in academia (a nice surprise!) and there is considerable respect for industrial applied science in academia than 20 year ago (another pleasant surprise!!). Significant pockets of purists exist who detest the current emphasis on translational science in academia and consider NIH and academic investments in the commercialization projects is a waste of time.
3. How does a typical day in academia differ from a day in industry?
This depends on whether the job description is purely scientific and project management or it also includes teaching and research responsibilities. The earlier model is not very different in academia and industry- in terms of day-to-day activities. Reviewing and writing project plans, literature reviews and scientific discussions with Principal investigators, project meetings, internal seminars, intellectual property discussions, mentoring collaborating scientists etc.
If the job also includes academic responsibilities such as teaching and maintaining one’s own lab, (post-docs, technicians) for scientific research and grant writing, it can be quite hectic. Compensation will be higher for taking on both aspects, but I do not recommend both.
4. What things do you find you CAN do in academia that you couldn’t or didn’t do in industry?
To my surprise, there is very little difference today in terms of the ability to do scientific research in academia and industry. There is tremendous freedom to choose the areas of research in academia, which is restricted in industry due to business priorities. However, the freedom exists only if you can get adequate grant funding, which has rapidly dwindled in the last 2 decades. Industry has the capital resources for needed technology and support services. The universities have talented manpower in terms of students and post docs. Academia is increasingly wants to protect its IP and attempting to find ways to increase funding for research due to ever decreasing state and federal support. So accomplishing focused scientific research is hampered in both places due to mismatch of resources and manpower.
One can get involved in teaching to the exclusion of active research. This is an option that is not available in industry, but one would expect it to be so. Freedom to publish is also an important difference, and is expected to a great extent.
5. What things do you find you CAN’T (or don’t) do in academia that you did in industry?
Monetary reward is poor. Scientific interactions with bright faculty, students and post-docs are clearly rewarding. Since each faculty has very different basic research, one can learn tremendous amount on latest developments. The enthusiasm to try new ideas can be infectious- that’s what keep many faculty or the .com-to.edu group to enjoy the new environment. May be it is going back to their grad school “childhood”!
Academic administrators are also beginning to put value on industrial experience that brings scientific project management to university environment and exposing students to how the industrial scientists work.
So this is a new era and still in the making- we are the guinea pigs.
Until Next Time,
Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto
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