Chiara Giuliano talks about taking her research expertise from academia to her role as in vivo scientist, central nervous system expert in the Safety Pharmacology Team at AstraZeneca, which she started in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020
My career path to date
I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Padua with a final 1 year-research project at GlaxoSmithKline on the mechanisms regulating relapse to nicotine use. After a 6-months internship at the University of Sussex contributing to a project on neural mechanisms of responses to food-related conditioned stimuli, I started a PhD in Translational Biomedical Sciences in the Department of Pharmacology, University of Verona, Italy. My research focused on the neurochemical mechanisms of sustained attention in rodents. I then took up a postdoctoral role in the Department of Psychology investigating the neural and psychological mechanisms of the compulsive pursuit of drugs (alcohol in particular) and highly palatable food. I joined AstraZeneca in July 2020.
My current role
I design and run experiments to support projects with CNS (Central Nervous System) safety risk, analyse and interpret the results. My day varies according to the project’s requests. According to the scientific project-related questions I have to provide details on the possible risks a specific compound with CNS activity may have considering the on target and off target activity.
When the risks potentially involve the CNS, I provide details on the best in vivo model available to assess them and try to mitigate them. At that point, I specify whether it is possible to run the experiment in house or if an external CRO specialised on that assessment needs to be contacted. I define the experimental design, coordinate the experiment with other teams and make sure the results will be delivered according to specific internal deadlines.
At the moment I am using my intellectual expertise more than my technical skills, especially because I have never used some of the in vivo procedures currently used in safety pharmacology. I will need to be trained to broaden my technical expertise on safety pharmacology models, but I think that my previous experience will make the learning process faster.
I am still learning about my role, drug development, new drug modalities in the pipeline, but learning is what excited me!
How do you know you’re doing a good job?
I have a fortnightly 1:1 with my line-manager, where I talk about the projects I have been involved with, the challenges I have faced, the options to solve them.
At the beginning of the year, I am required to set my goals with my line manager and during the year I monitor by progress against them. At the end of the year there is a formal review with the supervisor where I provide the description of what I have done in order to reach the goals, comments from other colleagues on my performance, and we assess whether I reached all my goals or not.
What’s it been like starting a new role during the pandemic?
I have been working predominantly from home, only going to the lab when there is a specific project requiring in vivo CNS expertise. When I joined AZ I virtually met my colleagues with a 1:1 in order to understand each role within the team. I have been assigned a ‘buddy’ and through weekly meetings I have been introduced to the new environment and my new role. In my team people have different expertise, spanning from oncology to cardiology or chemistry or secondary pharmacology. I am still learning about my role, drug development, new drug modalities in the pipeline, but learning is what excited me!
In academia you work on your niche and you tend to become very specialized in a small area. In industry you may be asked opinions on very different projects and you contribute with your own expertise.
How does your current role differ from academia?
Experiments need a lot of planning and coordination with several groups. A significant period of time (sometimes weeks or months) may pass from when I am asked to give my opinion on a specific way to assess a risk and the work starting to experimentally assess that risk.
I may be involved in projects on compounds from the oncology or cardiovascular portfolio. Most of the time I have never heard of specific targets/mechanism behind those projects, but I am asked to apply my CNS expertise to solve specific issues.
In academia you work on your niche and you tend to become very specialized in a small area. In industry you may be asked opinions on very different projects and you contribute with your own expertise.
It is very dynamic. You learn a lot of new things as you are exposed to several projects at the same time. This can also be a challenging, as you really need to learn how to compartmentalize things related to different projects (especially because some projects can be 1 or 2 years old). You learn to be effective and goal oriented in your work.
What do you miss from academia, and how do you deal with these differences?
I miss not being able to think about a scientific question I find interesting, define the hypothesis and experiment, discuss it with lab members, and just do it. In industry things need more coordination between several teams. At the moment I don’t have interaction with students, but in the future I may have masters students.
What does the future hold?
In the future, I need to decide whether I want to manage other people (in that case I will be promoted ‘Associate Director’ and then ‘Director’) or if I want to manage projects, in that case I will be coordinating the work coming from different groups.
I personally found it difficult to really understand the variety of roles in industry only based on a job advertisement, and I think that once you have your first job in the industry you can identify new roles you did not even know about and you can follow those interests.