Who are you and where are you going?
Hello world, and welcome to my new blog, which will focus on the biotechnology industry. Most blogs in biotech tend to cover emerging trends and technologies. I’d rather focus on what it’s like to actually BE in biotech. In addition to answering the common questions I get from others looking to find their way into or within biotech, I’ll chronicle my evolving path towards becoming a biotechnology executive. And of course, let’s have good healthy discussion and some fun along the way.
The overall theme of my career has been that of a nerd who always wanted to help patients. I went to MIT for undergraduate degrees in mathematics as well as in computer science and engineering, plus minoring in biology. I looked into being a doctor originally, but after I shadowed Dr. Elaine Woo from Massachusetts General Hospital for a day, I confirmed my tragic discomfort with blood and guts. That’s when I looked into computational biology as a career path. After several classes in the area, I pursued an internship with the Molecular Informatics group at Pfizer Discovery Technology Center, and one as a Program Manager with Microsoft. After finishing up my bachelor’s degrees, I stayed at MIT for my M.Eng degree. I conducted my thesis research with Mark Daly’s group at the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research (now known as The Broad Institute), and won the David Adler Thesis Prize for best Master’s thesis of 2004.
Despite my success, my career took a sharp turn. While pursuing my Master’s, I decided to add a class on the side. I took Prof. Fiona Murray’s class, “Building a Biotech Enterprise,” at the MIT Sloan School of Management. The class explored many of the business questions that I had never even considered before: planning manufacturing capacity for the next five to ten years based on a company’s current portfolio… outlicensing a drug… even structuring VC deals! I had to stay after class for extra lessons from my TA on the basics of finance, just to keep up — but I was hooked. I wanted to get into the business of life sciences immediately. I finished up my Master’s that same year and joined Accenture as a Business Analyst in the Health and Life Sciences Strategy practice, based in San Francisco.
After two years at Accenture, I found myself growing weary of the constant travel, and joined Amgen in Thousand Oaks, which is about 30 or so miles west of Los Angeles. Specifically, I joined Amgen’s Business Analysis and Information group in August 2006, where I assumed the role of Senior Marketing Analyst for the Aranesp Non-Oncology brand. In April 2007, I became the Secondary Market Research Manager for both Aranesp Non-Oncology and Sensipar. I am fortunate to work with tremendously brilliant and innovative people who share my passion for improving patient lives. So far, no matter the setbacks I’ve faced, I still bounce out of bed and can’t wait to get back to work.
What about you? Who are you, and where are you going?
Hi Jonathan,
my name is Danny Halperin and I’m a former employee at Amgen (worked for 4 years in Clinical Immunology’s cell-based assay group), and I have since gone back to graduate school to pursue my Phd at UCLA. While my background is in bench science, in the last year I have become increasingly interested in the business aspects of the bio-pharma industry. In particular, I’m interested in business development, university-industry collaboration, technology commercialization and corporate bio-pharma management in general. Of course, there’s still a good chance I’ll end up back on the R&D side of things when I move on after grad school, but complementing my advanced bio-science training with business/management skills and knowledge just feels more like the kind of “complete” well-rounded training I’m looking for. I have and plan on continuing taking business classes at UCLA and getting involved with the technology transfer office. I would also consider myself a “lifelong student.” I thought about doing an MBA while at Amgen, but at the time I saw a lot of people there already doing this and just going into a purely business/management track didn’t interest me at the time since all of my experience has been in R&D. I still feel this connection for the science I suppose.
So, I’m curious what kinds of responsibilities do you have in your job? Your background seems to be in computers and engineering so how did you get into market analysis? Are you considering doing an MBA? Where do you see your career going? Do you interact with the business development group at Amgen? During my time I saw Amgen go through some changes. Frankly, while I’m still very hopeful for D-mab and Amgen has a wonderful pipeline, I am concerned about the long-term innovative drive of the company. Some of the acquisitions Amgen has made recently appear to be strategically sound, but Genentech seems to still be considered the top dog when it comes to the pure research that drives breakthrough discovery. Hearing about the latest hiring freeze was a bit depressing too.
Thanks for starting this blog.
Danny Halperin