Moving from Academia to Biotech
Thoughts and advice on transitioning from a career in academia to industry biotech.
This is a guest post from Stephen Turner, who publishes the Paired Ends Substack about genomics, computational biology, and data science. He also happens to be one of the best bioinformatics engineering leaders I’ve ever worked with. Just sayin’. So I wanted him to share his thoughts on how he went from an academic to a leader in industry.
After I finished my postdoc I was faculty in academia for eight years before moving to a consulting firm for five years, then joined a biotech startup two years ago.
I’ve been blogging for over 15 years, and engaging in scientific discussion on social media for about the same amount of time. I’ve also given a few talks on non-academic careers and non-traditional academic roles at both the University of Virginia where I was previously faculty, and at my alma mater James Madison University. Between these occasional lectures and my online presence, I’ve had hundreds of trainees and early- to mid-career academics reach out to me asking for advice about transitioning into industry. There’s been an uptick in these requests lately, as our government continues its assault on NIH/NSF/CDC research funding to universities.
So here’s an attempt to put a few pieces of the advice I give in writing. It’s mostly applicable to people working in data science and bioinformatics, although some of this still applies if you work in the lab.
A disclaimer: don’t take my advice
I’m always hesitant to give advice like this because the time and place where I made decisions about my training, projects I’d work on, skills I wanted to pick up, etc. were different than they are now. I’m telling you the numbers I used to win the lottery. I’m generally skeptical of anyone handing out career advice, and don’t take my word as gospel either. You can’t use someone else’s knowledge to achieve your own goals.
While I’ve made some deliberate decisions along the way, much of the reason I am where I am right now is sheer luck and happenstance rather than my own agency or force of will. I’ve found myself at the right place at the right time with the right people in the room, and my path (or the path of anyone giving this kind of advice) isn’t reproducible. Be wary of advice you’re reading here or from anyone else giving career advice by telling the story of their own success.
Publish
The publish or perish aphorism in academia will serve you well in some industry roles. I left my faculty position at UVA to join a consulting firm as a senior staff scientist, assuming the role of principal investigator on several grants and contracts. My publication record helped with this move, as well as my move into my current startup as principal scientist.
I’ve been on the other side of the hiring table for many years now. We don’t publish as much in industry. But having a publication record, especially if you’re first or last author, is a good indicator to me that (1) you can write, (2) you can design and manage a research project, and (3) if the author list is long and multi-institutional, it tells me that you can wrangle collaborators from multiple disciplines and institutions.
Your publication record on your CV shouldn’t be front and center, ahead of your technical skills and project/leadership accomplishment. I’d also warn against focusing on publication in a job interview. Some companies may be supportive of academic publishing, but many will be turned off if they perceive that you care deeply about continuing to publish and that you’d be disappointed if you can no longer do so.
Be online, but not too online
Take up space. Get a personal website. I’m a big fan of the postcards R package for making a personal website with RMarkdown (shameless plug: see my personal website as an example). Get an online presence that showcases your portfolio. This could be your Google Scholar, your GitHub profile, a blog, etc. Have other high PageRank websites like your university / lab website point back to your personal website. Put it in your X/LinkedIn/Bluesky/GitHub profile. Make it so that when I Google your name, I land on the pages that you want me to see.
Show me, don’t tell me. If I’m hiring a technical role, I can read your CV, but showing me what you can do is so much more powerful than telling me what you can do in your CV. I’ve written about this previously. You might start a technical blog (and link to it from your personal website). On this blog I’d recommend writing about what you’re doing, and what you’re learning.
Be careful with social media. Some of you aren’t going to like this advice. Feel free to skip ahead. I’ve been on Twitter/X (@strnr) since 2009, and Bluesky more recently (@stephenturner.us). I use these platforms exclusively to talk about science, engage with scientists, promoting the cool work other people are doing and occasionally shamelessly promoting my own research. It’s tempting to get drawn into politics and culture war commentary but I’d strongly recommend against doing so in public. I might agree with 100% of your views on what Washington DC is doing. Even if I do, as a hiring manager if I see you’re engaging loudly and forcefully in political discourse and culture war commentary with your timeline filled with snark and outrage, it’s going to be a hard pass for me. Since leaving academia I’ve worked in the defense industry and now in biotech, both of which have more viewpoint diversity than the ivory tower. I won’t stake my reputation and risk disrupting team dynamics by bringing in someone whose activism I fear might bleed over into the workplace, even if I completely agree with those views and support such activism. Or maybe skip X/etc altogether. I find that smaller focused communities to be more engaging. Consider joining communities on Slack like nf-core, Bits in Bio, R-contributors, and the Data Science Learning Community.
GitHub front and center
This is most relevant if you’re trying to get into a technical role. Related to the advice above on writing and learning in public: put your GitHub profile front and center on your resume. Show me, don’t tell me. I recognize that if you’re already in industry/biotech, you probably don’t have many public projects. But if you’re an academic you should! Put your own projects on GitHub, both your lab projects and your personal projects. Highlight your contributions to open-source, but make sure your GitHub profile isn’t filled exclusively with forks (it’s easy to see through this).
Network at conferences 🤢
It feels gross even suggesting it, because I think the idea of deliberate “networking” with people I don’t know under some contrived pretense is nauseating. But it’s important and you can’t not do it. I’ve found a few things that can help make things feel less contrived and to more quickly get past insufferable small talk.
A poster can facilitate conversation more than a talk. If you’re presenting at a conference, a talk is usually seen as more prestigious than a poster. But a poster gives you more opportunities to strike up a productive conversation than a talk.
Other people are just as awkward as you think you are. Look, all scientists are a little bit odd and socially awkward, present company included. That person scrolling their phone alone over a plate of canapés and coffee during a poster session is just as desperately hoping someone would strike up a conversation with them as you are. Go initiate the conversation.
Get past the small talk. Nothing makes me want to escape a conversation more than talking about the flight trouble you had on the way here or the local weather. Consider a few alternatives to the normal questions. Instead of how are you, which puts people on autopilot (“fine and you?”), try what’s been good, or what’s the highlight of your day? Instead of what do you do or where do you work, try what exciting things have you worked on lately? Most people don’t think they’re defined by what they do, and some people might think where they work is boring. Asking people what exciting thing they’ve done lately gives them permission to tell you about some cool project, which could be a side hustle or a personal project outside their work life. And they’ll be excited to do so!
There’s a technique I’m working on myself sometimes called “reverse charisma.” The idea stems from the fact that most people would like to be seen as charismatic, but you might form a better connection by making the other person feel charismatic.
There’s a story which could be apocryphal about Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone competing against each other for the position of Prime Minister in the UK. Jennie Jerome (Winston Churchill’s mother) dined with both on separate evenings. When a journalist asked for her impression of both men, she responded:
When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England.
But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling that I was the cleverest woman.
Before launching into your own career goals and ambitions, make the person you’re talking to feel like the cleverest and most charismatic woman or man in the room.
Emphasize leadership, but not too much
This depends on the kind of position you’re applying for. If it’s a purely technical position, well, emphasize your technical prowess. If it’s a more senior position where you’re leading projects, supervising teams, developing the business, make sure to emphasize your project management and team leadership experience. But if the position is a more technical role and you overemphasize how many people you’ve supervised, how many grants you’ve submitted, how many projects you’ve managed, etc., you’re risking being seen as the manager that the company doesn’t need instead of the individual contributor that they do. It’s a truism that as you move more into management and leadership roles your technical skill will inevitably atrophy. I know this, and if all I see on your resume for my technical position is your leadership drive and experience, you probably won’t get an interview.
Understand the business
Your foundational technical skills and leadership experience are important, but have to be viewed in a real-world context. I’d highly recommend reading Sean Goedecke’s recent essay, “Knowing where your engineer salary comes from." The central thesis of the essay is that if your work isn’t clearly connected to company profit, your position is unstable. Understand the company’s business model — how do they make money? How would your work support the business model?
I interviewed for a job at 23andMe way back in 2010. I had a great rapport with all the scientists I spoke with, and I think I impressed them with my publication history, software development experience, and research background. At the end of the day in a short conversation with co-founder Anne Wojcicki, she asked bluntly a question to the effect of: “don’t you want to know how we plan to make money?” I got a job offer in the end, but in this moment I felt caught off guard and mortified that I hadn’t done my homework to really understand the business case for bringing me on. Don’t make this mistake.
Aside: U.S. Government — keep a clean nose
There’s a big defense and intelligence industry where I live here in Virginia. I spent over 10 years working in this sector, both when I was in academia and when I left to join a consulting firm. The military-industrial complex pays well, and you can do some really exciting science that has real-world immediate impact.
To get these jobs you’ll almost certainly need a Secret or Top Secret clearance, and often you’ll have to take a polygraph exam every few years. Don’t do drugs, kids. Even if you live in a legal state, cannabis is still federally illegal, and using cannabis can be grounds for denying a clearance. If you have in the past, tell the truth because it’ll come up on your polygraph exam (pseudoscience nonsense as they are). Pay your parking tickets, keep your state inspection up to date, don’t pirate music from the torrentz, don’t run up credit card debt, and don’t try to hide anything embarrassing about your personal life. Anything that could be seen as making you subject to bribery will be a fast track to a clearance denial and getting blackballed from this industry entirely.
Know that it might be difficult to come back
When I left academia I spent most of my first few years in the consulting business working in national security. The work my team and I were doing was innovative and pushing the boundaries of human and microbial forensic genetics. But this work will never see the light of day. I was able to publish some toward the end of my time there, but not much. Same with software — I was able to open-source some of the tools I developed, but only a small subset. Know that in most industries, your publication record and open-source software profile will probably take a hit, and publications are the coin of the realm in academia. Also, unlike leaving a postdoc position, you almost certainly won’t be able to take your work with you when you leave.
Some academic departments like to say they want to recruit faculty from industry, startups, government, and other sectors beyond academia. But in practice this is rare. I don’t have a research program I can take with me, nor do I have my own funding I can take somewhere else. All your research and funding are company property. Spend enough time outside of academia and you might find it hard to get back in.
Aside from the matter of can you come back, another question you’ll face is would you want to at all? You’ll definitely take a pay cut going back into academia, and if you’re at a startup you’ll probably leave stock options on the table.
Either way, you have lots of options!
-Stephen