{"350601":{"#nid":"350601","#data":{"type":"news","title":"UCB-Georgia Tech Day","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIf there was a recurring theme at the first UCB-Georgia Tech Day, it was this bit of common sense: You rarely end up where you start in a career. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThat essential piece of career wisdom kept coming up during the November 7th\u0026nbsp; event, when about 70 students from the Georgia Institute of Technology got an insider\u2019s view of a global biopharmaceutical company at the North America Operations headquarters of UCB in Smyrna.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cYou really don\u2019t wind up where you first started,\u201d says Bruce Lavin, vice president of Medical Affairs for UCB, North America. \u201cAnd that\u2019s a good thing.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe experience of his UCB colleague, Deb Hogerman, serves as a fitting example. Thirty years ago, Hogerman never could have imagined that she would become the North America vice president for Regulatory Affairs for a major pharmaceutical company. \u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cI was schlepping around vats of nutrient media, growing E. coli for vaccine research, and I remember thinking, \u2018I went to college for this?\u2019 I mean, it\u2019s an important job, but it\u2019s not what I wanted to do with my career,\u201d Hogerman tells an audience of Georgia Tech students. \u201cWhen I got into this industry 30 years ago, \u2018regulatory affairs\u2019 wasn\u2019t even considered a career path. But it has grown by leaps and bounds since then.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ERegulatory Affairs was just one of four specific focus sessions that students were able to take advantage of at UCB-Georgia Tech Day. Lavin led the session on \u2018medical affairs,\u2019 and there were also informative sessions focused on \u2018supply chain,\u2019 as well as \u2018market access and pricing.\u2019 There was also a session, delivered live from the UK by Neil Weir, UCB\u2019s senior vice president for research, on drug development, and a panel discussion featuring a group of UCB executives. The idea was to give Georgia Tech students an unprecedented snapshot of an industry setting.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe\u2019ve never done anything like this before,\u201d says Cynthia Sundell, director of life science industry collaborations for the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Tech. \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity to shed some light on the inner workings of a pharmaceutical company and perhaps provide some guidance in terms of potential careers in the industry. Our students are the biotech workforce of the future. They\u2019re the main reason companies come to us.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EThe wide-angled approach played well with the students who attended. According to Tom Bongiorno, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in bioengineering, \u201cGeorgia Tech seminars often give students the opportunity to learn about one particular aspect of the pharmaceutical industry, but the UCB visit enabled us to hear a bit about each aspect of the pipeline, from drug discovery to regulatory clearance and marketing, in one day.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EUCB-Georgia Tech Day was the result of a concentrated effort to bring the two entities closer together. Jeff Wren, UCB\u2019s president of the North America Region, has made it clear that he\u2019d like to build a strong relationship with Georgia Tech.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cWe\u2019re exploring collaborative research options and thinking of other ways to work closely with Georgia Tech,\u201d Wren says. Plans are in the works, for example, to develop an internship program at UCB, which does about $4.2 billion in annual sales globally (3.4 billion euros), impacting the lives of more than 700,000 patients. \u201cWe prefer to think of our success in terms of the number of patients we serve, and we know every single one of their names.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EUCB has carved out a significant niche in the industry, serving patients by developing and marketing therapeutics in two main focus areas \u2013 central nervous system and immunology. The company, which operates under the banner, \u201cInspired by patients. Driven by science,\u201d also spends more of its revenues on research and development, on a percentage basis, than almost every other pharmaceutical company \u2013 25 to 27 percent, versus an industry average of about 17 percent.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cHardly any other pharmaceutical company in the world invests more in research and development than UCB does,\u201d Wren says. \u201cOne of our primary roles as a pharmaceutical company is delivering phenomenal products to patients, and we can\u2019t do that if we invest any less. So that\u2019s where we spend our time and effort.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EWhich means as the company transforms \u2013 and it will, Wren says \u2013 the career opportunities in areas requiring advanced degrees will evolve also.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u201cI think the opportunities will be endless in the pharmaceutical industry as we move forward,\u201d Lavin says. \u201cHere we are, a biopharma organization responsible for developing healthcare strategies for patients, based on their unmet needs. How do we respond to those needs? How do we become more innovative? How do we offer better options and improve healthcare? How do we understand how to marry new technology with clinical science? I think the answers are in the students here today.\u201d\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Students get close-up view of biopharmaceutical powerhouse"}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EStudents get close-up view of biopharmaceutical powerhouse\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Students get close-up view of biopharmaceutical powerhouse"}],"uid":"28153","created_gmt":"2014-12-01 11:25:05","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:17:37","author":"Jerry Grillo","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2014-12-01T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2014-12-01T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"350581":{"id":"350581","type":"image","title":"Jeff Wren","body":null,"created":"1449245702","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:15:02","changed":"1475895078","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:51:18","alt":"Jeff Wren","file":{"fid":"201954","name":"ucb-jeff.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ucb-jeff.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/ucb-jeff.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1934421,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/ucb-jeff.jpg?itok=F6VnvsU9"}},"350591":{"id":"350591","type":"image","title":"Bruce Cindi Student","body":null,"created":"1449245702","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:15:02","changed":"1478871456","gmt_changed":"2016-11-11 13:37:36","alt":"","file":{"fid":"201955","name":"bruce_cindi_student.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/bruce_cindi_student.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/bruce_cindi_student.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":850757,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/bruce_cindi_student.jpg?itok=U_W2ignA"}}},"media_ids":["350581","350591"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.ucb.com\/","title":"UCB website"}],"groups":[{"id":"1254","name":"Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"139","name":"Business"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/node\/jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EJerry Grillo\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ECommunications Officer II\u003Cbr \/\u003EParker H. Petit Institute for\u003Cbr \/\u003EBioengineering and Bioscience\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}