Students majoring in engineering or science-related fields have countless directions they can take their careers, from clinical work to research to manufacturing to corporate roles. With so many opportunities available, it’s not always easy to discern which professional path is the right one. But internship experiences, academic classes, and personal preferences can help uncover which direction a student should take their career after graduating.
Biotech, a rapidly growing scientific field that involves the manipulation of living organisms to produce impactful, innovative products and processes, is an example of one career path that students might choose to pursue. This exciting industry sector can be a great fit for anyone who wants to apply novel technologies and scientific principles in order to create life-changing healthcare products and solutions.
Does that sound like you? To provide more clarity on the signs someone might be a good fit for a career in biotech, we spoke with four graduates who began their careers in the analyst program at Roivant Sciences, a leading biotech company.
Roivant aims to improve healthcare by rapidly delivering innovative medicines and technologies to patients. The company does this by building “Vants” – nimble, entrepreneurial biotech and healthcare technology companies. Since the company’s founding in 2014, Roivant has built over 20 Vants and developed over 40 medicines targeting a wide range of serious diseases. Most recently, Roivant is involved in combating the current global health crisis by running a large clinical trial testing a monoclonal antibody in patients with severe COVID-19 and building the COVID-19 Research Database, a free tool for public health and policy researchers to use real-world data to better understand and combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two-year Roivant Analyst Program offers recent college graduates the opportunity to rotate across four functions within Roivant and its Vants, providing analysts the chance to work on projects with real business outcomes while also exposing them to a wide range of career paths available within the biotech industry. We spoke with four former Roivant Analysts about the top reasons they became interested in this field, as well as the key signs a college student should look into post-graduate opportunities in biotech.
Sign #1: You want to work in an innovative industry that makes a real difference.
If you’re someone who wants to make a positive impact with your career while working with cutting-edge technology and science, biotech can be a fulfilling industry to carve out a career path.
The mission-driven elements and complex challenges within biotech piqued the interest of the analysts we spoke with, while the analyst program offered by Roivant gave them the chance to see all sides of the industry and its impact.
Ryan, a Senior Analyst who now works in gene therapy investments at Roivant, recalls being drawn to the field of biotech throughout college. Even as his academic focus shifted between science and engineering, the idea of pursuing a career that has an outsized impact resonated with him and led him to the opportunity at Roivant.
“The biotech field always intrigued me as one with challenges requiring a balanced approach of scientific rigor and creativity to solve. It’s incredibly rewarding to feel your work is making a positive impact in society as a whole,” Ryan said. “Coming out of college, I wanted to find a company that had a start-up mentality and mission-driven goals that were rooted in innovation and dedication to patients. I was lucky to have found Roivant, especially given it had – and continues to have – a unique blend of scrappiness and strong capitalization that makes it an exciting and dynamic workplace. I was particularly drawn to the Analyst Program given the opportunity to explore my interests in science and finance in a way that felt very hands-on.”
The potential to have a positive impact on society also played a large role in the decision of Ameer, another graduate of the Roivant analyst program, to pursue a role in biotech. Ameer studied chemical engineering in college, but wasn’t interested in the common career path that many of his peers took.
“There are common fields where chemical engineering majors end up, such as Oil & Gas or chemical processing,” said Ameer. “The company missions in those fields did not stand out or excite me. In biotech, you might use the same skills or perform similar work as in those fields, but the product you’re working on often has a more immediate connection to people in need.”
Ameer now works as a CMC Engineer for Roivant, a role that has a direct impact on patient outcomes. In one part of his role, he performs CMC process development and CMC regulatory submission support for Gimsilumab, a monoclonal antibody being developed to prevent and treat Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) in patients with COVID-19.
Danny, a former Roivant Analyst and current software and machine learning engineer for Roivant subsidiary VantAI, is also involved in a high-stakes project related to the current global health crisis. VantAI pairs machine learning techniques with deep systems biology expertise to build computational models that uncover hidden relationships between molecules, targets, and diseases – and that includes COVID-19. VantAI's strategy on COVID-19 has been to uncover novel targets involved in less-understood phases of the viral life cycle in order to identify the drugs that can combat the virus.
“It’s rewarding that you ultimately are working on innovative therapeutics that may impact a lot of lives,” said Danny. “It’s particularly exciting when you can work in disease areas that are completely unsolved.”
Sign #2: The idea of constantly learning and expanding your areas of expertise is exciting to you.
Sitting at the intersection of science, technology, healthcare, and business, biotechnology is an ever-evolving field with a wide range of career paths. If you’re someone who enjoys expanding your scope of knowledge and taking on new challenges, the field of biotech could be right for you.
“One sign someone might be a good fit for this industry is having an interest in a broader scope of activities compared to becoming an expert on a specific subject,” said Ameer. “Many biotech roles are built really well for that because you might be working on something and then six months in, there’s a new technology, drug, or disease to learn about.”
Given that the landscape of biotech is vast and rapidly evolving, the Roivant Analyst Program can be an invaluable experience to understand the full extent of opportunities available. Catherine, a former Roivant analyst now enrolled in medical school, credits her time at Roivant with showing her the full scope of the drug development process and the different directions she can take her career path. After medical school, she hopes to straddle the line between clinical work and the biotech industry, whether that’s on a medical advisory board or designing clinical programs.
“The rotational aspect of the program is very informative,” said Catherine. “I gained experience in asset finding and evaluating clinical programs and also worked on a commercial ideation team as well as strategic finance. It was a diversified exposure to all aspects of the life stages of bringing a drug to market, from the discovery of the molecule to designing the clinical program and planning for a commercial launch to the financing. I found that extremely valuable in deciding what part of the drug development process I’d like to be in. Compared to my peers, no one has that breadth of experience that covers each stage of what it takes to bring a drug to market.”
These rotations were also particularly helpful in showing Ryan the diverse set of opportunities available across the field of biotech.
“At Roivant, you have the opportunity to see and contribute to workstreams that span the entire spectrum of the biotech industry – from honing your investments strategy, to developing groundbreaking technologies (both biological and computational), to designing clinical trials,” Ryan said. “Especially for a mission-driven, innovative-minded student coming out of school who is interested in the biotech field, but hasn’t yet had the opportunity to determine in what capacity, the Roivant Analyst Program is the best possible place to help you find your path.”
Sign #3: You want to work with cutting-edge technologies in addition to more traditional sciences and settings.
Students majoring in the sciences often end up in professions that are confined within lab or clinical settings. Biotechnology, however, allows students to leverage the skills they acquired throughout their academic experience in a wide range of settings while still working toward scientific and medicinal breakthroughs.
“If you enjoy problem-solving and you don’t want to be on an engineering site or lab, biotech offers you the opportunity to solve cutting-edge problems,” said Danny. “The rotations in the analyst program gave me the opportunity to work in different departments and learn about new domains, like tech.”
Roivant’s impressive portfolio of healthcare technology companies – including Datavant, Lokavant, and VantAI – means that individuals like Danny can pursue their passion for tech while still utilizing their academic backgrounds. In Danny’s current role as a software and machine learning engineer at VantAI, for example, a significant portion of his software work is heavily reliant on chemistry, biology, and applied computational biochemistry.
The integration of new technologies into traditional processes is one reason the industry is such an exciting one – and it’s what fosters an innovative environment for those who enter it.
“A central focus for the industry at large should be to deliver medicines to patients as efficiently as possible,” said Catherine. “There stands to be innovation for how that is actually done, and it takes an open mind and a willingness to be creative to take on that challenge. You need to have a desire to innovate.”
Do you have that desire to innovate and solve today’s most pressing health challenges? If you identify with any of the signs listed above, consider applying to Roivant’s Analyst Program – you’ll find that a career in biotech would be a fulfilling and impactful professional path.
Learn more about Roivant and the Analyst Program here.