Quantitative Systems Pharmacology Research Scientist Review

I enjoyed working in my placement year. Being situated in the beautiful city of canterbury greatly attributed to this.

I felt very valued by my colleges, I was never made to feel as if I didn't belong to the team despite the lack of knowledge I had within the systems pharmacology industry. I was involved in the team meetings every week, and shadowed important group meetings attaining a real insight to what the industry would be like.

Guidance was given whenever I had asked for support. If there were any problems I could ask, I battled personal struggles through the year and management had always been very friendly.

I did find myself bored most days due to the monotonous tasks of acquiring information day in and day out. However, I can see that there wasn't that much I could actually do. My supervisor then set me on a task to do my own PKPD analysis for the review by my university - this was very interesting and thoroughly enjoyed it!

I sourced literature for the team which would be used in the modelling for PKPD analysis.

Skills acquired: - The ability to reference documents to scientific standard. - Read and interpret scientific literature - Ability to work in a professional team - Ability to present in front of a team and set my own deadlines - Learnt the basic interface of MATLAB and sim-biology package

Generally very quiet. Everyone was very hard at work, so in a sense very busy. I did have one or two colleges to chat to a couple times during the day.

Very well organised. The supervisor did a great job in responding to the university and making time for meetings to discuss work.

My supervisor and colleges invested a lot of time into my development at the company, especially when trying to understand PKPD. However I feel I could have received more training from the company and would have loved to have travelled to main headquarters participate in training days.

I'm unsure about this question. Usually you would need a PhD to apply for a position on the team. I think after many years of development and after attaining a PhD would drastically change my employment prospects within the organisation anyway.

I went and had lunch a few times with colleges, they had also sent me off with a lovely lunch in town. Besides this, I never really saw any of them outside work - probably due to the huge difference in age.

I had already lived in the town for two years and was used to living and socialising on a cheap budget. Was great to be situated in a lovely student city.

Nightlife was great for me, a few clubs and lots of pubs/bars!

I was the social secretary for the mountaineering society whilst working at Simcyp/Certara. If you work in a student city, you should join any student activities associated with the university!