The Call of Industry

Increasingly, scientists are considering the transition from academia to industry. What does it take to make that move? APS Executive Director Scott Steen, CAE, FASAE, spoke to two APS members who recently took the plunge: Katherine Grabek, PhD, chief science officer and co-founder of Fauna Bio in Emeryville, California, and Corey Reynolds, PhD, regional medical scientific director for Merck. 

Grabek: At Fauna Bio, our focus is mining the extraordinary genomics of mammals that have, over the course of their evolution, adapted extreme physiology. In particular, we’re looking at hibernating mammals and how they’re naturally protected from insult that would lead to disease or death in us. We’re looking at the genes that they’re using and then identifying those as targets, to then go and validate as potential therapies for human disease.

Reynolds: My job involves building relationships with physicians in the therapeutic areas of heart failure, NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis), atherosclerosis and thrombosis. Those relationships often develop into those scientific leaders taking part in clinical trials that we’re running. 

Steen: How did you end up where you are?

Reynolds: I was aware of the medical science liaison role when I was in graduate school. I met somebody who was in that role who told me, “Go do a postdoc so that you’ll have that experience on your resume, and then if you decide to go into industry, you’ll have that already built up.” So I went and did a postdoc, enjoyed the work that I was doing, and stayed at the Baylor College of Medicine for almost 12 years. But toward the end, I spent less time actually doing science, so I made the decision to actively pursue a medical science liaison role within industry. 

Grabek: I’d always been curious about industry. At the University of Colorado, where I did my PhD, it was very focused on the academic track and that’s what you did. Year four of my postdoc at Stanford rolls around and I had a little bit of this existential crisis of, do I really want to be an academic? That year was quite difficult for me. I started looking at other careers. Our postdoc adviser, Carlos Bustamante, approached a couple of my co-founders about starting a company around animal genomics. So, we three would spend our lunches brainstorming: What would we do with this, and how would we start this company? We met an investor not long thereafter and had seed funding pretty soon after that. We had about two weeks to decide, do you want to start a company or not? We really wanted to go for it because we felt when else is this going to happen? 

Steen: How transferrable was the knowledge you gained in academia to an industry environment?

Reynolds: The skills I obtained in graduate school, in postdoc and academia were actually quite transferrable—specifically the teaching I did during that time. You can always tell people  who have teaching experience because we’re a lot more comfortable talking to people and explaining materials and science. Some of the things that I wasn’t prepared for: I came into this job really green. I thought that the doctors would be excited to talk to me, and that’s not always the case. You have to be very persistent in the way that you go about trying to schedule meetings. I won’t say schmoozing, but getting in good with the admin so that you can get to the doctors. I would also say that at Baylor I was used to a routine, and industry is not like that at all. It changes daily. That was probably the hardest part for me to accept—the constant change that was going on around me. 

Grabek: I learned about learning to be independent and design my own projects and learn deep knowledge on things I had no knowledge on and building the confidence that I could do that. But there are a few skills I had to unlearn. One of them that was a big change for me is going from being an individual—this is your project and you’re going to be the first author on this paper. [But] in industry and in startups, it doesn’t work like that. 

Steen: Where do people struggle the most?

Reynolds: It’s folklore that we’re great at science but we can’t communicate with people, that we’re just kind of lab rats. And that’s, as you see here today, that’s not the case at all. But there are some people who are just not comfortable communicating. They’re not very good at reading a room. They’re not very good at reading body language. Those are the ones that aren’t successful at being in the role that I’m in.

Grabek: I would say it would be working with others. Maybe they’re great scientists and they’re great at the bench, or they’re great doing analysis on the computer, but they need to work with others and communicate and work in a team. 

Steen: What are one or two things that have made you successful as a scientist in industry?

Reynolds: My ability to communicate science to pretty much anyone regardless of their level of education. The second would be my ability to communicate with ease. Talking to people isn’t difficult for me.

Grabek: For better or for worse, I can be very stubborn so I can push things forward that I have very great conviction in. And then also being able to learn very quickly and not be scared or intimidated on something I don’t know anything about. Because I have the mindset of “how hard can it be? I can learn this.” And then, just being able to be flexible. 

Steen: Do you have any “I wish I had known”?

Grabek: I wish I had known about LinkedIn a little bit earlier and was able to reach out to scientists and industry, and do informational interviews or do a consulting project, and just gain a little bit more experience, and get a peek into the world of industry, instead of it being a mystery to me.

Reynolds: I wish I would’ve known how quickly things change in industry. Literally, you may get an email or call that says, “oh, we decided to get rid of this team,” and then tomorrow you’re out of a job. I did not understand that aspect of industry at all.

Steen: It sounds like both of you feel like you ended up in exactly the right place and that this is the career that you would’ve wanted.

Grabek: Yes, for sure.

Reynolds: Yes, I think mine was ordered in the way it was supposed to be.

This article was originally published in the May 2023 issue of The Physiologist Magazine.