Choosing the perfect path to an industrial R&D career

Over the last decade, a raft of initiatives have opened up industrial careers to more people than ever before: a PhD is no longer a prerequisite. But for those who took a different path, niggling doubts can remain about how their choice may affect their career. ‘I get the impression that 20 years ago, it was far less common to enter without a PhD,’ says Marianela Gimenez-Asis, a scientist at Pharmaron. ‘But people that have been hired straight out of master’s like me, we’ve all, at some point or other, asked ourselves the question of what we’re missing.’

Straight to it

The occasional moment of doubt does not detract from the conviction that entering industry immediately was the right decision, says Gareth Hart, a scientist at Johnson Matthey. The summer before beginning his undergraduate course, Hart secured a two-month placement with the company and this positive experience crystallised his ambition to return after his degree. ‘For me, it was the desire to make a real tangible impact. I could see such a great sense of teamwork and great meaning behind the work, whereas I felt that I wouldn’t get that in an academic group,’ he says.

Entering the industrial research environment fresh from university naturally involved a period of adjustment as Hart familiarised himself with his first project and the company’s more formalised procedures. Broadly though, he felt aptly prepared by his undergraduate degree and well supported by his new team. ‘You’re surrounded by people at varying career levels, each with a slightly different background. Each person’s skill set was something to tap into and they were very willing to share their experiences and skills,’ Hart recalls.

Now four years into his industrial career, Hart believes this experience of how industry operates places him at an advantage over candidates entering after a PhD. ‘PhD candidates would have a similar amount of practical experience, but they won’t understand how the business works: the strategies behind intellectual property, how to satisfy business requirements, how to interact externally with potential partners or collaborators. I’ve had such a huge exposure to these different aspects.’

The benefits of starting immediately extend beyond business insight. For both Gimenez-Asis and Nathan Caplan, also a scientist and master’s recruit at Pharmaron, committing four years to a PhD was a daunting prospect, especially considering the disruption to their undergraduate practical studies caused by Covid-19. An industrial position therefore provided the perfect means to test the waters of a future career in chemistry, gaining practical experience while building a more cohesive picture of the options open to them.

That’s a privilege to have that diversity of technical experience so early

Marianela Gimenez-Asis

The unique demands of process chemistry mean that all new recruits are assigned a senior team member to shadow as they learn the ropes. ‘Almost all of the skills you’ll learn on-the-job – they don’t expect us to have process-specific skills at that level,’ says Caplan. ‘I see starting straight out as a big advantage. We’ve had a lot of exposure to practices and considerations, like process safety and environmental impacts, that you don’t worry about in a PhD.’

‘On the more technical side, we have access to equipment and techniques that we maybe otherwise wouldn’t have had in academia,’ adds Gimenez-Asis. ‘I think that’s a privilege to have that diversity of technical experience so early on in our careers.’

Two-and-a-half and four years in respectively, Gimenez-Asis and Caplan’s initial uncertainty about a future in chemistry has been replaced by a sense of confidence and excitement for where their new skills will take them. However, like many master’s recruits, they occasionally worry whether they missed something important by not pursuing a PhD first – most significantly, theoretical knowledge. ‘It’s not unusual that someone shares a molecule and says “Can people submit ideas for how you would make this?” Coming here as a fresh master’s grad, that’s about the most intimidating email you can receive,’ says Caplan.

‘It’s possible to gain those retrosynthesis and route planning skills if you want to,’ adds Gimenez-Asis. ‘But because it’s not as necessary for my day-to-day, since often a route is already locked, people that join with a PhD tend to have much better paper chemistry knowledge than I do.’

An academic stop

It was precisely this more academic side to chemistry which first attracted Dario Filippini and Loïc Pantaine to PhDs before joining industry. Particularly for Filippini, the extremely pure and fundamental nature of his master’s course at the Sapienza Università di Roma in Italy meant that he was eager to explore the wider applications and reach of chemical research before committing to a single path. Both Filippini and Pantaine always intended to settle in industry and the challenge and stimulating breadth of academic research was exactly what they wanted to gain from their PhDs before making the transition.

As senior scientists in process chemistry at Pharmaron, the technical knowledge they gained during that time is certainly an asset. But, says Pantaine, the relative importance of this experience for an industrial career varies. ‘Depending on the field of chemistry within pharmaceutical companies, some departments rarely (if at all) hire out of master’s because the roles require a lot of academic understanding: the functionalities that are going to work for specific binding sites, etc,’ he explains. ‘On the other hand, I know of at least one polymer manufacturing company that doesn’t hire anyone with PhDs because it’s mostly learning on-the-job.’

Process lies somewhere between these extremes. Route scouting projects are a blend of methodology and synthesis, very similar to an organic PhD. Meanwhile, delivery projects – which involve producing kilograms of material at a time – are much more of a departure from PhD skills and all new recruits, regardless of background, begin on a relatively even footing.

Confidence, resilience and independence are valuable traits

For Alex Williams, now an associate principal scientist at Pharmaron, the added security of an additional qualification in the early-mid 2010s, when the process industry was in a state of flux, decided the matter. ‘I was already leaning towards staying in academia and the fact that pursuing a PhD enabled me to delay the job hunt until the market stabilised, and be more qualified at the end, meant it was also the practical decision,’ he recalls.

The technical skills he gained – a prerequisite at the time – have doubtless been an asset in his career but Williams believes that the soft skills developed during a PhD are equally valuable in an industrial environment. The financial constraints of academia frequently spark creative solutions to practical problems, standing candidates in good stead to deal with the challenges of industrial work.

Similarly, confidence, resilience and independence are valuable traits, formed and matured by the lone responsibility of a PhD project. But, in the collaborative industrial environment, it’s vital that this autonomy is balanced with the ability to work effectively in a team.

The recruiter’s perspective

In fact, the needs and structure of the existing team is one of the key considerations in all recruitment decisions, says Barbara Breeze. A senior principal scientist, Breeze joined Johnson Matthey in 2008, at a time when a PhD was the expected route into industry. While never an absolute requirement – Breeze believes her career trajectory would ultimately have been the same without – having the qualification was almost certainly instrumental to the speed at which she progressed through the levels of her career.

When building her own team, qualifications are just one factor she looks at. Some extremely technical positions will require specific expertise only gained through academic study, but broadly her choices are made around candidates’ attitudes and behaviours – curiosity, enthusiasm, adaptability, teamwork – without the requirement for particular qualifications. ‘If it’s something that we can teach on-the-job, then it depends on the structure of the team and whether we have the ability to support training and mentoring for the new recruit,’ Breeze explains.

A mixture of scientific backgrounds is a real asset to the team, she continues. Their differing experiences lend each member unique strengths that they can share with the group to help everyone become well-rounded. And although some differences may be present initially, these soon become indistinguishable. ‘I would expect the people with PhDs to be more self-starting, able to troubleshoot, and to need less support than those joining from undergraduate,’ she says. ‘Whereas the people joining from undergraduate can often have a wider skill set because they’ve not honed in on one area and have a bit more agility to flip between different aspects of chemistry. And after three or four years, it’s very difficult to tell which route someone took at all!’ 

No door closes

Regardless of their initial qualifications, industrial employees constantly evolve new skills, which means there are always opportunities to address any perceived gaps.

At Pharmaron, the open and flexible atmosphere makes it easy to develop skills in new areas from colleagues in adjacent teams, says Gimenez-Asis. ‘Each piece of equipment has its own team (eg high-pressure hydrogenations, LC–MS, NMR) and there are different working groups such as the process safety team, AI and machine learning team, and high-throughput experimentation. Nathan is part of the catalysis centre team and I was interested in learning about coding so I’m building a solvent selection tool to be used in-house.’

‘Somewhere else you’d maybe need a formal qualification in that area, but here, pretty much anyone can get involved with these different initiatives,’ adds Caplan. The company also provides a voluntary training programme to help address perceived gaps in theoretical knowledge. Staff share their area of expertise through lessons and seminars and the course is open to anyone who would like to develop a deeper understanding of the theory underpinning organic chemistry.

As a much larger company, Johnson Matthey takes a slightly more standardised approach, generally opting for an 80:20 split of on-the-job training and professional courses. ‘It’s all about communication,’ says Hart. ‘If someone feels they have missed an aspect of not doing postgraduate research, by communicating that with line management, building that skill can become an individual’s objective for the year.’

There’s no single best path to a successful career in industry

Hart recently took his ambition for professional development one step further, enrolling as an industrial fellow through the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 to pursue an industry-focused PhD at the University of Warwick, UK. The fellowship enables him to retain his position at Johnson Matthey while taking an academic deep-dive into an up-and-coming area of research. ‘I felt I had gained so much from having the several years in industry, but I also wondered whether I was missing something by not having done a PhD,’ he explains. ‘It was the aspect of personal project management, having an intimate understanding of the academic landscape, and that close academic network of researchers spread throughout different industries.’

For the next three years, Hart will spend roughly 10% of his time on campus, culminating with the production of a thesis on his chosen research area.

Ultimately, there’s no single best path to a successful career in industry. ‘Long-term it doesn’t matter at all,’ says Breeze. ‘If you’re motivated, inquisitive, and you want to learn from those around you, you can join at any point in your academic career and go a long way.’