I came in a bit earlier today to check out my poster. I didn’t get a chance to see it as my supervisor printed it and carried it up to the US. It wasn’t too bad and the resolution looks pretty good for its size. Not all the morning sessions appealed to me. However, there were a few talks on aging & immune function which were quite interesting. Everyone knows that older people have weaker immune systems. But how and why were the questions addressed by the talks. There was also evidence that older memory cells were much more effective than recent memory cells. Aging just like fine wine.

I also took a walk around the career exhibitions to change the frame of concentration and attended a talk on the drug discovery process, to see how a PhD person fits into that industry. The speaker seemed well exposed and his experiences on both the academic and industrial side made it more creditable. His talk really gave specific insights to the job requirements, skill sets and process of the entire drug discovery process. It seems that with my skills, I can either fit into the early discovery process or the downstream sale/marketing/communication end. Although most of the terms like GLP, GMP and GCP were familiar, I never really understood its role. They should have taught us about Business in Biotech and include case studies or visits to manufacturing centres. Perhaps they do it now but back in my day, there wasn’t much. We learnt the GLP word for word. There were other stations like resume critic, career counseling, and a whole panel of job postings. Another session I attended gave great tips for academics to enter the biotech industry. Quite a few tips were related to resume, cover letters, but the segment on networking was good and negotiation of salary was good too. So much opportunities, all in the wrong country for me.

I stood for about thirty minutes by my poster. During that time, only one person came up to talk to me out of over 3,000 immunologists. Sad, but good as there aren’t many people involved in the study and the one I talked too gave me some clues to look into. The other person I spoke to was the guy from the next door poster and he also gave some ideas and clues to follow up.

I’ve decided to end the day early. There is so much in my mind now that I’ve got to take the time to write it all out and draft up ideas. Tomorrow is the final (half) day and most talks should have less attendance.