Doing a part time PhD in industry. The best of both worlds?

As part of my BSc degree programme at King’s College London (KCL), I was lucky to be able to undertake a year in Industry at a contract research organisation (CRO), known at the time as Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). When I finished my degree, I briefly worked for a pharmaceutical company on a fixed term contract. Unfortunately, the site closed around the time my contract expired but I got in touch with my former placement supervisors at HLS and in a stroke of luck, found there was a job available. Around the time I began working at HLS, Dr Simon Pitchford and Prof Clive Page approached the company to see if they would be interested in collaborating on a PhD studentship. As I knew my future supervisors from my undergraduate degree, I was put forward, and following the final approval of the project, registered as a part-time PhD student at KCL. It was agreed that I would divide my time equally between my PhD studies and my job at HLS. Therefore, I was given 6 years of study, rather than the usual 3 years for full-time PhD projects.

Since my employment at HLS began, the company has gone through a series of mergers, first becoming Envigo, before taking on its current form as part of Covance, which is part of the larger American company LabCorp. My job at Covance involves managing studies for clients at our laboratories here in Cambridgeshire. I generally work on respiratory discovery studies; in brief, companies developing drugs for respiratory diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) will pay us to conduct experiments to see if their compounds are effective in our validated animal models of the disease in question.

One of the reasons that HLS were keen to sponsor the studentship is that there was overlap between the business goals of HLS and the academic goals of the PhD project. My PhD project has focussed on developing an improved animal model of IPF and then investigating the role of platelets in this model. The development of improved animal models is of great interest to CROs as offering new and improved disease models to our clients gives us an advantage over our competitors. Carrying out my PhD studies in industry has also benefited both myself and my supervisors, in that I have been able to make use of the company's resources to carry out a larger scale investigation into the role of platelets in IPF than would have been possible if I was based at university full time. Another positive of this project for Covance is that collaboration with highly respected scientists at KCL gives potential customers confidence that we are experts in this disease area and the right CRO to work with.

Although there is overlap between my job at Covance and my PhD project, balancing the two is not always plain sailing. Managing studies for our clients at Covance can involve working to tight deadlines and as many readers will know, working towards a PhD can also involve highly pressured and stressful situations. I initially found it challenging balancing the two, particularly with regards to saying ‘no’ to either my managers at Covance or my PhD supervisors. I was worried they may be upset or think poorly of me if my work schedule meant I could not take on extra duties when asked or needed flexibility with deadlines. However, I have learnt that this is not the case and that if I am upfront, honest, and realistic in what I aim to achieve, then people are mostly very understanding. It also helps greatly to try to keep as organised as possible.

Although there can be challenges involved with completing a part-time degree in industry, I believe there are also several advantages. For example, I will graduate not only with a PhD, but also with the foundations of a career in industry. I’ve also had the opportunity to develop skills that would be a lot more difficult to develop in an academic setting, such as working with customers and managing people. As mentioned, having the resources of a large company has also been a fantastic help with regards to being able to get large experiments completed with the help of experts in many different disciplines here at Covance.

I consider myself very lucky to have been given the opportunity to take on this project and I am very grateful to my managers here at Covance and my PhD supervisors who have supported me throughout my project so far. From my experience to date, carrying out a part time PhD project in industry has been an excellent way to undertake a doctoral degree. I would encourage anybody interested in completing a PhD to give this option some serious thought.

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Published: 24 Nov 2020

About the author

Rob Carrington


 

Rob is currently a senior study manager in the pharmacology department at Covance in Cambridgeshire. He received his BSc in Pharmacology and Molecular genetics from King’s College London and is currently being sponsored by Covance to study part time at KCL towards his PhD investigating the role of platelets in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

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