Discovering a Career of Impact By Learning to Define My Major
Embracing innovation’s uncertainty to facilitate biotech’s flourishing
What’s Molecular Engineering?
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been asked this question and throughout my 4 years of undergraduate studies. I have never described my degree the same way twice. Every job interview I’ve had, any encounter with friends from high school or family I haven’t seen in a while, and any new person I’ve told about my college experience has definitely asked this question at some point–and to this day, I’ve still yet to come up with a consistent answer. That’s just a benefit of the degree, though. Far from a double-edged sword–being a Molecular Engineering (MENG) major has opened doors for me in healthcare, biotech, finance, and software engineering, and academia. However, it has taken me quite a while to figure out what Molecular Engineering is exactly–but in doing so, I’ve learned how to achieve a career of impact within the field of biotechnology.
An interdisciplinary approach to biomedical engineering that involves a strong emphasis on theoretical/computational analysis and research.
That’s the way I described MENG early on in my undergraduate career. But the major has evolved and expanded since I started. Nowadays, there are also a handful of minor tracks within the field that allow students to specialize in areas like Tissue Engineering or Computational Analysis which weren’t available when I started 4 years ago. When applying to UChicago, I initially chose MENG as my intended major because I was interested in biotech. My overarching goal was to invent some new biotechnology and hopefully start a biotech company of my own one day. However, at that point, that end goal was far from being well thought out; I had a job title in mind rather than a way to truly create an impact on the field. Like many students first entering college, I was unsure about the prospects that would be available to me after graduating; in fact, I remember looking up info about the prospective salary for MENG majors post-graduation only to find no information for the subject. Indeed, it was such a new field that there seemed to be few well-defined career paths involved. Truthfully, I didn’t really know exactly how my MENG background would help me achieve my goal. Nonetheless, it was a new major at UChicago and it seemed more interdisciplinary than more traditional STEM majors. Plus, it sounded pretty cool–so I said “why not” and decided to go for it. Little did I know that in learning to define my own major, I would end up figuring out how I’d like to define my dream career.
You know during the first few weeks when college starts where all the clubs at your school have a big fair to recruit new members? If you were like me, you mostly went to the different tables and booths to pick up all the swag and food you could find and impulsively sign up for every email list host around. Lucky for me though, I found a small table near the back corner with a poster that said “GeneHackers”. Since it sounded interesting, I still went up to their table despite their lack of food. There, I learned that they were UChicago’s iGEM team–an independent group of undergraduate researchers using synthetic biology to create functional pieces of DNA called “biobricks”–and they were looking to recruit new MENG majors! Although I didn’t really understand all of their terminology at the time, I still decided to apply and eventually ended up joining the team just a few weeks later.
Take advantage of every opportunity you can.
In joining an iGEM team, I inadvertently laid the groundwork for what has now become my guiding principle throughout the past few years: take advantage of every opportunity you can. I have since realized that a career in biotech is not as clear-cut as careers in other fields–as such, opportunities to learn and grow in the field are not always evident. The best advice I could give to anyone looking to form a career in biotechnology would be to take advantage of every opportunity that comes their way. Although I didn’t seek out iGEM on purpose — I truthfully wasn’t aware of what it was until I got to college — I made the most of the opportunity at hand and I sure am glad that I did.
Overall, the goal of our iGEM project was to develop a novel centromeric plasmid vector for the industrial manufacturing yeast strain Pichia pastoris. Throughout my experience, I was grateful for the opportunity to work with and meet like-minded people with similar interests on the team. I was also appreciative of the fact that we had a ton of flexibility and independence in conducting our project–something I hadn’t seen before in a research setting. Most importantly, I was excited for the opportunity to carry out our project working full time in a lab the summer after my first year. And as a result of that opportunity, I would also get to attend the Giant Jamboree in Boston in 2018 and present our research.
I soon came to realize that conducting research is easier said than done.
During our project, we ran into a number of unexpected roadblocks. The research project which had seemed very straightforward and simple during the planning process and was supposed to take roughly 10 weeks to complete dragged on for the entire summer. Amplifying our target DNA and extracting and cloning it into our plasmid vector — which had a protocol meant to take just a few days — turned out to take weeks and produced inconsistent results at best. In addition, there was a steep learning curve to actually conducting the experiments. As you can imagine, a team of undergraduates is definitely prone to making mistakes. Personally, over that summer, I probably messed up a PCR in every way imaginable. The work was tedious and tough; but I can definitely say I learned to be persistent and think on my feet.
Despite the roadblocks, there were still some breakthroughs. With help from our graduate student advisors and PI mentors, we were able to come close to achieving our end goal. Though it took longer than expected, I was proud of the work that we had done and was excited to present it at the Giant Jamboree conference later that fall.
Do your best to form connections with people in your area of interest in any way you can.
That conference was one of the highlights of my college career–and it also helped me learn this important lesson. I met amazing people–from fellow undergraduates like myself to CEOs of revolutionary biotech startups and famous researchers. Although it would have been impossible to meet everyone there, I did my best to make meaningful connections with the people around me. Although most people in biotech in America are located near Massachusetts or California, there are still opportunities to meet with other biotech professionals all over the world. Even if you live outside the major hubs for biotech, you can meet innovators. If you’re in school, there are guaranteed to be professors or graduate students that you can learn from and would be interested in mentoring you. Through some of the classes I have taken, I have been able to meet with biotech leaders from across the globe solely over Zoom. Forming meaningful connections isn’t dependent on proximity–so take the first step and reach out to people that you are interested in learning more about. Check out some other blog posts on Bioeconomy.xyz (and the podcast!) to learn more about how to go about forming these connections!
Most important amongst my experiences at the iGEM Conference was the keynote speech by Jason Kelly, one of the founders of Ginkgo Bioworks.
He showed us a picture of a standard work desk, complete with a smartphone, desktop computer, calculator, and potted plant on it. Then, he demonstrated that out of all of those devices on the desk, the plant was the most remarkable; after all, what other device is self-replicating, self-healing, and capable of responding intelligently to any environment? He also talked about his beginnings and experience working on his own iGEM team years ago. Truthfully, his speech capped off one of the most inspiring events I’ve ever been a part of. At that talk, on a rainy Boston fall day that happened to be my 20th birthday, I decided that I wanted to make a career for myself in synthetic biotechnology.
Throughout Kelly’s talk–and almost every other one I attended, too, I learned that the best way to make an impact in the field was to go to grad school. From there, I thought I’d have to get my Ph.D. in some synbio-related topic and then go on to work for a biotech company. After maybe a decade, I’d have the experience necessary to start my own biotech company–hopefully with a capable team of my peers–and create and market a piece of synthetic biology that would change the world. My roadmap was set, and all I had to do was execute on it and I would achieve the career of my dreams.
There was one small problem, though: I didn’t LOVE research.
Truthfully, I didn’t hate it, either, but the thought of spending 5+ years after graduating from college doing tedious research that may never amount to something just to get the certification I needed just to begin working in the biotech field didn’t seem too appealing to me. Although I had passion for the field, I didn’t have the patience and drive to endure graduate school in order to create a new piece of biotechnology from scratch. Maybe my dream career wasn’t as the founder of a biotech company.
I considered changing majors, but decided to stick with my MENG major for a little bit longer; after all, I was finally getting to take more interesting classes and subjects. In the meantime, I took internships in finance and healthcare administration. I taught myself to code and signed up for Computer Science classes at UChicago in an effort to explore Software Development as a career. I became more interested in entrepreneurship and worked on a handful of apps and company ideas with my college roommates. Although these careers were nothing like what I’d been studying in school, I was able to apply my major to all of these fields and jobs. Instead of talking to employers about the research potential available in synthetic biology, I focused on how MENG is an interdisciplinary approach to engineering that involves strong scientific analysis and a lot of math. Research wasn’t essential to success in Molecular Engineering.
My major doesn’t determine my career.
Rather, it was up to me to determine how I’d like to use my major to achieve the career of my dreams–and honestly, I believe that this mindset applies to almost any field of study. Don’t limit yourself to jobs solely in your career field–especially in college. Employers are willing to hire college students part-time, irrespective of their field of study. In fact, if you are able to work, I would highly encourage you to get some sort of work experience while still in college. Regardless of the type of job you work, employers will still recognize that you have work experience while studying full time and you will be more competitive for jobs later in your college years. Also, working helps you build your network and figure out what you like and dislike about many aspects of your job. And in the end, knowing your own preferences can save you tons of time and effort when you start job hunting full time.
During my third year, I put a ton of effort into finding a career path that I’d be more interested in. However, between the jobs and classes I was taking, I had put quite a lot on my plate. On top of that, I didn’t have a well-defined career path in mind and only a vague idea of what I might be interested in if I wasn’t going to go to grad school. Overall, I had lots left to figure out and I felt like I was getting nowhere.
Take some time for yourself.
However, this time in college was vital for me to learn the most important lesson someone in college can learn. Life is inherently stressful and lots of things are out of your control. The only thing you have some control over is how you respond to the world around you. In my case, I decided to take a quarter (10 weeks the equivalent of one semester) off of school. In March of 2020, with the world going into a pandemic-fueled frenzy, I decided to just go home and relax. I spent lots of time reading, watching TV, and hanging out with family and our bubble–after all, the quarantine had just started. This time was essential for me to reflect on the things that I had learned and enjoyed throughout college; in the end, it helped rekindle my interest in synthetic biology and helped me reshape my focus on what I’d like to do in the future.
These experiences during my middle years of college ultimately led me to take a class called Hacking for Defense (H4D) during the beginning of my fourth year of school.
Although I was only one of 2 undergraduates in that course, I was able to use my MENG background to frame my interest in participating in a project about the biomanufacturing industry. Our project was to help the DoD understand the capabilities and vulnerabilities of the biomanufacturing supply chain and investigate how this supply chain can be secured domestically. From this, I got the opportunity to interview key stakeholders from the government, academia, and the private sector and understand their views on the industry. It was this experience that introduced me to Dr. Titus and many other industry stakeholders that had successfully lived my original dream of creating an impactful career within the bioindustry. For more information on our project, check out my teammate Xavier’s article:
Overall, many of the key issues with the biomanufacturing industry relate to the so-called “Valley of Death” that exists between academic research in synthetic biology and large-scale applications of biotechnology.
Although immense capabilities–such as the synthetic production of efficient biofuels and even self-replicating material technologies–are abundant at the lab-scale production level, there is a significant dropoff in the amount of technology that is available for large scale commercial use; this decline can be attributed to a confluence of factors including issues with stakeholder collaboration, workforce development, and scale related issues. Indeed, many of the same technologies that I witnessed through iGEM could be the foundation of hugely successful biotech companies of the future. However, these companies would likely face the same pitfalls that their predecessors have faced–unless there is something done about it.
Here, I believe that a career of impact can be carved out within the field of synthetic biotechnology–not necessarily as a researcher who invents a novel material or technology but instead as a facilitator of the use of these technologies.
This role does not have to be confined to those who hold Ph.D degrees. Indeed, there is room for business administrators, consultants in biotech, and authors to inspire the use of biotechnology. An entire generation of lawyers may well one day focus on laws regarding the ethical use of biotech. There is promise for fermentation and other biomanufacturing technicians to break into the field without the need for an advanced degree. The field of synthetic biology holds tremendous potential for a wide variety of job opportunities that have yet to be taken advantage of–and these jobs will be essential to facilitate the widespread adoption of biotechnology in the future.
I would like to take a moment to address recruiters, teachers, and leaders in the field of industrial biotechnology.
For those of you looking to expand the workforce for biotechnology, it is absolutely essential to foster a better understanding of what jobs in the field look like–especially to younger students. As I mentioned, when I first started college, I had little idea what an actual career in biotechnology looked like. Like many other students interested in biology, I had a better sense of what a career in medicine would look like than one in biotechnology; in my view, that has to change in order for biotechnology to grow in importance domestically. In part, I think that change can be started in the classroom. Teachers at every level must be more willing to discuss the future directions of industrial biotechnology rather than focusing solely on the clinical outcomes that accompany it. In addition, STEM curriculum at every level can be more focused on the potential use of biotechnology rather than simply on the research methods that have led to the creation of important pieces of biotech. Although these types of changes take years to implement, I believe that with time, biotechnology as a field can become recognized as one of the most lucrative industries in the world.
I frame my own educational background in MENG with respect to the fundamental tools it has given me to understand complex issues related to biotech–and not just the academic interests that hold great promise.
I’m truly grateful that I’ve had an interdisciplinary educational experience–after all, classes like H4D weren’t within my major but were still essential for fostering my interest in biotech. Also, I’m grateful that I’ve been able to learn a lot outside of the classroom too. Together, these experiences have taught me that it’s completely fine that I’ve never defined my MENG background in exactly the same way more than once. Indeed, because of my field of study, I’m responsible for creating my own goals and defining my own career path. And yes, those goals have changed quite a bit throughout my college career–but that’s entirely fine. Just as I have learned to accept the ever-changing definition for my MENG background, I will surely have to redefine my constantly evolving pathway to success in the field of biotechnology–and I’m truly grateful that I have had the opportunity to start learning just how to do just that through my years in college.
My current goal is to create a career of impact facilitating the increased use of biotechnology; however, that goal still leaves a lot left to be defined.
After graduating from college in March, I’ll get my first full-time experience working as a Software Engineer for a healthcare company. From there, though, I’ll have to decide whether to go back to school and get another degree or continue to work. I hope to transition into the biotech industry soon in my career. Ideally, I’d work on operations or business development–I’d love to target the issues we uncovered during my H4D project. I’m still not sure about the path I want to take to achieve, but I do know now both where and how I can make an impact in the field. I’ve got a much better-defined goal for success than I did at the start of college. Now, all I have left to do is figure out the steps I need to take to make that impact–and hopefully, my dream career can one day be a reality.
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