Dr. Priya Khurana is a Scientist in the Cell Process group at Catamaran Bio, since July 2021. She completed her doctoral research in Dr. Hamid Bassiri’s laboratory and graduated from the CAMB (CB) program in June 2021. Her doctoral work was focused on immunometabolism and anti-tumor properties of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells
1. Can you describe your current designation and projects you are working on at Catamaran Bio?
I am a Scientist in the Cell Process group at Catamaran Bio. Our company is a small biotech working on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) modified natural killer (NK) cell-based therapies for solid tumors. Our ultimate goal is to produce allogeneic, off-the-shelf cell therapies for cancer patients, and our CAR-NK cells have many novel features that allow them to be efficacious against solid tumors, addressing a major challenge in the field of immunotherapy. For my role, our cell process team is focused on figuring out the best ways to isolate, activate, engineer, and expand NK cells in order to manufacture these cells to deliver sufficient doses of high-quality cells to patients to best kill tumors.
2. What does your day-to-day look like? What are your key responsibilities?
My day-to-day can vary quite a bit, but generally is a mix of bench work, data analysis, making slides to present data to both my team and other groups at the company, planning experiments, and managing collaborative projects with external groups (contract research organizations (CROs) and contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs)). And lots of meetings! I am mainly responsible for helping plan and execute studies involving isolating, engineering, and expanding NK cells and studying NK functional properties as well as leading projects, which entails coordinating people, and schedules, and planning out experiments and data analysis across other teams.
3. How’s the work-play culture at Catamaran? Does your role allow you to maintain a good work-life balance? The work-life balance and company culture at Catamaran is amazing! I’m quite lucky because many start-ups can be very intense, but people here are very good about leaving work at a reasonable hour and being given flexible schedules (both in terms of hours and hybrid work at home times). I very rarely have weekend or late-night work hours, which is awesome.
4. How much flexibility do you have in shaping the course of your projects in industry?
In general, there’s definitely less independence and flexibility in driving projects in industry than during your PhD – in grad school, you are responsible for designing, troubleshooting, and shaping your project largely on your own. But in the biotech/industry, the projects are very team-based and there are certain constraints from the needs and timelines of your company (and in the case of smaller biotech, what investors are looking for). This can sometimes change rapidly, and you always have to move quickly and pivot your focus at any given time. In my case, I am still given the freedom to share my ideas and introduce novel ideas to our group, and in fact my immunology expertise is always welcome, so I am encouraged to bring in new and creative ideas to our group, especially since we are still in the early stages of the company. So overall for me, it is a good balance!
5. Were you looking at big pharma companies as well? What made you choose a medium size biotech? Yes, I actually started my job search looking primarily at larger pharma companies - this was because most of my connections and career panels I’d seen were largely people at big companies, so I knew almost nothing about the biotech/startup world until late into my job search when I began networking with people in the Boston area, where biotech is huge and booming especially right now. I was drawn to small-medium biotech as soon as I learned more and loved that you could really make a huge impact and have a lot of visibility because you can really shape the course of a company in its early stages. I’ve always loved small environments where I could contribute and be an integral part of the community and culture; for instance, I attended a small college and joined a small lab in grad school – so it seemed like the right fit for me.
There’s definitely pros and cons to large pharma vs smaller biotech. At a larger company, more things have been optimized/figured out so you may be able to jump right in and work on projects already on a path to the clinic. With smaller biotech, the culture can vary a lot, and many protocols and programs are still being worked out. This can be both risky and exciting! I think with anywhere you go, if you’re excited about science and helping patients, and like the people you are working with, it can be a great learning experience. Plus, people often move around companies a lot (especially in Boston!) so it’s not like grad school where you are more locked in for years.
6. What as per you might be the key benefits/perks of working at a medium-size biotech?
To me, the key benefit is visibility and contribution. Our company has about 45 people (30 when I joined), so it’s small enough that I know everyone fairly well, even the leadership team. In fact, our CEO sits in our desk space and will often have beers with us after work! Everyone is very friendly and open to collaborating and helping out, which creates great culture and helps you learn new things from others. Also, even though I’m relatively new, many of the studies I’ve done have been presented at board meetings and to investors, so I feel like every study I’m working on matters a lot and is directly working to help patients and inform big decisions of how our company will move forward. While this can be high pressure, it’s very team-oriented so you are never really alone and instead get to make important contributions as a team!
7. What are the biggest challenges of working at a medium-size biotech? One of the challenges is that depending on what stage of the company, many protocols and processes may not yet be established, making it sometimes difficult to learn. When I joined, our cell process team was only two people, and we barely had any protocols written or made. So initially adjusting and figuring out how things worked could be very challenging at times. The company may likely be growing as you join, so there can often be many things they are still working out. While this does provide an opportunity to directly shape the company culture and how things are structured, there may still be some “growing pains”.
8. How was the transition for you from being a grad student to a scientist in industry? Can you share a little about your journey with us?
Sure! In all honesty, for me it was a challenging transition. It was a lot of change at once, going from being in a certain comfort zone in the same place for 6+ years to suddenly adjusting to new people, a new city, new science, and a new lifestyle of being a working adult! In the beginning, it was a lot to navigate and a bit overwhelming. While I really liked my boss and team at work and was excited to be there and learn a lot of new science and have more work-life balance after grad school, I definitely suffered some imposter syndrome because biotech and industry can be so different from academia. For instance, the way we think about things is much more patient-oriented rather than mechanistic and hypothesis-driven thinking. There are also a lot of new acronyms, new lab techniques, and new people to get used to. After your defense, you feel like an expert in your field and are used to the working styles of your PI and committee, but then starting new you have to re-adjust expectations again and feel like a complete newbie. For me, it was just a matter of being patient with myself, telling myself that it is normal to get used to a new job, and not being afraid to ask lots of questions to fully immerse myself and get up-to-speed. I would say for me, within 3-6 months, I felt much more adjusted and confident!
9. What have been the biggest differences between working in an academic and industrial setting? Some of the biggest differences in industry/biotech is that you are really working as a team, not just seeking to answer your own questions and fulfill your own goals but doing what is best for the company and what the company itself needs at a given time. This is certainly a big change in mindset from the PhD process, which at times can be isolating because you are on your own, working towards an individual goal (with timelines created by you and your PI, not an entire company!). Also, the work I’m doing is a lot more patient-driven, so instead of spending a lot of time answering interesting mechanistic questions, I’m more focused on studies that address actual manufacturing of therapies to patients, which is very new to me. Finally, it’s a lot more meetings and communication than grad school! So much of my time is spent planning with others, electronic lab notebook record-keeping, and coordinating studies across many groups of people.
10. Any networking advice to current grad students? What were your key platforms to apply when you were looking for jobs? I would advise attending career panels at all stages of grad school, just to get an idea of what different jobs can entail. It honestly will be hard to know what a job or field is like until you are there but talking to as many people as you can (whether it be at alum panels, or through informational interviews) may give you an idea of what you think you might like or not like. I was very undecided about my career path until I defended; I knew academia wasn’t for me, but was open to scientific communication, large pharma, or smaller biotech. I didn’t know anything about small/medium biotech throughout most of grad school, since most of my network and panels I attended about industry were largely people from big companies. So, I did apply to those, but I also started connecting with friends-of-friends on LinkedIn, and that’s how I connected with someone in the Boston area who helped me find this job! She worked at another small biotech, and the cell therapy biotech world (especially in Boston) is quite small, so was able to connect me to Catamaran. When I learned more about the biotech world, I knew it would be a great fit for me. So, my main platform was LinkedIn – don’t be afraid to reach out to as many people as you can with your resume and a brief blurb about what you are looking for in a position, people are often very happy to help! Especially BGS alums and 2nd/3rd degree connections.
11. What was your timeline like with submitting your paper, writing your thesis, defending, and applying for jobs?
My timeline was pretty tight! I submitted my manuscript in April, got permission to defend in May, wrote my thesis in 6 weeks, and defended towards the end of June. I started applying to a few jobs in the winter prior to knowing my defense date, as a few opportunities came my way that I decided to apply to anyway. But the majority of my applications and interviews and networking were during the months of April and May, right at the same time I was writing my thesis. The job search was much easier once I had a set defense date that I could tell companies, but it was still a lot of work to apply for jobs and work on my thesis/paper at the same time! If I could have done things differently, I probably would have tried to spread out the process more and apply to jobs more after my defense. I felt a lot of pressure because I came across many Boston-area scientist job opportunities in the spring and was worried that if I waited until summer after my defense, there wouldn’t be as many openings left, but right now biotech and pharma (at least in the cell therapy field) are so hot that there are CONSTANTLY openings! There’s a lot of turnover, and a lot of new companies that are rapidly hiring – in fact, in Boston, they are actually competing for good candidates so you may even end up with multiple offers. So, I’d say there’s no rush and it’s best to go on a timeline that allows you time to apply, relocate if needed, and maintain sanity 😊
12. Does it matter where you publish your PhD thesis paper while interviewing for industrial positions? Not at all! Most companies do not care about what journals you publish in or how many papers you have from grad school. This can depend on your role and how discovery-based your team/project will be, but for me and many others, it was not really a large factor.
13. Can you tell us about the interview process at your company and how you prepared for it?
At my company and other small-medium biotech’s, the process consisted of a 20-30 minute phone screen with a recruiter or HR member to ask basic background questions from your resume and make sure on paper you are a good fit for the position, followed by a 30 minute interview with the hiring manager (which is more scientifically driven), followed by a seminar talk (similar to thesis defense talk) open to the whole team/company, and finally, team interviews where I met on Zoom with several of the other scientists I’d be working with. It was a great way for them to get to know me, and for me to get a sense of the company and people. Also at Catamaran, we are given the chance in our interview process to meet with the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) and the VP of Research which was really awesome exposure and helped sway my decision! At all stages of the interview, they expect you to have a lot of questions for them as well, so it’s really a two-way street. At the time I applied and even now, most of the interview is on Zoom, but we are starting to transition to giving people the option of an on-site visit.
14. What are the key skills that Biotech companies look for during the hiring process?
For a scientist-level position straight after a PhD, they are looking for curiosity/passion for science, being able to self-motivate and execute projects independently, and relevant technical skills (in my case, a lot of molecular biology and immunological assays such as flow, metabolic assays, and ELISAs). Other things that can help are fellowships, presentations at conferences/retreats, and mentoring junior scientists (like summer or rotation students). Coming out of Penn and CAMB, we are mostly extremely qualified candidates – the key is in being able to communicate how great we are to the hiring manager/team! Practice interviews with the career center, friends, or anyone in your network.
15. Do you think there is a need or added benefits of doing a postdoc after PhD to get hired by biotech/pharma companies? I personally don’t think there is a need to do a post-doc prior to a position in industry. Some job positions do require it or think it is a benefit, but in my case, especially once I started looking for positions in Boston, there were many biotech’s that were hiring scientist-level individuals straight after grad school. If you have the relevant technical skills, that is usually seen as sufficient because they know that PhDs are very qualified, and that a few extra years of academic experience as a post-doc doesn’t necessarily add the skill-sets they are looking for. That is just my personal opinion from my experience and those I spoke with! It can be beneficial to getting experience in certain desired technical skills or to allow time to decide what kind of job to apply to, so it can’t hurt.
16. What’s the biggest myth about working at small/medium size biotech firms?
I think the biggest myth about biotech is crazy work hours, intense environments, and no work-life balance. While in many cases this is sadly true, every company has a very different culture, and this could not be less true in my case! The best way to assess this is during your interview as you speak with your hiring manager and other team members. You can usually tell how happy people are or by their tone about how work-life balance is. There are also certain companies (in the Boston area particularly) that have reputations, so if you network and ask around, you can also get a sense of how a company is.
17. How inclusive is your company towards employees with diverse backgrounds or international origin? My company is very inclusive of diverse backgrounds and actively working on diversity and inclusion initiatives. While we do have some international team members, I am personally not sure of the visa sponsoring policy.
18. Any thoughts about the booming biotech hub in the Boston area?
Boston is an amazing Biotech city! In fact, it recently topped the bay area as #1 biotech hub in the country for life sciences. There are so many companies here and of all sizes. It is an excellent place to be, especially for cell therapy work. Also, since there are so many companies and positions, biotech’s are really competing for good candidates, especially right now! So, if you don’t like the company you join, you can easily transfer to another one.
19. What do you miss the most and least about your grad school life?
What I miss most is being a student –
being able to ask a scientific question and pursue my own interests in the lab as I wanted to, on my own schedule; there’s a sense of independence and autonomy and creativity that I sometimes do miss. I also miss the community of PhD life and having so many of my close friends and colleagues all doing the same thing and being close by (the sense of all going through an experience together). While I really like my new co-workers, everyone is at different stages of their lives and careers so it’s not as relatable as with my grad school colleagues.
What I miss least is the constant pressure –
always feeling like you are behind, or needing to be in lab, or that every experiment that fails can affect your graduation timeline and is the “end of the world” in some way; because industry is so much more team-based and structured, you’re in it together with a group of people and at the scientist level, it’s not your job to have everything figured out. Even the few times I’ve had to stay late in the lab, it was with my team-mates, and we could order in food and make it fun. So, I never really feel alone or isolated!
20. Any other advice for current grad students who are in the early years of their PhD and for those who are ready to defend and want to pursue a career in industrial research like you? Sure! My advice for early-stage graduate students is just to explore different career options by attending panels. There’s no need to put pressure on yourself that early but starting to think about what kinds of jobs sound interesting can always help, because you can then focus your networking in the later years. I think if you do know you want to go to industry very early on, it could help to let your PI know and potentially shape your grad school lab choice or project choice accordingly – for example, immunology and computational skills are two examples of very marketable technical expertise for industry.
For those closer to defending, I would try to talk to as many people as you can in the relevant fields – this can be anyone from alums, speakers at career panels, personal connections, or second-degree connections on LinkedIn. My PI and committee members were also very supportive and helped me connect with people in their networks who were in industry/biotech. I also used BGS Career Services for help with my resume and interviewing practice, which was super helpful too. For interview prep, especially the seminar talk, it helps to practice with other colleagues or friends. Just like most other things in grad school, it requires a lot of reaching out and advocating for yourself! If anyone is interested in biotech and wants to talk to me further, I’m happy to connect – please reach out to me on LinkedIn or email me at pkhurana11@gmail.com.
