In August 2014, officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) called global-health specialist Adrian Hill, who is the director of a non-profit vaccine-research centre. They had an urgent question: how soon could the centre launch a clinical trial for an Ebola vaccine?

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“They weren't talking months — they were talking weeks, if not days,” says Hill, who works at the Jenner Institute in Oxford, UK. A non-profit partnership between the University of Oxford and the animal-health-focused Pirbright Institute in Woking, UK, the Jenner Institute had vaccine-research programmes in progress that targeted nearly 20 human and veterinary diseases — but not Ebola.

Yet within a month of the phone call, the institute had launched an Ebola-research initiative. And six months later, it was testing candidate vaccines, including one in a phase III trial that involved 27,000 people in Liberia.

The rapid implementation of this programme underscores the swift pace and nimble nature of vaccinology, in sharp contrast to other disciplines in which it can take decades to gather results and create practical applications. And although priorities can shift rapidly, the pressing nature of outbreaks means that researchers can see their ideas implemented quickly to tackle a major disease. “There are not many fields where you can go in as a graduate student to a lab and finish up four years later, and something you've made with your own hands at the bench is being used to immunize people in a clinical trial that you are part of,” Hill says.

Early-career scientists with an eye on vaccinology do not necessarily need a PhD. Because the field is geared towards translating research into practice (see 'Vaccination campaigns must deliver trust first'), many employers value practical lab experience and a humanitarian mindset, and are willing to provide on-the-job training to promising candidates.

Getting a vaccine from the lab to the clinic requires an approach that includes fields from microbiology to chemical engineering. “One of the attractions for a young person coming into this field is that it's so diverse,” says Hill. “You can head off in different directions.” Opportunities exist throughout industry, the non-profit sector and academia.

Vaccination contagion

The global vaccine market has boomed in the past couple decades. Between 2000 and 2013, the market value for vaccines soared from US$5 billion to almost $24 billion; by 2025, that value is expected to quadruple. Groups around the world are trying to devise effective vaccines for dozens of diseases, especially the 'big three' — HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

In 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, began pouring money into the development and distribution of vaccines for economically disadvantaged nations. After 11 September 2001, the US and other governments began to prioritize vaccine research for diseases that could be used in bioterrorism. And the WHO and other aid organizations have helped to drive home the necessity of controlling diseases in developing countries, such as the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Novavax, a vaccine research-and-development company in Gaithersburg, Maryland, has more than tripled in size over the past 4 years to roughly 300 employees. “Novavax is hiring like crazy,” says Christi McDowell-Patterson, director of upstream process development for the company. Her department, a mix of chemical engineers, cell biologists and other scientists, manages the cell lines and equipment used to create the company's vaccine candidates, including ones for Ebola, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus.

Novavax also hires summer interns — mainly undergraduates or recent graduates with bachelor's degrees. “If we like them, we'll try to figure out a way to keep them on,” McDowell-Patterson says. Novavax, along with other companies and organizations — such as Sanofi, Novartis and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative — offers tuition reimbursement to support graduate education for promising young scientists.

Apart from the many perks Novavax offers, ranging from yoga classes to a bowling league, chemist Natalie Thompson was most intrigued by the company's production methods, which use virus-like particles and nanoparticles composed of recombinant proteins. She joined the company in March 2014 after completing a PhD in analytical chemistry and a three-year postdoc during which she used mass spectrometry to study monoclonal antibodies.

At Novavax, she employs analytical methods such as liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry to determine the constituents and quality of the company's vaccine products. “What I enjoy about working in industry is that the final goal is really defined,” she says. She also likes the fast pace, and that many different teams work together.

A symbiotic relationship

Many vaccine-development organizations have set up shop near universities to take advantage of local academic expertise, which means that opportunities for budding vaccinologists are often steps away. Gerald Strohmaier, global head of industrial relations and corporate finance at the biotechnology company Valneva, regularly draws talent from the University of Vienna, which hosts the company's main research facility. “We do not have a huge scouting department looking for talent all over the world,” he says. “But whatever we can do with students, we do.” Although Valneva hires only a few postdocs at a time, scientists who score a position have excellent job prospects — as many as 80% of them secure permanent jobs with the company.

The pressing nature of outbreaks means that researchers can see their ideas implemented quickly.

Whereas pharmaceutical and biotech companies focus on more-marketable vaccines, many non-profit institutes are researching vaccines that have less commercial value. Salaries at these institutes are generally lower than those for university or industry jobs, but people do have the potential to make a humanitarian difference in developing countries.

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI), for example, is an independent organization at Seoul National University in South Korea that creates and introduces vaccines for neglected infectious diseases. One of the institute's most-successful developments is a low-cost oral vaccine for cholera. But that vaccine requires two doses given two weeks apart, and IVI researchers are in the process of analysing data from a clinical trial of 200,000 people in Bangladesh to gauge the effectiveness of a one-dose version to improve compliance. The institute is always on the lookout for research talent, says Sushant Sahastrabuddhe, a physician who heads the institute's Enteric and Diarrheal Disease Programme. Its international scientific staff of about 50 includes researchers with PhDs, medical doctorates and master's degrees.

The formation of partnerships between non-profit organizations and developing countries is also creating job opportunities. The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) in Seattle, Washington, employs about 125 people and works with nearly 100 collaborators around the world. It has helped to establish vaccine-formulation centres in South Africa and India. Manufacturing vaccines locally instead of importing them can decrease both the cost and distrust of the product, says Steven Reed, IDRI's founder.

The need to bolster public-health infrastructure in developing regions has become increasingly important. “There's minimal, almost zero, capacity to develop vaccines in the Middle East, north Africa and sub-Saharan Africa,” says Peter Jay Hotez, president of the non-profit Sabin Vaccine Institute and Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development in Houston. “And yet these are the places where we're going to see the next generation of catastrophic emerging infections.” The US Department of State named Hotez as a US Science Envoy, a role designed to help promote international partnerships. For his project, he is pushing to expand vaccine infrastructure in Africa and the Middle East by focusing on countries such as Saudi Arabia and Morocco, which have an established scientific culture and PhD-level scientists. If he succeeds, programmes that increase vaccine production in these places could lead to more jobs for local scientists, as well as for international consultants.

For him, vaccinology provides the “perfect confluence” of humanitarian values and biomedical and social science. And as Hill can attest, the work is seldom boring. The past six months have been particularly “invigorating and energizing”, he says, with regular enquiries about the Ebola trials from the British Prime Minister's office and other top government officials. “Going to the highest level of government with what you assayed yesterday,” he says, “is pretty exciting.”