Abstract
Careers in biomedicine can take many forms, and one common career decision facing scientists is whether to pursue jobs in academia or industry. In this Viewpoint article, four leading scientists who have spent time in both academia and industry provide their perspectives on both types of workplace, such as whether the environments are really as distinct as they are often perceived to be, as well as how academia–industry collaborations can be a driving force in biomedical research and translation.
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D. Gary Gilliland was President and Director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center from 2015 to 2020, where he is now Emeritus. He has held positions as Professor and Vice Dean at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine; Senior Vice President for Global Oncology at Merck; and Professor of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at Harvard Medical School.
Aviv Regev is the Head of Genentech Research and Early Development. She previously served as Chair of the Faculty at the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard and as Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). She is currently Professor of Biology at MIT on leave and Core Member on leave at the Broad. She is a founding co-chair of the Human Cell Atlas (HCA).
Eric E. Schadt is founder/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sema4, a patient-centred health intelligence company advancing health care through data-driven insights. Under Eric’s leadership, Sema4 is applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to multidimensional, longitudinal clinicogenomic data to construct individualized health trajectories that help enable the delivery of precision medicine as the standard of care.
Joyce Tung is Vice President of Research at 23andMe, and is responsible for 23andMe’s consumer-based research programme, including new method development, genetics discovery for therapeutic target identification and validation, and academic and industry research collaborations. Joyce graduated from Stanford with a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences (minor Computer Science), and earned her Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
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D.G.G. is on the Board of Directors and equity holder at LabCorp and Nuvalent. A.R. is a founder and equity holder of Celsius Therapeutics, an equity holder in Immunitas Therapeutics and until 31 August 2020 was a Scientific Advisory Board member of Syros Pharmaceuticals, Neogene Therapeutics, Asimov and ThermoFisher Scientific; and since 1 August 2020 is an employee of Genentech, a member of the Roche Group and has Roche stock. E.E.S. is Founder, Chief Executive Office (CEO) and Director of Sema4, and owns equity in this publicly traded company; and is also on the Board of Directors of Sage Bionetworks and 4YouAndMe, both non-profit medical research institutions. J.T. is employed by and stockholder in 23andMe.
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Gilliland, D.G., Regev, A., Schadt, E.E. et al. Traversing industry and academia in biomedicine: the best of both worlds?. Nat Rev Genet 23, 461–466 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-022-00486-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-022-00486-5
