Abstract
“…meaningful collaborations between industry and academia are critical to the future of the biopharma workplace.”
Introduction
One of the highlights of LabAutomation2005 was a special session-in-the-round that focused on workforce trends in the U.S. biotech and pharmaceutical industries. This session was moderated by LabAutomation2005 Associate Program Chair Douglas Gurevitch of the University of California San Diego, and featured a panel of experts from academia, government, and industry who discussed current and anticipated trends and challenges facing both employers and employees.
This interactive session-in-the-round was the first of its kind for LabAutomation, and was highly valued by those in attendance. In addition to conference attendees, members of the local professional community were invited to gain perspective on current workforce trends, employer-driven education needs, and the biotech/pharma manufacturing workplace and how it differs from the research workplace. As a result, lively discussions ensued about curriculum development and training requirements for automation job seekers.
For those who were unable to attend this session, I offer a condensed summary here, and I thank Doug Gurevitch for the careful reporting that made this summary possible.
Session Overview
The Market
Biopharma is one of fastest growing sectors in the U.S. economy. According to Elaine Johnson of Bio-Link, biotech industry revenues have grown from $8 billion in 1992 to $39.2 billion in 2003. There are 1473 biopharma companies nationwide—314 of them are public, and 370 of them focus on biotech drugs and have vaccines in clinical trials.
Unlike the software industry, biopharma employment opportunities have not been moved offshore. The biopharma employment hotbeds in the U.S. are located on the east and west coasts, and according to Matthew Gardner of BayBio, these current biopharma employment centers are draining national talent from across the U.S.
Mike Biros of the Bay Area Chapter of the Laboratory Robotics Information Group (LRIG) reports that the California Bay Area fosters the largest biomedical employment community in the U.S., with 699 companies and 31 academic research institutions. All told, the Bay Area biopharma industry and educational institutions employ 85,600 people, and local employment trends are on an upswing. The percentage of companies reporting layoffs decreased from 23.7% in 2003 to 8.3% in 2004 (through Q3). The fraction of companies on a pay freeze decreased from 16.7% in 2003 to 7.3% in 2004 (through Q3). Finding workers, however, is still a problem for many employers. Forty-one percent of biopharma companies surveyed report that there are too few candidates available for the scientific and technical positions they need to fill. On the other hand, 51% of the companies report that they are finding enough talent, and 7% report that they have more than enough talent available.
After polling a number of hiring managers in the Bay Area, Biros found that R&D employees are typically biochemists and biologists at B.S. through Ph.D. levels, chemists, and a few are engineers. Most hiring managers indicate that they want employees with a good, basic understanding of biology and an understanding of how to scale assays. One of the biggest difficulties is assay translation. The move from manual methods to automated methods may require decreasing volume, simplifying procedures, and understanding how to develop robust assays that can compensate for hardware limitations.
In terms of specific skills and knowledge, more managers look for familiarity with cell-based assays, imaging (automated microscopy), understanding biology of morphological changes, and selective computer skills. Most automation systems now don't require knowledge of programming; however, familiarity or comfort with interfaces from major vendors such as Caliper Life Sciences, Beckman Coulter, Tecan and others is definitely required for experienced hires.
The one subject that most managers feel is not receiving enough attention in educational institutions is statistics. According to Biro, many employees are very inexperienced with the types of statistics needed for quality and reliability tracking, which is a necessary component for FDA regulatory compliance, design of experiments, and validation of equipment.
Predicting Needs
The long-term outlook for jobs in the California Bay Area is promising. Thirteen percent employment growth is expected, which is greater than the national average. Biros, however, points out that as companies grow to more mature stages of development, proximity to R&D will likely become less critical, and manufacturing jobs may move out of the Bay Area and into areas that are less costly for employers and employees.
Matthew Gardner of Bay-Bio echoes similar concerns about how both expected and unexpected changes in corporate environments can make predicting workforce needs very difficult. For example, one California company with an abundance of job openings suddenly found its entire facility closed after it was acquired by a larger organization.
Gardner points out that as innovative, entrepreneurial companies grow, they are forced to “become more corporate,” and a barrier to workforce efficiency can be a company's human resources department. According to Gardner, rigid corporate HR policies frustrate employers and employees alike, and inflexible hiring policies often result in missed opportunities. Human resource professionals can be prone to very literal interpretations of requirements that eliminate promising candidates because they may have too much or not enough industry-specific experience. Even capable entry-level workers can be lost because their profiles do not exactly match an HR department's job description.
As another example of how some companies can allow corporate policies to be their own worst enemies, Gardner shared the story of a California company that determined it needed an additional 500 employees to effectively manufacture and market a new product. Before the company could move forward with hiring, its existing CEO left and one of the new CEO's first orders of business was to freeze all hiring until a needs assessment was conducted and completed. A full year later, the assessment confirmed that the company needed 500 additional employees—urgently.
Industry and Academia
Panelists agree that meaningful collaborations between industry and academia are critical to the future of the biopharma workplace. They also agree that meaningful, ongoing interaction between these two important groups is often difficult. Although more and more schools are beginning to directly address employer requirements, Jeff Newman of the California Business, Transportation and Housing Authority emphasizes that employers must be realistic in their expectations and recognize the limits of educational resources.
Genentech is one company working to fill this financial and intellectual resources gap. According to Hank Stern, advanced degrees are found in management and product development positions at Genentech, but less so in production technician jobs. The employees Stern works with are baccalaureate and nonbaccalaureate workers who must become familiar with programmable logic controllers, distributed control systems, laboratory information systems, good manufacturing practices, enterprise requirements planning, manufacturing execution systems, and other systems. New hires typically require six months or more before they become familiar enough with a system to be allowed to work on their own. In addition, up to two years of experience tends to be necessary before hires are ready to learn all of an area's systems.
Because few of these required technical skills are available through formal education programs, Genentech launched an internship program for academic faculty. In the spirit of “training the trainer,” these internships enable educators to experience and understand practical workplace skills firsthand. Panelists agree the Genentech internship program is a “best practices” example that creates a very effective link between industry and academia.
David Bieber of San Jose State University (SJSU) acknowledges that many closely aligned academic and professional specialties have formal governing bodies to help judge educational outcomes and develop assessment tools, such as the engineering community with the Accreditation Board of Engineering Technology (ABET). Because bio-pharma does not have such a governing body, Bieber reports that the Master of Biotechnology program at SJSU has assembled an extensive industry advisory board. Unlike many advisory boards that tend to focus on fundraising, this advisory board provides real-world insight and practical guidance in curriculum and resource development and has contributed greatly to SJSU's growing list of successful student internships and job placements.
Many research universities are beginning to add lab automation to their core facilities, but according to Gurevitch, few graduate students and even fewer undergraduate students are exposed to automated systems. Exceptions tend to be genome centers and new programs such as the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, CA (as featured in JALA 9.5, October 2004). In addition, says Gurevitch, many research universities tend to focus on producing graduate students, and little emphasis is placed on helping baccalaureates transition into the workplace.
In some local and regional markets, employer-driven education and training needs are being addressed by community colleges. In response to the rapid growth of the biopharma market in California, Bio-Link was established to serve as a catalyst and support system for the development of mutually beneficial relationships between local companies and nearby community colleges. Bio-Link is the National Advanced Technological Education Center for Biotechnology, and is funded by the National Science Foundation. It advocates biopharma workforce training by providing communities with practical educational resources for instructors (including Web-based initiatives), and acting as a clearinghouse for information.
Elaine Johnson of Bio-Link explained that in the case of the City College of San Francisco, many of the students taking advantage of locally crafted educational opportunities already hold baccalaureate and advanced degrees from other universities. Many are outsourced or downsized professionals from other areas who are in need of upskilling. The community college program enables them to meaningfully retarget themselves for the biopharma workplace.
One challenge that these community college programs face is attracting a critical mass of capable students. According to Johnson, significant improvement in K-12 education programs must become a priority, because many high school graduates lack the essential skills needed to participate in the modern workplace and cannot perform successfully at the community college level.
Thank You
As ALA president, I am enthusiastically grateful to Doug Gurevitch for fueling this session-in-the-round initiative, and I thank the panel members whose insight and experience made this an exceptionally valuable experience: Jeff Newman, technology and commerce partnership manager with the California Business, Transportation and Housing Authority; Matthew Gardner, president of BayBio —Northern California's Bioscience Association; Elaine Johnson, Ph.D., executive director of Bio-Link—the National Advanced Technological Education Center for Biotechnology; Hank Stern, director of manufacturing and supply chain support for Genentech; David Bieber, Ph.D., director of the Master of Biotechnology Program at San Jose State University; and Mike Biros, executive chair of the Bay Area Chapter of the Laboratory Robotics Interest Group.
Sincerely,
