Plugging Your Skill Sets Into Big Data

By Benjamin Ross

May 30, 2018 | When 3,500 members of the biotech and life sciences industries converged in Boston for the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, the idea of hiring the right people in Big Data popped up again and again.

“Bringing human beings into the lab, actually allowing them to get exposure… [allows for] grand storytelling that has to happen,” Kristen Cleveland, BioTeam's Director of Operations, said when addressing the inclusion of IT professionals into the field of research during the closing panel session of the conference. “Having that storytelling is key.”

“What skill sets would you recommend graduate student researchers have, who are in the process of transitioning to a Data Science industry?” a member of the audience asked a day earlier during a panel discussion addressing data science.

“Hold onto that question,” Bio-IT World editorial director Allison Proffitt said. “We have a panel scheduled during this conference looking to address that very issue.”

The aforementioned panel featured Jeremy Jenkins, Executive Director and Head of Chemical Biology & Therapeutics Informatics at Novartis; Bino John, Computational Biology & Systems Biology Group Leader at Dow-Dupont; Joseph Lehar, Executive Director in Computational Biology at Merck; Patrice Milos, President & CEO of Medley Genomics; Michelle Penny, Senior Director and Head of Translational Genome Sciences at Biogen; and Daniel Robertson, Research Fellow and VP of Digital Technology at Indiana Biosciences Research Institute.

“The world is changing,” Bino John said in his opening statement. “The skill sets you think are easy to predict are going to go away. And it is important to reflect on what is important for us to continue in our research.”

A Certain Level Of Expertise

“Is there much room for someone to start a bioinformatics career without an understanding of the biology itself?” an audience member asked the panel.

“The interesting thing is that biology is a complex problem, and you need to have domain knowledge to make any progress in it,” Joseph Lehar of Merck answered. “If you don’t have that knowledge the best thing you can do is try to work with the people who do and soak in as much knowledge as you can, because the more understanding you have of the problems you’re trying to address the more effective you will be.”

A grad student next asked the panel how their PhDs affected their career trajectory.

Patrice Milos of Medley Genomics tackled the question first, saying that, while earning a PhD is still important, there’s a lot of flexibility when it comes to how far one is able to go.

“I think it’s a matter of the position you’re aiming for and your experience,” Milos said. “When I’m hiring I’m looking for PhDs, but actually recently some of my most promising candidates have master’s in computer science and are really interested in the problems we’re trying to solve with collaborators. “

Daniel Robertson of Indiana Biosciences Research Institute and Lehar also chimed in, with Robertson saying that within Pharma, having a PhD has become somewhat of a prerequisite.

Lehar expounded on this concept, saying that having the PhD and having work published is a way to externally track what a candidate has done and what they’re working on.

“The more outside revenue you have for yourself the more easily you’ll be able to convince people that working with you will be worthwhile,” said Lehar.

Biogen’s Michelle Penny commented how she received her PhD after she began working in the space, and she wants to make that more commonplace.

“One of the things I’m trying to work on at Biogen right now is trying to rethink our career leveling, asking, ‘Why do we feel we need someone with a PhD to fill a particular role?’ Now I think there are roles in data sciences where you can work yourself up the ranks, even becoming a CEO, without a PhD.”

While the level of education one needs was up for debate among the panelists, they were all unanimous in stressing the importance of the interview process.

When asked how they evaluate the soft skills of a candidate (social skills, competence, etc.), Milos said the first phone interaction is so important.

“If you’ve done your homework on a candidate and you know their resume, then that first phone call is your opportunity to evaluate their ability to communicate,” said Milos. “It’s amazing how poorly many people will do in that first phone discussion.”

Robertson agreed with Milos, adding that the first contact on the phone is a way for both parties to see if they are the right fit. “If that fit is not there, it’s going to come through,” Robertson said.

Leading Science Vs. Conducting Science

The amount of data one works with diminishes when they get high enough in leadership, one attendee pointed out. She went on to ask how much science each of the panelists are able to still work on and how they stay up to date with the recent breakthrough in the science.

“I try really hard to stay close to 10% of my time spent in the lab, and that’s if I’m lucky. But honestly I wouldn’t be that good of a manager if it was more than that,” Jeremy Jenkins said of his time at Novartis. “At the same time you do have to maintain a certain level of street cred. People need to see Unix shell open on your desktop or else they lose faith in you as a leader. For me it’s a lot more important to make sure you’re still reading papers that are actually coding so I can see where the trends are going. As a manager you have to understand the scientific trends.”