Making the Leap: 3 Researchers Share Their Transitions from Academia to Industry

This blog is the first in a series about making the career transition from academia to the pharmaceutical industry. Watch our webinar on this topic.

As a researcher, the idea of leaving academia for industry can be daunting.

Magdia De Jesus, PhD

Magdia De Jesus, PhD, excelled in her academic career path. As an assistant professor, she ran her own laboratory focused on developing prototype vaccines for oral delivery, published research, and mentored bright young students. “The epitome of my career was going to be to reach full professorship,” De Jesus said. “It was a very linear track.”

Yet she felt dissatisfied. “I wanted to make a larger impact across science,” De Jesus said. “I felt I needed to do something bigger. I wanted to learn how to develop a real vaccine that goes into the arms of patients.”

At the end 2019, she decided to leave academia to join Pfizer’s Vaccine Research and Development Unit. As she dumped her cell lines into bleach when closing her lab, she felt panicked and questioned her decision. Just after her move to Pfizer, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and she ended up helping her new colleagues develop the COVID-19 vaccine and oral treatment. She has no regrets about making the move to industry.

De Jesus shared her story in a recent PhRMA Foundation webinar, along with two other scientists who made the transition from academia to industry. The panelists discussed their reasons for making the career choice, misconceptions about industry, and their advice for researchers considering an industry career.

Sihem Bihorel, PharmD, PhD

Sihem Bihorel, PharmD, PhD, left her job as an assistant research professor about five years ago to work as a senior director at Merck & Co. “This is not a decision that you make very easily,” she said during the webinar. “You think about it, you consult with friends, with colleagues and others, and you weigh the pros and cons.”

“You always know what you are leaving, but you don’t know what you are going to get,” she added.

As an expert in clinical pharmacology and model-informed drug discovery and development, Bihorel’s academic research had attracted funding from pharmaceutical companies, so she had experience collaborating with the industry.

Like De Jesus, she was motivated by a desire to see her work have a more direct impact on patients. However, she had concerns about working in industry: Would she lose the research freedom she had in academia? Would there be too many boundaries imposed on her? Would she still be able to publish?

“I had the perception that industry was a very closed environment,” she said. “I have to admit I was completely wrong. What I thought were challenges — things that were holding me back from making the decision — in the end turned out to be positives.”

She eventually overcame her concerns by talking to colleagues, collaborators, and friends in industry. In her current role, she still focuses on research she enjoys and publishes often.

Stacia Lewandowski, PhD

In contrast to De Jesus and Bihorel, panelist Stacia Lewandowski, PhD, started out with an interest in the pharmaceutical industry, but she enjoyed her graduate studies so much that she thought she might prefer to remain in academia. “I decided to go on and do a postdoc just in case I liked it enough to stick around and pursue academia as a career,” she said.

During that time, Lewandowski said she witnessed successful, independent researchers who were longtime postdocs struggling to land interviews for faculty roles and she knew that wasn’t what she wanted for herself.

“It was a little bit of an identity crisis,” she said. “When you’re surrounded by academics who live, eat, and breathe academia, it can be hard to feel like you’re making the right decision. I had to find the courage within myself to apply and make the leap.”

In 2022, Lewandowski landed a job as a senior scientist at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, where she continues to do bench research related to her expertise in in vivo pharmacology and cellular and behavioral neuroscience.

“I still feel just as invigorated and enriched as I did as a postdoc and grad student, maybe a little bit more,” she said. “I’m very happy at the bench. I like working with animals, I like working with my hands, and I still love to pipette.”

The three panelists encouraged researchers to take their time making their career decisions and to network to get an accurate picture of the benefits and challenges of industry roles. Many scientists in industry are former professors who have been through this transition themselves. The panelists encouraged reaching out to researchers to ask for informational interviews to better understand what it’s like to work at a certain company. Watch the PhRMA Foundation’s webinar on mastering informational interviews for guidance.

Because this is a big life decision, it’s common to have doubts, Bihorel said, but “once you make the decision, don’t look back.”

De Jesus’s final advice to attendees: “Be courageous, be bold, and be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Take the leap of faith — it’s not the dark side.”

To learn more about the ins and outs of transitioning to industry, look for our future blogs posts on this topic.