A solid platform with many opportunities
Grith Krøyer Wood, age 31, is a formulation chemist at Statens Serum Institut. Grith has a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and earned her MSc in Pharmaceutical Sciences with Drug Development as her area of specialisation.
I am certain that my master’s in Pharmaceutical Sciences gives me a solid platform for an exciting career. I get the distinct impression from talking to colleagues that I made a good decision when I added a master’s in pharmaceutical sciences to my engineering degree.
My original plan was to get a master’s in civil engineering. My main interest is medicine and drugs and therefore I wanted to take as many electives as possible at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. While I was searching for electives on the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences’ site, I discovered their master’s programme. Suddenly here were all the courses I was looking for, so I applied to the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences instead of taking the engineering route.
Drugs in focus and quality as second nature
The chemical engineering programme studies many different substances, anything from paint and plastic to ketchup. In contrast, all of the courses at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences are focused on drugs. That is a major strength for students who already know they want jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.
Another difference that struck me right away is that quality assurance is integrated into all the courses at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. That provides an extra dimension and has equipped me well for work in the drug industry, where there is heavy focus on quality assurance. I am so used to working with the quality assurance aspect of drugs that it has become second nature.
"One of my responsibilities is to produce and investigate tuberculosis vaccines for pre-clinical and clinical trials. Here in the vaccine development department, we follow vaccines from early development to clinical testing.
Fast-track from thesis to job
My supervisor at the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences helped me make a thesis agreement with Statens Serum Institut. My thesis topic was about vaccine research and dealt with protein binding to liposomes and lipid layers.
I was offered a job at Statens Serum Institut as an extension of my thesis. I work here now as a formulation chemist in vaccine development. One of my responsibilities is to produce and investigate tuberculosis vaccines for pre-clinical and clinical trials. Here in the vaccine development department, we follow vaccines from early development to clinical testing.
Typical of our work is upscaling and finding a stable formulation for a promising vaccine or vaccine component from the research department. In our department we develop and optimise methods and analyses to make the product profitable in production. Statens Serum Institut is a workplace that allows you to handle many different tasks, and I really appreciate the variation that comes from switching between laboratory work and paperwork.
Well prepared for the future
I can’t really say exactly where I will be in 10 years, but right now I see a future in which I am working in drug development or production. Statens Serum Institut has a very exciting research and development environment that offers many different career opportunities, so I certainly have a wealth of opportunities for development right here at my current workplace.