University Industrial Placement Student: Biometrics Review

Supporting Literature review requests to deliver insights to a research question, this could be about survival or safety data for clinical trials of a specific cancer type and patient population, risk stratifications, or context of a disease. I was also involved in digitisation of KM plots and reconstruction of patient data. On the side I supported other work when needed such as testing of new tools, or making presentations for competitions.

In the first few months I was not given any responsibility, however as I became more experienced with the work I was given more independence. That being said, throughout the placement the work can be very self directed, you have to put in the effort to reach out to people and support a project. Sometimes this would be difficult and there would be periods of time where you have little to do.

Yes, I have gained alot of valuable skills mainly from being proactive and getting involved in a variety of project work, and also other company initiatives such as joining employee resource group committees.

I was allocated a mentor at the beginning of my placement who was incredibly supportive. We had weekly catch up meetings in the first we weeks and throughout the placement she was always there to reach out to if I needed any support. With regards to project work It depended on who I was working with, generally the people I worked with were incredibly supportive, took time to teach me and gave me alot of responsibility and say in the work I was doing.

The company culture is great, there are always events happening and socials to attend. There are many events organised for early careers, and a very fun christmas party in December. Within my department, all interactions were online via Microsoft teams due to staff being based globally (USA, Canada, Poland). Whilst this was very useful to develop cultural awareness, it did make it difficult to reach out to people at times and would be difficult scheduling meetings with time zone differences. It also felt a bit unsociable at times, as there wasn’t a big team presence in the office.

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement year, mainly because I put in the effort to get involved in a variety of projects and company initiatives.

Yes