I always knew I wanted to spend my career helping others. I grew up wanting to pursue anything and everything from becoming a UN ambassador to wanting to cure cancer. The allure of the opportunity to help advance the field of medicine is what led me to double major in biomedical engineering and biochemistry at Arizona State University. Though I entered college still unsure of how I wanted to help people, I knew that having the opportunity to problem solve through engineering would be an amazing way to learn about myself and how I can best contribute to the field of medicine.
Since beginning college, I have set my mind on the premedical path, and hope to earn my MD and become an oncologist with the ability to both see patients one on one while still contributing to research and advancing medical technologies. Upon this realization, I began to search for opportunities to earn exposure and experience in both clinical and research settings related to my goals. Fortunately, AZBio reached out to me with an opportunity to pursue an internship with a startup company called FAKnostics out of the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine that has been developing diagnostics and therapeutics for both cancer and fibrosis related conditions. I was ecstatic to apply, and upon receiving the job offer, I knew that I would gain industry experience unlike I had before. I expected to earn some technical reading and writing skills in terms of clinical and market research, but was surprised by the skills I ended up developing instead.
The work I completed at FAKnsotics was unlike anything I had been tasked with before. I was reoriented to view their technology not from a research perspective but from a marketing and business perspective, as I would have to do in industry as an engineer. Though I was initially surprised and unsure of how to go about such expectations, I quickly learned the significance of understanding competition and the market around pharmaceuticals to the success of new technologies and drugs. This new perspective opened my eyes to the aspects of research and development that we do not often have the opportunity to see as undergraduate students in classes or even in the lab, so I am grateful for the exposure and the new skills that I earned along the way, including coding macros in Excel and PowerBI to develop a clinical database and dashboard for investor pitches. I was also responsible for learning the significance of the analytical side of marketing and for boosting engagement and the presence of FAKnostics online, and was exposed to the analytical tools on sites like LinkedIn and Wix.
I am grateful for the opportunity to grow my mindset and skill set that AZAdvances and AZBio provided for me. The support from my mentors and colleagues at FAKnsotics helped me develop as a future physician and industry member. This internship experience has shaped how I understand drug development as well as clinical and market research, and this prepared me for my potential future career in developing medical technologies and cures. I am excited to take this knowledge and apply it elsewhere in my journey, and hope that other students get to explore similar opportunities through this program.