Emily Robinson
When I began my part-time Master’s degree in Drug Development Science five years ago I was working in the King’s Clinical Trials Unit as a Trial Statistician. Having finished my degree two years ago, I have been able to progress in my career significantly.
As soon as I completed the MSc, I was able to apply for an internal promotion, which allowed me to put into practice my new expertise and become a Research Fellow in Medical Statistics. One example of this was how the content of the modules and experiences of the lecturers vastly expanded my knowledge of early-phase trials, having worked mainly on mid-late phase trials up to that point. In my new role, I was therefore able to become more focussed in dose-escalation trials and have since attended specialist courses for modern dose-escalation trial designs and methodology.
Despite the busy schedule of each teaching week, I really enjoyed the variety of industry experts who came in to teach us about their specialities. In particular, I gained a real insight into the expanse of preclinical work, and I enjoyed learning more about post-marketing trials and pharmacovigilance. For my dissertation / research project, I was able to use real data from a previously published drug trial and explore the side-effect profile of the investigational medicinal product in question. I committed long hours and hard work to the analysis and write-up of my dissertation, which earned me a distinction.
The effort I put in really paid off, and I would encourage future students to find a topic that they are genuinely interested in, as it makes the whole process more enjoyable and satisfying. I also liked making acquaintances with other students during the module teaching weeks. We all had different academic backgrounds and career experiences, and the group exercises and presentations encouraged us to learn from each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
Having been successful with the MSc, I was keen to collaborate professionally with the other module leaders. To this end, I suggested to the programme lead that our distinguished groups of clinical trial experts join forces, and I happily took on the responsibility of co-module lead for the statistics module. This has allowed me to support the continual development and improvement of the teaching for this programme, and I have thoroughly enjoyed giving something back to future students.
More recently, I have been offered a new role with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, which I have accepted. I will be Lead Statistician and Clinical Trials Methodologist, which means that again I will be able to draw upon the knowledge and skills that I acquired during my degree, such as navigating industry regulations and encouraging early-career trial teams to execute well designed, robust clinical trials for effective drug development. If I had to offer a couple of key tips of advice for future students, I would encourage them to be proactive in asking questions where they don’t understand something the first time round; and to absorb as much information as they can from the industry experts.