My Career as a Separation Scientist: Part 2: Graduate School and Early/Mid-Career

This article is the second part of the series on ‘My Career as a Separation Scientist,’ which chronicles my childhood in Hong Kong, arriving in America as an international student, and eventually carving a career as a separation science. I started writing at an early age and progressed to technical writing in analytical chemistry and separation science.

A Brief Recap of Part 1: (Early Childhood, High-School, and College) 

Part 1 describes my upbringing in Hong Kong and how I developed an interest in science and writing in high school and decided to go to college in America to study Chemistry.

What is Analytical Chemistry and Separation Science? (Skip this part if you are a chemist!)

Perhaps I should start with a few words on chemistry and separation science to those less familiar with the topics.

Chemistry is considered a fundamental science for the study of matter and its interactions. Chemistry is generally divided into physical, organic, inorganic, biochemistry, and analytical chemistry. Analytical chemistry is the scientific study for measurement, particularly on the levels of essential components in a mixture. It is considered an applied science to support research, product development, and quality control. Analytical chemistry primarily relies on two techniques called spectroscopy and chromatography. 

Spectroscopy uses the interaction of matter with electromagnetic radiations (ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, sound, X-ray, NMR, etc.) to evaluate the identity or measure the amount of a component in a matter. Chromatography is a separation science where a mixture is physically separated into its constituent components by interacting with absorbents packed into a column. The separated components are then detected for either identification or quantitation. Chromatography can be carried out in the liquid phase or gas phase called liquid chromatography (LC) or gas chromatography (GC), respectively. If an electrical current is used in the separation, then it is called electrophoresis. Mass spectrometry (MS) is considered to be spectroscopy and a pivotal information-rich detector for chromatography, in which ionized components are separated in a high vacuum by their mass/charge ratio, allow highly-accurate determinations of molecular mass. 

About sixty years ago, high pressure was used to improve LC's efficiency, and the technique is called high-pressure liquid chromatography or HPLC. It quickly became an indispensable analytical chemistry technique for pharmaceuticals because of its widespread utility and accuracy. HPLC equipment's market size is currently only about $6 billion (the size of the Apple watch), its impacts critically on the entire pharmaceutical industry with market size of over $1 trillion. Under the current regulations, no drugs can be marketed without the HPLC's quality control testing to ensure the drug products' safety and efficacy.

The combination of HPLC and mass spectrometry (MS) or HPLC/MS, is becoming the most powerful and widely-used technique in researching complex samples, particularly for bioscience research and clinical diagnostics. This combination of two analytical techniques is often touted as ‘the perfect marriage,” which allows the quantitation (measurements) with trace components easily in very complex samples often found in natural environments (e.g., pesticide residues in food, blood, and biological tissues).

 Graduate School at Graduate Center (the City University of New York, CUNY)

In the Fall of 1971, I started research at Brooklyn College as a summer intern in my senior year in a radiochemist lab, followed by enrollment at the Graduate Center in the City University of New York (CUNY) in analytical chemistry. I was concerned about the lack of job opportunities in radiochemistry and decided to switch my specialization field to chromatography in my second year of graduate school. High-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) was emerging as a dominant analytical technique at that time, and this decision proved to be a wise choice later on in my career development. The subject of my research was environmental chemistry on ‘the chromatography of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in suspended air particulate matter.’  PAHs are potent carcinogens implicated in the etiology of human lung cancer in cigarette smokers. These compounds could be a supplemental factor for those exposed to air pollution. PAHs are ubiquitous as trace pollutants in the environment since they are formed by ‘pyrosynthesis’ during the combustion process and can be found everywhere in sediments, waste oil, BBQ foods, and cigarette tars. 

My thesis was conducted in collaboration with the New York City Department of Air Resources, whose laboratory was located in the Cooper Union building in Manhattan. I worked weekdays and most weekends with a single-mindedly focus on completing my thesis as soon as possible. In 1976,  I published my first paper in Analytical Chemistry, my only publication in this prestigious journal. It was a good start, and here is the full reference:

“M. W. Dong, D. C. Locke, and E. Ferrand, HPLC method for routine analysis of major parent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in suspended particulate matter, Anal. Chem. 48 (2). 368-372, 1976”.

In the years I was in graduate school, we stayed in several apartments in Brooklyn and Queens in New York City. The last few years of graduate school were spent in a 2-bedroom railway apartment in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn. Our rent was $130/month, including heat, utilities, and maintenance. The location was close to a subway station, a few stops from Manhattan by the ‘L’ train. Across the street was a Boar’s Head factory with trucks and activities in early mornings. It was an older building with minimum amenities with sounds of rodents running inside the wall.  However, rent was inexpensive and befitting for a student. As time went by, we moved to larger suburban housing in quiet neighborhoods, resulting in escalating costs and massive time commitment. Life is always a compromise of pros and cons.

Summer Intern at Naylor Dana Institute (Valhalla, New York)

In the last summer of graduate school, I was an intern at the Naylor Dana Institute for Disease Prevention (The American Foundation) at Valhalla in Westchester County, New York. I worked under Dr. D. Hoffmann, responsible for the data used in the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Tobacco and Health. The institute was well-funded by research grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It had 30 organic and analytical chemists working in the ‘Department of Environmental Carcinogenesis’ focusing on tobacco and health research and the effects of environmental carcinogens in the etiology of the most common human cancer (lung and colon). 

One of the department's accomplishments was the identification of Nitrosonornicotine (NNN), a unique tobacco-specific nitrosamine (a potent class of carcinogens), which is formed during the curing process of tobacco leaves from the reaction of nicotine with nitrites. I recalled the department recorded a level of 90 ppm in a sample of chewing tobacco. Its use was often associated with esophageal cancer. This high level of nitrosamine unheard of for nitrosamines in the environment. I was a ‘sponge’ and learned a lot about research and related analytical chemistry in a vibrant and collaborative environment.  Every time a paper was accepted, the first author would bring in dozens of donuts to celebrate the publication. This tradition turned into a great motivator for all the scientists to publish.

I lived in an apartment in Brooklyn and purchased my first car – a 5-year old used Buick Skylark with a V-6 engine for the daily 30-miles commute to the institute in Westchester country.  During that time, I published six technical papers as a summer intern, and later on as a post-doctoral research fellow. I applied for a grant at the National Institute of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS) and was elated when it was accepted and funded. Regrettably, I left the institute before I was able to execute this funded grant.

Celanese Research Company, Summit, New Jersey (First industry Job)

I had an annual salary of $12,500 as a postdoc research fellow but thought I could have done better in industry. My first industry job prospect came from a headhunter, and I received a job offer for $23,000 from Celanese Research Company in Summit, New Jersey (NJ). In January of 1978, my wife and I moved to Summit, NJ, where I became a research chemist, a section head of the separation group, with three technicians as direct reports. Celanese Research Company was the research branch of Celanese Corporation. Celanese was the sixth-largest chemical company in the US, and it had an annual sale of $2 billion at that time. The lab had ten gas chromatographs (GC) and two new HPLCs (One Varian Syringe pump system and a brand-new Perkin-Elmer Series 3B). It was a busy lab supporting various business units in specialty plastics, chemical catalysis, and biotechnology. The separations lab did about 8000+ analyses of acetaldehyde each year to support the polyester bottle resins (used for 1 and 2-liter soft drink bottles as those used by Coca-Cola and Pepsi). As a result, I published two papers on headspace gas chromatography.

In the first year, we rented a 2-bedroom apartment in a 2-family house in Summit and bought our first new car, a Pontiac Grand LeMans, for $6k. The quality was so low that I immediately took it to the dealer to fix many issues upon delivery. Our combined annual income was ~$35k, and we felt rich as an average single-family house in the affluent Town of Summit sold for only $50-60K at that time. We bought our first single-family house and had our first child during those three years at Celanese. 

Owning a house and raising children in America was a tough balancing act for a dual-career family. My wife was working in New York City in the banking industry and commuted there from New Jersey, albeit a very long working day. Our total mortgage payment, including tax, was $600/month, and a week of full-time childcare was $40/week. We felt well-off at that time because health care was totally free. Years later, even as our income kept rising, we never felt as rich as we were in the early 1980s’ since the income was hardly catching up with the rising cost of housing, taxes, and health care. I believe that America epitomized the unprecedented leader in the world in terms of technologies, efficiency, and standard of living after the second world war to perhaps the 19980s and 1990s.

Owning a house in America could be a rewarding but challenging undertaking for a first-time owner. We made frequent trips to many department and hardware stores to equip our 3-bedroom, 1.5-bath, 1-garage, split-level ranch-style house on a ? acre property in New Providence, NJ. Soon, our half-basement was packed full of stuff. Since I had an easy 3-mile commute to work, most household chores and chauffeuring fell on me, and I spent countless hours cooking, cleaning, and performing home maintenance tasks for the first time. There was a giant oak tree on my property, and I developed a severe case of allergy to tree pollens in the first season.  

Nevertheless, life was good for a suburban professional with a decent job and plenty of freedom. However, I was not happy running a support lab and dealing with customers’ issues all day. I yearned for a more fulfilling career and learning opportunities. I soon received another call from a headhunter and accepted an offer as a Sr. Application Chemist with the Perkin-Elmer Corporation in November of 1980.

Early Career at Perkin-Elmer (Norwalk, Connecticut)

 The relocation package from Perkin-Elmer was substantial, which included a third-party buyout of my house purchased only two years ago. In 1980, Perkin-Elmer was voted as one of the five best-managed companies by Wall Street. Sales hit $1 billion, and the company achieved a ranking of Fortune #280. It was a market leader in four high-technologies: analytical instruments, optics, microlithography, and 32-bit minicomputer. Perkin-Elmer introduced the first infrared spectrophotometer (debuting the analytical instrument industry) in 1942 to support the emergency war effort to make synthetic rubber by the American Cyanamid Corporation after the occupation of Malaya by the Japanese, which nearly cut off the supply of rubber to the world.

I reported to a young Assistant Product Manager in the HPLC Product Department, consisted of around 20 marketing and laboratory staff. My first project was performing research studies in Fast LC with 3-mm columns, paired with an ultraviolet (UV) detector equipped with small flow cells (volumes of 1-2 mL vs. those of 8-10 mL from those of conventional detectors). This instrument was a precursor to the next generation of HPLC called ultra-high-pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC), which debuted 20 years later in 2004.

Connecticut was a more expensive state to live in. Within a commuting distance to Wall Street, New York, Fairfield County had many towns with the highest per capita income in the nation, such as Greenwich and New Canaan. We bought a 5-bedroom, 2.5-bath raised-ranch style house in Norwalk, right across the more expensive and trendier town of Westport. The house was two years old and came with an in-ground pool, which required more maintenance and was a burden rather than an attractive addition for the colder northeastern states. One significant advantage for our decision was the mini-bus would go curbside pickup from my house to the Westport train station to New York. My wife’s commute was more comfortable because it was only one train ride to the Grand Station vs. three different train, path, and subway rides from our previous house in New Jersey. She later met many friendly bridge players on the train, and they would be reserving a seat at a table waiting for her to board as the fourth player. Life was becoming mundane and full of seemingly trivial decisions and routine chores but had significant daily living impacts.

I worked with many prominent scientists at Perkin-Elmer, such as John Atwood and Leslie Ettre. I met with legendary scientists such as Marcel Golay (the inventor of capillary GC columns), Abe Savitzky (developer of the Savitzky-Golay noise reduction filter). Our HPLC product consultants were prominent professors such as G. Guichon of Georgetown, C. Lochmüller of Duke, M. Novotny of Indiana, and C. Horváth of Yale. A year later, the company hired R.P.W. Scott from Roche as a research director of the instrumental division, a pioneer in microbore LC and HPLC/MS interfaces.

Looking back, the first three years at Perkin-Elmer were my golden years in chromatographic research. I worked in the laboratory feverishly and wrote 20+ papers on Fast LC applications. The applications group also gave many technical presentations at National Meetings and seminar tours. The job was enjoyable and rewarding. We managed to publish a small booklet on High-Speed Liquid Chromatography in 1981 called the ‘red book’ vs. the ’green book’ published by Harold McNair on gas chromatography. The red book was written mostly by Leslie Ettre, with data generated from my studies. My articles were published in the Journal of Chromatography, Chromatographia, J. of Chromatogr. Sci. and a new trade magazine called the LC Magazine, which debuted in 1983.

With my smooth sailing career, I decided to expand my horizon by taking evening classes in Japanese, painting, real estate, and other hobbies. I obtained a real estate license as a realtor in Connecticut but never actually practiced as one. In 1983, I joined the Norwalk Chapter of Toastmasters International, an association of professionals for improving public speaking skills, where I gave 15 speeches in my first year with the club.  I was also active as an officer. My first official title was Sergeant-at-arms with the responsibility to greet each new guests at the beginning of the meeting, much like the official greeter's job at Japanese Department Store who bows to each incoming guest to make him or her feel welcome. I became much more extraverted and learned how to establish rapport with strangers from different backgrounds quickly. 

It was an exceptional organization that yielded long-lasting benefits. Besides learning how to do public speaking in a supportive environment, I believe that I learned much about the ‘essence of American culture’ by listening to hundreds of fellow members' inner thoughts. Something often missed in the usual social interactions at work or parties. Personal computers were widely available in the early 1980s, and I would type out all my speeches, which inadvertently also improved my writing skills.

In 1984, the honeymoon period at Perkin-Elmer was soon over, as the department lost the initial innovative spirit and directions. At the time, I was looking for a newer career direction within the company. I spent six months in the new Laboratory Robotics Department using an OEM robot from Mitsubishi, which did not succeed as a product because of its limited reach of the articulated arm. In 1986, I volunteered to serve a 1-year assignment as a marketing specialist for chromatography in the Pacific Rim with extensive travels to Australia, Japan, China, and ASEAN countries (Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia). This temporary assignment was based in Yokohama, Japan, though I spent more time in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Canton, and Hong Kong.) I flew 40+ trips that year, and my mom was delighted as I visited her six times during transits.

China was relatively backward and an inexpensive place to live in 1986. I stayed at a company-leased apartment at the Friendship Hotel in Beijing and had all my meals in the canteen for a few dollars a day. A 1-hour body massage cost ￥3 RMB, and my personal live-in maid was ￥50 RMB (USD $5) a month. This assignment was an extraordinary cultural and eye-opening experience though it was difficult for my wife and the young 6-year old daughter.

I returned to the US in 1987 and found the HPLC Department in disarray with declining sales and uncompetitive products. Internal competitions with our subsidiaries in the UK and Germany further diluted the corporate R&D budget for HPLC. The next twelve years at Perkin-Elmer saw my career in a coasting pattern. The Chromatography Division enjoyed some success in the chromatography data system (CDS) with PE Nelson’s TurboChrom and limited growth from newer HPLC products such as Series 200. The department changed directors and managers many times without any long-term plans for the product line.

In the 1990s, Perkin-Elmer (PE) struck gold with two product lines. The first was polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for amplifying DNAs, licensed technology from Cetus. The company built and marketed the first PCR thermal cyclers, which enjoyed unprecedented sales. The second was the triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer, a joint-venture with Sciex of Canada. PE-Sciex’s LC-MS/MS systems soon became the gold standard in the bioanalytical market for measuring drugs in physiological fluids (plasma and serum). The LC/MS business unit became more critical to the corporation as a profit center and overshadowed the struggling HPLC business unit.

I continued in my application chemist role and worked on protein separations and application-specific systems for food, environmental, and bioscience analysis (e.g., sugars, organic acids, vitamins, PAHs, carbamates, amino acids, PCR, and peptide mapping). I dabbled in diversified roles in product management for micro-LC and marketing/training.   I continued to publish over 20+ journal articles and other supporting and marketing literature, including application notes, brochures, manuals, cookbooks for application systems, a DVD for product marketing, and an entire catalog for the PE Brownlee columns accomplished within a month from planning to print. I did contemplate a change of job and had a few interviews with various pharmaceutical companies. Things were not good, though never too bad until 1999.

My First Layoff

 My first layoff came when I turned 50, after 19 years at PE. It came as a surprise when the company decided to quit the traditional analytical instrumentation business to concentrate on the emerging biotechnology. It already divested most of the semiconductor, optical, and computer businesses and decided to sell the $600-million/year Analytical Instrument Division. The new CEO’s corporate vision was to focus on biotechnology's core businesses with two Divisions of Applied Biosystems and Celera Genomics (Gene Sequencing), which became Wall Street's darling during the Human Genome era. A deal was made to sell the analytical instrument business to EG&G of Boston at a fire-sale price of less than the annual sales figure. 

The new owner promptly changed its name to PerkinElmer without the hyphen and did a massive layoff a month after the acquisition. This familiar story repeats time after time in Corporate America, driven by the upper management's short-term profit goals with scant attention paid to product excellence or longevity and the employees' welfare. Looking back, being a minority in corporate American, the latter part of the 20th century could be a contributory factor in our success in career development. With just a strong academic background and work ethic but no network or mentors within the corporate structure, we were often the last for promotions and the first ones for layoffs during any economic downturns.

I recalled everyone was given a booklet by the company called “Who Moved My Cheese” shortly before the layoff to prepare the employees' mental state for the upcoming changes. The year 1999 was not a bad one to get laid off as the job market was strong.  My benefits package was one-week severance pay per year of service plus a COBRA program for interim health insurance. I was assigned to an out-placement agency and had a personal coach who taught us how to write a resume and conducting a job search by networking. I had ten interviews and received several offers, after which I selected Purdue Pharma since the pharmaceutical industry was the general direction I desired.

Six Years with Purdue Pharma (Ardsley, New York)

In November of 1999, I started my new job with Purdue Pharma Research Center in Ardsley, New York. The job was referred to me by a former colleague from Naylor Dana, who became my supervisor for the next six years. I started as a Senior Principal Scientist and progressed to a research fellow and a group leader. It was a good change as I learned pharmaceutical analysis, Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), management, drug development, method development/validation, and mass spectrometry in those years.

Purdue Pharma was a privately-owned company known for its expertise in sustained-release drug products for pain management. It developed several well-known drugs such as Betadine, Senokot (the number one over-the-counter laxative product), MS-Contin (morphine sulfate), and its flagship product ‘OxyContin’ (from a synthetic form of an opium-derived chemical called oxycodone). OxyContin was very much responsible for the emerging opioid crisis in America. 

I was assigned to support the development of OxyContin's abuse-resistant formulation by combining oxycodone with an antagonist. I was the pioneer in using HPLC with mobile phases at basic pH for the analysis of opioids to replace the older methods using ion-pairing reagents. These superior HPLC methods have better resolution and became standard practice for opioids analysis.

I was involved in method development of new chemical entities (NCEs) and Senokot Laxative. Furthermore, I was getting recognition for my HPLC expertise. I was promoted to a research fellow with the added benefit of a company car (a Saab 9-3 with a 2-l turbo engine with 190 horsepower capable of 30 miles/gal). I became a group leader and had six reports at one time; I learned much about being a supervisor and the many things that a first-line manager should and should not do, often the hard way.

In the Pharmaceutical Analysis Department, I organized most technical training in the Department. I brought in consultants for the departmental training courses in HPLC, method development, and software platforms such as DryLab. This side project in training eventually evolved into a life-long interest in giving my own HPLC short courses at National Meetings starting from 2003. I am not a very ambitious person though my strengths are persistent work ethic, intellectual curiosity, and an affinity for science, learning, and self-improvements. 

My First HPLC Book Project as an Editor

In 2003, my first book project came knocking from an experienced book writer when I was invited to be a co-editor for a book on pharmaceutical analysis by HPLC. I would be the junior editor responsible for most of the chapters. In the following 18 months, I worked methodically and tirelessly, inviting authors and writing five chapters myself. I found out that many of the invited contributors were either chronic procrastinators or genuinely lacking in the discipline/ability to write. The ‘worst’ authors were those with more prominent names. It was with much relief when this hard-cover book with 22 chapters and 658 pages - ‘Handbook of Pharmaceutical Analysis by HPLC’ was published in 2005 by Elsevier.  

The Second Book Project with John Wiley

In 2005, Heather, a young editor from Wiley, approached me on another HPLC book project. I was not happy with how the previously edited handbook turned out without a consistent style and content and decided to be the sole author of a general HPLC book at an intermediate level. It would be a practical paperback book with an abundance of tables, figures, and chromatograms catering to the laboratory practitioners.

The sole authorship allowed me to maintain better content and editorial controls. This format was feasible since I have accumulated a rich portfolio of chromatograms, figures, and case studies from years of work in HPLC applications, instruments, and columns, short courses, and method development experience in pharmaceutical analysis.

I pushed myself harder this time, working evenings and weekends, through snowstorms, plane trips, allergy seasons, company restructuring, and job changes. I managed to complete all the writing in just nine months while holding a full-time job. Two chapters were written in a hospital room in Hong Kong, where I stayed to keep watch over my father’s recovery from surgery. While the book was in production in India, I experienced a second layoff from Purdue Pharma. The reason this time was the loss of the patent protection of OxyContin. I survived the first wave of a 50% layoff in 2004 but did not survive the 90% second wave in the summer of 2005.

A Stint with a Contract Research Organization (CRO, Wareham, Massachusetts)

The severance benefit was more generous this time around, and everyone received at least 6-months of severance pay. However, the job market was not good this time, the year 2005 saw America in a recession, and most pharmaceutical companies were not hiring. I decided to take an offer from a contract lab in Cape Cod as a research director. The next 18 months were likely one of the most demanding personal and professional periods for several reasons.

The CRO was a leader in avian toxicology evaluation and wanted to venture into pharma analytical services. The company managed to put a core team together with a regulatory/quality director and two research directors (bioanalytical and pharmaceutical analysis), and additional supporting staff reporting to a lab manager. It was a very friendly and conservative organization with the parent company headquartered in Akron, Ohio. The mainline of the privately-owned testing business was in polymer testing and characterization.

The CRO had a new laboratory with four HPLC (Waters Alliance) controlled by Empower, one gas chromatograph, two mass spectrometers, and many stability chambers. The sales team consisted of a single vice president in business development from a larger bioanalytical CRO.  The new start-up CRO hoped to focus on the pharma companies around Boston, which was rapidly ascending as the new biotech hotspot.

Working for a CRO was not an easy adjustment for someone coming from a pharma background. Benefits were spartan, and there were no bonuses or stock options. My wife and I decided we would not move, so we commuted every weekend 180 miles each way from our rental apartment in Cape Cod. I bought a new Honda Accord and managed to put 35K miles in its first year. 

We rented a beautiful all-furnished summer beach cottage for $700/month for the first six months, which was not insulated.  The rent would go up to $2000 per week after Labor Day weekend in the summer. In the cottage, we kept the thermostat low and felt cold most of the time, but the gas bill was > $400/month. Our next rental in April 2006 was a much warmer 2-bedroom apartment in Fairhaven. It has a western exposure with only electrical heat, though the utility bill was much more reasonable.

I reported directly to the owner of the company in Ohio. He was a former Navy Seal, and we had a teleconferencing call every Monday at 7:30 am on the activities of the past and coming week. One needs to be highly disciplined working for a CRO, and I had to account for every ? hour of my time billable to various clients’ accounts. After a few months, I became quite efficient and had no problem doing a quotation in 30 min and a study report in a few hours. 

I continued my HPLC short course training at National meetings such as Pittcon, EAS, and ACS. I brought in a demo UHPLC unit from Waters and used it successfully in method development projects for several clients. This new instrument eventually led to a publication in LCGC on the applications of UHPLC in pharmaceutical analysis in 2007. The business was slow since the first person was not effective in bringing in any new clients. Business picked up when the company hired a new sales director who brought in projects from new customers.

My new book, ‘Modern HPLC for Practicing Scientists, Wiley,’ was published in 2006, and it quickly became a bestseller book in HPLC. I was approached to give a six-session HPLC webinar series for AAPS (American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists) with over 400 attendees in every session. However, I was tired of the long weekend commutes, working for many different clients with tight deadlines, and the upkeeping of two residences. I was restless and started exploring a more sustainable pharma position. In October of 2006, one phone call from a headhunter came in unexpectedly.

The Best is Yet to Come: Nine Years in Sunny California

I have spent most of my career on the east coast of America and around the New York Tristate areas of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut (CT). Since 1980 I have lived in Norwalk, CT, and it became my second hometown after Hong Kong. I never thought of relocating to California, although I guess that any pivot decisions in one’s life were all about timing, circumstances, and mindset. 

Genentech is the first and most prominent biotechnology company in the world. Its main campus was located at a 200+ acre bayside property in South San Francisco (SSF) and expanded its product portfolio to small molecule drugs.  Genentech pioneered recombinant DNA technology to produce biological therapies and was most successful in targeted therapies for cancer treatments using monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). It had three $6B+ per year worth of mAb drug products for oncology alone. My position was a Senior Scientist in the newly formed Small Molecule Pharmaceutical  Science Department. Genentech was one of the few pharma companies that still believed in doing basic research and drug discovery from the target, candidate nomination, to development.

The company exemplified the ‘coolness’ and ‘arrogance’ of the high-tech culture in Silicon Valley. Everyone wore jeans and sneakers so that one could run faster and be comfortable. Free lunches and Fridays’ Happy Hours were weekly affairs where beers and wines flow freely without any legal qualms.

In Oct 2006, I went for an on-site interview. The evening before the interview, the hiring manager picked me up in his Land Rover and drove me to an Asian Fusion restaurant in San Francisco to meet with fifteen colleagues from the department. The interview went well with an hour-long presentation attended by 30 scientists who asked many questions. 

The written offer came in late December with a reasonable base salary plus annual performance bonuses,  stock options, and sign-on bonuses. It also included a generous relocation package with an interest-free loan, housing subsidies, moving/closing costs, and substantial temporary housing. 

A decision to relocate was never easy, though the timing was right this time. My wife took early retirement two years prior, and we sold our house to our married daughter. Both the east and west coast were ideal locations for Asians with excellent grocery support, and I had four brothers and sisters living in the Bay Area. We would make frequent trips back to the east coast to visit our daughter and my wife’s family in New York. However, the overriding reason for making this big relocation was to start another segment of my career with a top pharma where scientific research and publications were recognized and required for scientists.

So, at age 57, I moved across the continent to start a new life in sunny California for the next nine years. It turned out to be some of the best years of our lives.

 Acknowledgments

The author thanks the following colleagues for the review of this article.

He Meng of Sanofi, Adrijana Torbovska of Farmahem, Alice Krumenaker, of TW Metals, LLC, Kim Huynh-Ba or Pharmalytik, Ke Hu of Allergan, Mingyi Chen of ChromClass, Tao Jiang of Mallinckrodt, and Lei Shen.

End of part 2 and to be continued in Part 3 (Late Career at Genentech and MWD Consulting).