Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton led the way in offering work placements and we have recently introduced academic placements at a host universities in Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
We provide expert assistance in helping students to secure their placement through a series of pre-placement workshops on CVs, interviews, and assessment centres as well as through the efforts of our placements tutor.
For more information on student placements please contact Dr David Tumbarello: D.A.Tumbarello@soton.ac.uk
My placement year was the real highlight. I was at Astra Zeneca in Cambridge, one of the country’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. I did geno-medicine, modelling cancer to find better treatments, it’s one of the latest technologies and I was fortunate to get all that laboratory experience.
I did a placement year at Sanofi, a global pharmaceutical company, in their new product planning and business development team.
I completed a 14 month industrial placement at Sanofi, which is a leading EU pharmaceutical company. I worked in the regulatory affairs department monitoring new safety legislation and maintaining medical drug documentation to ensure patient safety.
Throughout my time with GSK, I was working alongside doctors, scientists and statisticians who were very helpful and supportive. It was great to see how much the company was science-led and devoted a lot of resources to the development of staff. The pharmaceutical industry can be mistrusted, and it was refreshing to see that GSK went beyond the commercial side of business to enhance its corporate social responsibility and remain focused on R&D.
spent a year in industry at GSK in Stevenage looking at ways to monitor liver and kidney fibrosis.
I would recommend other students to do placement years during their degree as I felt I developed new and existing skills during the year and had real-life industry experience when applying for roles after my degree.