Genevieve Farrell BSc Biochemistry, 2016

Graduate

I did a placement year at Sanofi, a global pharmaceutical company, in their new product planning and business development team.

At school, I enjoyed the areas of chemistry and biology that overlapped, so it felt natural to choose Biochemistry. Southampton was my insurance university, but I had visited before and liked the city and the idea of being close to the sea, London and nice surrounding areas like the New Forest. After visiting on my UCAS day, I loved it and wanted to put it as my firm choice rather than my insurance; I was secretly pleased when I didn’t get into my first choice university!

I’ve been really happy with the choice of modules we’ve had. The lecture material is interesting and engaging, which obviously makes studying better! The Hartley library is a great resource, it’s a great place to study and has all the books you could possibly want or need. The teaching staff have always been really good. They reply to emails when you have questions, or if you want to ask them to clarify anything at the end of the lecture they are always helpful and knowledgeable. Some lecturers really do go above and beyond to make the lectures fun and engaging, which makes a 2 hour lecture on a Monday more bearable.

I’ve used careers destinations quite a few times to work on my applications to graduate schemes which has really helped. I’ve also attended several careers fairs which have led onto interviews for graduate jobs. The workshops to improve skills have been great; I recently went to one by the Welcome Trust to write the perfect application- that was a great opportunity to meet people from the trust (my dream employer).

I did a placement year at Sanofi , a global pharmaceutical company, in their new product planning and business development team. I was working on drugs that were about 5 years pre-launch. I mainly worked on market understanding, seeing what the competitive landscape was and completing disease understanding to help introduce the disease area to other colleagues in the cross functional team who did not have a science background. I also got to go to Centre Parcs for a company away day, a great Christmas party and we even got to meet Chris Robshaw, as well as learning lots about the healthcare industry!

I’ve had great experiences completing group projects in a variety of modules. Many of my closest friends I’ve made have been course mates who I’ve got to know through projects and lab work.