We are headed to Oregon! I leave on September 15 to start work on September 23, and Kyle, Eddie, and Billy will follow in May.
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I loved the people and the possible position at Lonza so much that I would be devastated if they rejected me. This job and I were made for each other. I know I would enjoy the work based on my experience doing what I have loved over the last 7 years. For me, it takes two things (besides comfortable wages and benefits, of course):
✅ Welcoming, smart teammates and mentors.
✅ Work that involves coming up with creative technical solutions so that it doesn't feel like work.*
*(In my final year at UT NMR, it definitely felt like drudgery and the Sunday scaries were a real weekly misery.)
Those pieces are there. I would be reporting to a great manager on a team that says it is not micromanaged. The work would be "incubator stage R&D," assessing and perfecting technologies and techniques before they are offered to clients. A big bonus here would be the return to drug substance work in addition to drug product.** There are hoods and equipment for small-scale synthesis in the Tumalo lab.
**Drug substance refers to the drug molecules and how they are synthesized. Drug product, the area of pharmaceutical science that I have mostly been working in for the past 7 years, involves the formulation of those drugs: what additional compounds the drugs are mixed with and their final dosage form.
That brings me to the next big draw: Tumalo.
There are two labs. The formulation spaces are in a large facility in north central Bend. As one would expect, they have spray dryers, melt extruders, powder labs, fluid beds, tableting equipment, and other mainstays in addition to more exotic formulation toys. I would mostly be working at this site.
Their GMP manufacturing and QA/QC groups are in a separate facility on the same campus (this is great for many reasons!) The R&D engineer who gave me the tour of that site said that when he gets called over to manufacturing, he is always in "mission specialist mode," like Howard Wolowitz, not in batch-record-signing operations mode. This is also great. Trying to plan your work around batch records and line clearances is stressful in an endless, cyclic hurry-up-and-wait kind of way.
In the second lab, the samples generated in the formulation lab are analyzed, and this lab is...how to say this?...glorious. It has been on the edge of the Tumalo State Forest since Bend Research was founded in 1975.
I would faint if there is ever a backlog for someone to use an HPLC. There were at least a dozen LC systems, and it felt more like two dozen. At least one had Charged Aerosol Detection, which is complementary to LCMS for molecules that don't ionize well or don't have a chromophore. I counted at least 5 DSCs in addition to a chip-DSC. There was a full suite of dissolution vessels of all sizes, multiple thermal activity monitors, two XRDs, mass spec, half a dozen microscopes, including an SEM with EDS attachment, and other things that I probably forget to mention. There are two NMRs. I am overjoyed about this. I love NMR data. Their 600 MHz, which runs both solid- and solution-state samples, is getting a console upgrade to a Bruker Neo. It should be up and running by November.
The best part, though, was the space itself. The story goes:
When Bend Research built the facility in Tumalo, the founders didn't know if their business was going to be viable, so the site was constructed like a farmhouse, complete with a fireplace. That way, they could sell it if they failed.
Now, that facility is almost 50 years old, so it has undergone several renovations, but it is still charming. Windows looking out on evergreen forests are everywhere. I noticed more than one skylight, and the breakroom is a glassed-in solarium. The facility has hiking/running trails to the north. No wonder it is known for so much fantastic science. It is the perfect place to think.
Thinking back to a month ago, I was on my way to Glasgow:
The best part about writing to yourself is having a record of your thoughts to look back on. When I wrote my answers to FAQs at the end of June, I was very concerned about choosing my next move based on its location rather than on the work itself. That concern has been alleviated. Five of the people who I interviewed with have been there over 10 years, and at least three have been there over twenty.
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So here I am again, on August 10, 2024, delighted that I wrote all of this.
I now have 36 days to finish up in Austin. Although the pay, non-discretionary bonus, relocation, and benefits are incredible, the PTO policy is good, but not great. In hindsight, maybe I should have tried to negotiate it, but I am just so thrilled at the total compensation that I am just going to suck it up and be as present online as I can be for my kids. Daily face time to talk about school and life.
The job is going to be very challenging, and I am going to show Lonza exactly why they made a great decision in hiring me, so there isn't going to be a lot of flying back and forth from that little airport in Redmond. Southwest has a "Young Travelers" policy that will fly the kids to Eugene. It looks like the drive is about the same distance as from east Austin to IAH in Houston. Not great, but it's only nine months. We can make it through, and we will spend next summer together in a new place in Bend.
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