I recently interviewed Michelle Alton, a senior pharma professional who is in the middle of a job search. The market is tough out there, she says, and networking is key.

If you're looking for a model of business/government/academic cooperation in preparing the youth of today for careers in biotechnology and the life sciences, look no further than North Carolina. The state has myriad well-funded, integrated programs at the high school and community-college levels in particular.

Today I came across the blog of Michelle Alton, a career pharma professional who has found herself recently unemployed. Alton has chosen to spend her "downtime" and job search proactively--travelling, blogging, and exploring LinkedIn and other professional networking sites.

In this digital era, we ask a lot more of you, our readers--to answer poll questions, provide feedback on articles, and most importantly to provide input for our surveys on key industry topics. Well, here we go again. There are two surveys that we'd love to get your input on:

I've always found one of the most evocative terms in the Toyota lexicon to be “gemba” ----the real place, or as it has more poetically been translated, “the place where truth will be found.”  The word already implies that you may have preconceived notions of what the truth is and need a reality check. What better way to define the workplace, whether that's a laboratory or a factory?

A model which other companies may want to emulate. Genentech's Scholars Program is giving high schoolers scholarships and internships in the hopes of encouraging them to pursue life sciences professions. Would love to hear about similar programs out there . . .

--PWT

On Monday afternoon, a manufacturing and operations discussion group focused on the topic of global competition.  Session chair Julian Wilkins, Vice President of PharmaConsult US, Inc. and a part-time professor of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing at Stevens Institute set the stage with an introduction spelling out the issues and challenges.

We received an office visit today from Dr. Prabir Basu, executive director of the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Technology and Education, or NIPTE. (He's also head of Purdue University's Pharmaceutical Technology Education Center.) NIPTE, in case you haven't heard, is a not-for-profit consortium of 11 universities whose mission is to further scientific education and training in the pharmaceutical industry. More accurately, NIPTE hopes to bring about a paradigm shift in the way that pharmaceutical products are developed and manufactured and how pharmaceutical workers are educated and trained, in line with FDA's Critical Path initiative.

Pharmaceutical education and pharmaceutical manufacturing are in crisis, says Basu. "We need more science," he says. By that, he means we need better integration of the various scientific disciplines that, collectively, are needed to move the industry forward. Basu cites the experience of a friend from industry who had to hire a chemist, analyst and engineer to do the job of one person, since none of the three could perform the multiple functions required of the position. To that end, NIPTE is completing work on two manifestos, a Technology Roadmap and Education Roadmap, that will lay out a course for overhauling pharmaceutical science education. Look for excerpts of the two on PharmaManufacturing.com in the coming months.

How is it that 11 different institutions, with input from FDA and industry, have gotten together on the same page to produce these roadmaps? "Fear of extinction," says Basu. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are losing their competitive edge, and pharmaceutical science programs are losing their relevance, top professors are retiring or leaving their posts, and few universities have sufficient funding to lure qualified new faculty to their pharmaceutical science and engineering or physical pharmacy programs.

We interviewed Dr Basu earlier in the year at the 2008 IFPAC meeting, and we'll have more such discussions and more information on NIPTE as we launch our PharmaQbD.com web site this October.

PWT

Just received this troubling news release , which alleges that Lilly is allowing a racist workplace culture to thrive in Indiana.  Last month, the release reports, an African American security guard found a noose tied to a tree on the corporate campus, and that this imagery has been turning up for the past 11 years.

I can't vouch for the authenticity or credibility of the news source, but a class action lawsuit has been filed by a group of employees, led by former employee Cassandra Welch, who claim that they have been subjected to racist actions, including discriminatory pay differences.  Here's a copy of the class action complaint.  Last November, the NAACP joined the plaintiffs, adding a great deal of credibility to their claims. 

 One snippet from the release:

 "The presence of a hangman’s noose was first reported at Eli Lilly’s Clinton Plant in 1996, where a stuffed white sheet painted black with a noose around its neck was left dangling where dozens of employees could observe it. Then four years ago, also during Black History Month, Welch reported a black doll with a hangman’s noose around its neck dangling from her desk at the company’s headquarters."

Haven't seen an official response from Lilly yet to this latest press release, but no doubt one will be forthcoming.

The following (with a comment by an alleged former colleague of Ms. Welch's) may offer some insights.

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/112187_comment.php

AMS