Additional resources on this blog
Interview-based career profiles for this career area
Laura Cortesi, Senior Operational Study Manager Barbara Tizzano, Clinical Trial Manager
A life science careers blog for early career researchers
This blog aims to inspire early career researchers exploring different career options. We provide interview-based profiles of life scientists working in diverse science-related careers and articles on a broad range of career-related topics, with new content added on a regular basis.
Clinical trials are a large-scale undertaking, and there is a range of roles that coordinate and oversee all aspects including site selection, communications with doctors, trial protocols, data management and analysis. The pharma sector, contract research organizations and hospitals, often employ PhD-qualified life scientists for these positions.
The most common area for life scientists to work in is in a coordinating role where tasks may include a subset of the following activities:
These coordinating roles may involve work directly at the site of the trial, but there are also opportunities for home or office-based roles that involve coordinating clinical trials across multiple locations.
Additionally, there are other roles focused on the management and analysis of clinical trial data. This area can be particularly interesting for life-scientists with quantitative or computational backgrounds. Entry-level roles in the data management area generally involve working in electronic data systems to encapture and track data about each participant in the trial, and resolving queries and issues with the data. More senior roles might involve more strategic input on data strategy, data clean-up and analysis etc, as well as supervising more junior staff.
In our careers & skills survey, 7 clinical trial management professionals told us about the competencies they used most often. The most commonly selected competencies were:
Entry-level roles include ‘clinical research assistants’ and traineeships. Direct entry to operational roles may be possible particularly at CROs (contract research organizations) – PhDs often enter as ‘clinical research associate’ (CRA) or ‘clinical research monitors’. Some additional training (e.g. online courses providing an overview of clinical research) will increase your chance of entry into an operational role rather than a traineeship. With experience, you will likely advance to more senior roles such as clinical project manager or clinical research coordinator.
Example job titles
In our careers and skills survey, scientists working in clinical research told us that they appreciate that their work:
Interview-based career profiles for this career area
Laura Cortesi, Senior Operational Study Manager Barbara Tizzano, Clinical Trial Manager
Data roles
For EMBL fellows
Within EMBL, further internal resources (e.g. recorded career seminars) can be found on our career exploration intranet pages.
For all career areas, we highly recommend first learning more about the careers using the resources above, then conducting informational interviews to gain further insights directly from former PhDs working in career areas that interest you.
Last update: November 2022