Career support and guidance to predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows across EMBL’s six sites
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.
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 & skills survey, 7 clinical trial management professionals told us about the competencies they used most often. The most commonly selected competencies were:
In our careers and skills survey, scientists working in clinical research told us that they appreciate that their work:
We highly recommend 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.
Further internal resources (e.g. library of recorded career talks) can be found on our intranet pages.
Laura Cortesi talked to us about her career path, passion and motivation for clinical research management, and how parenthood prepared her to work in a role that requires coordination of tight timelines, different needs and unexpected events.
Barbara Tizzano shares her experience of moving into clinical trial management. This is a career area that may be attractive for people who love coordinating projects and bringing people together to solve real-life problems.