Creating the next Moderna | Amaury Genovese
Caption
Amaury Genovese, 2023 DPhil Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, writes:
What happens when you spend too much time with your head in the clouds, twiddling your thumbs, during your DPhil*? As it turns out, it might just lead to one of the most prestigious industry experiences in biotechnology.
Offered by Flagship Pioneering, the three-month fellowship in Boston, Massachusetts, is run by the venture creation company behind some of the world's best-known biotech start-ups. Founded in 1999, Flagship has launched more than 100 companies, including Moderna and Sana Biotechnology. This summer, I joined a cohort of 20 final-year PhD students and postdocs who fought their way from an international pool of 900 candidates to drive the company’s future golden geese.
The fellowship, which is split into three one-month cycles, touches on various themes spanning human and planetary health. Flagship’s own blueprint pushes the cohort to explore areas they are unfamiliar with. I realise this fits my unconventional academic path quite well, having jumped from chemical engineering in my undergraduate to cancer biology in my master’s and to cardiovascular science and developmental biology in my DPhil.
In fact, one of Flagship Pioneering’s most distinct features is its ability to establish companies in a wide array of scientific domains. Ideas with great value and known low risk are highly saturated, so we are constantly pushed to generate so-called venture hypotheses in unclaimed territories where the risk could be minimal but no one has dared to evaluate it yet. My academic training prepared me to solely generate adjacent hypotheses, which turned out to be a completely different skillset required to successfully “leap” into the unknown. The other fellows and I have had to learn everything from scratch, which has been slightly challenging (for lack of a better euphemism). Fellows have been taught this process since 2009, when Flagship Pioneering welcomed its first ever cohort. Nowadays, it has become an important recruitment pipeline and, as I discovered, dozens of the 600 employees happily call themselves ex-fellows.
My experience shines the spotlight on a booming path after graduation: entrepreneurship. Whether you join an institutionalised version like Flagship’s or make your own way, it can be a rewarding experience for those seeking a non-academic career. Today, more than ever, Keble College graduates have an unparalleled opportunity to have a global impact, and both traditional and unconventional means are certainly worth exploring. Even at the cost of twiddling your thumbs for a bit.
* Editor’s note: Strongly discouraged!
