\u201cI came out of the lab and all of a sudden I was responsible for business development,\u201d says Joep Muijrers. Muijrers is a former PhD student at EMBL\u2019s Heidelberg site and now an investor in life science companies. \u201cYou find yourself in the middle of it and you learn as you go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jumping into a situation and teaching yourself what you need is something that many scientists will be familiar with. It\u2019s easy to think of science and business as separate worlds, but Muijrers points to many skills that are common to both. The people who are most successful in making the transition, he says, are those who are \u201cvery open-minded. Who understand that there\u2019s a lot of things they don\u2019t know yet, and who don\u2019t mind a challenge.\u201d And in business, as in science, you have to put in the hours \u2013 \u201cbut there\u2019s no way I would need to tell anyone at EMBL that!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Muijrers came to EMBL in 1997. The subject of his thesis was ET recombination \u2013 a method for editing specific sections of DNA. It was more efficient than other techniques available at the time and made it possible to work with longer DNA sequences. In 2000, a group of four \u2013 including Muijrers and his supervisor Francis Stewart \u2013 founded EMBL spinoff Gene Bridges, a company focused on DNA recombineering. Muijrers became Director of Business Development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a lot of collective expertise there, and anyone is invited to tap into that<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Eager to increase his financial knowledge, Muijrers moved to an investment bank and now works at Life Sciences Partners (LSP). LSP is one of the largest investment groups that specialises in medical innovation companies. The company manages funds for a mix of private individuals and larger institutions. Muijrers\u2019 area of expertise is investing in listed companies. He recently moved to LSP\u2019s offices in Boston, US. The Boston area, he says, is an exceptional place for biological research. \u201cEurope is a very good area for innovative science and there are some very good companies there,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut arguably there are not that many places like Boston as an ecosystem for life sciences and biotech. I haven\u2019t been here a long time but what I\u2019ve seen so far is quite amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His life now may be very different to that of a PhD student in Heidelberg, but Muijrers is clear about what he\u2019s gained from his time at EMBL. \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to have a background in molecular biology,\u201d he says, \u201crather than trying to master molecular biology as an economist.\u201d Having worked in research himself, Muijrers says he\u2019s also better able to understand the companies he\u2019s looking to invest in. \u201cAny company I see will tell me everything is great. Everything is going to plan. Their science is fantastic and their products are fantastic \u2013 yeah, right! It never happens that way and that\u2019s something you know if you\u2019ve spent some time in a lab.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Muijrers\u2019 broad experience was also one of the reasons he was keen to get involved in the EMBL Alumni Association. He\u2019s spent the last five years as a board member, and played a major role in securing sponsorship for EMBL\u2019s 40th Anniversary Reunion in 2014. \u201cI felt, if you really enjoyed your time so much at EMBL and feel you can add something that might be of value, then why not?\u201d he tells me. Muijrers knows it\u2019s not always easy for scientists to make contact with investors. This is one of the reasons he\u2019s planning a new industry event at EMBL, starting in 2018. He\u2019s also happy to talk to EMBL alumni and make introductions where he can. He emphasises that it\u2019s a two-way street: as an investor, he benefits from the contacts he\u2019s made via the alumni network. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of collective expertise there,\u201d he says, \u201cand anyone is invited to tap into that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EMBL alumnus Joep Muijrers talks about making the transition from science into business<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":9289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,17593],"tags":[80,59,71],"embl_taxonomy":[],"class_list":["post-9288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-people-perspectives","tag-alumni","tag-careers","tag-industry"],"acf":{"article_intro":"
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