Dr. Lulu Chu, PhD in Biomedical Engineering | Associate Director, Cell Therapy Clinical Pharmacology, Modeling & Bioinformatics at Takeda

In this episode, we discuss how Lulu leveraged her internship experience while pursuing her PhD in Biomedical Engineering to land her first post-graduate job, her advice for using internships to build skills and to help ease the transition from academia to industry, and the ways mentorship and identity-based networks have supported her professional development.

Hosted by Brooklyn Arroyo

To connect with Lulu and to learn more about her story, visit her page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

Brooklyn Arroyo

Hello I'm co-host Brooklyn Arroyo and this is 100 Alumni Voices podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Lulu Chu, PhD in biomedical engineering. Hello, and welcome to PHutures podcast.

Lulu Chu

I am happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Thank you for coming. So, let's just jump right into why you chose to study biomedical engineering. Was that something that you always wanted to study? And what did that look like for you?

Lulu Chu

That's a really good question. I think I started back in undergrad when I was doing both biology and math double major and then as I continued exploring both majors, I realized I wanted to combine them. So, biomedical engineering seemed to be the, you know, like in the natural solution to combine both areas. And then I got to talk to a bunch of professors. And then later on, obviously at Hopkins, I feel like this is the the route that I wanted to to to work on and in the future in healthcare.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Definitely. So, you mentioned wanting to pursue healthcare and what did that look like for you? Did you have any moments where you experience like work experiences? Or did it all have a very linear academic experience for you before and during your PhD?

Lulu Chu

So, I think it started off with very linear progression was academic, you know, from undergrad and then grad school. The courses and then start research. I think initially Healthcare is like this very big thing in my head. It has different sections, different areas. But what I was doing in my PhD was actually more basic research, biology research using, you know, computational modeling or mathematical modeling, but I wanted to understand like how potentially my skill sets could fit into the healthcare industry. So, I just decided a year before my graduation from PhD, I decided to do an internship with the pharmaceutical company at AstraZeneca to gain more experience and understanding what it looks like to for someone like me to have a work experience in the industry. And then that kind of like opened up my horizon and then things started from there.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Definitely. So, within the things that you were doing within your PhD, did you ever have any moments where you thought maybe the healthcare wasn't your path? Or I know that it for a lot of people it's so far away or it seems like almost out of reach and for a lot of people we don't think that's accessible for us. And did you have any moments where you faltered or you thought, I don't know if I can do this?

Lulu Chu

Absolutely. I think every PhD students, while everyone is different, every student probably went through ups and downs throughout their PhD journey. In the sense that you know, when I reach my lowest point where my experiments were not working, my modeling was not going anywhere. I was actually thinking do I need to think about other career choices, like consulting, where I actually explored a little bit through the, you know, the Hopkins Consulting Club as well. But I think that that kind of helped me realize that I really wanted to work in healthcare or like in, you know, with a biology-related industry where I can actually help the patients.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, you you mentioned having the opportunity to work within an internship. And so for other students, whether undergrad or PhD level, do you recommend finding those internship opportunities? Do you think that it really did pay off for your overall experience?

Lulu Chu

Oh, absolutely. I highly recommend all the students you know, starting from undergrad or grad school, I think just to start exploring different summer opportunities. If you think it is something that you wanted to do, get into the industry for three months and see whether that's something you really want to do. I, you know, I certainly think that opened up a path for me to move forward upon my graduation cause I actually joined Astra Zeneca as a full-time scientist after graduation because of the internship, and I believe a lot of other students had similar experience, you know, leveraging their experiences from internship to get them, you know their first job or opening up their their career path.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, when approaching the the the job that you decided to take after your PhD, how did that look for you? And you you mentioned briefly just now about how your internship sort of had your foot in the door and you were able to roll right into your career. But how has that progression looked from from academia into solely working in your field now?

Lulu Chu

Yeah, I think the early transition, if I understand you correctly, I think the early transition definitely had some obstacles and different perspective from where you were like what I was thinking back in, in school. I think the the internship gave me a glimpse of the you know like how working in a team setting, in a function in a drug development process and also you know communicating within the team and outside the team across different functions and collaborating, how does that work from an industry perspective? I think that experience helped me transition relatively smoothly because like as a PhD student, we were always trained to work independently as a scientist. So, with that experience, you learn to how to communicate with people, how to present your ideas, your your results to others more and collaborate more with people from different backgrounds. I think another transition that I had to experience more it just, you realize that, like your day is not just like, you know, sitting in the lab working on a problem like throughout the day. There are meetings that you have to learn about. How does your function fits into the whole pipeline of drug development? Where does your team come in? How do you provide your expertise? How do you communicate with people? Those are definitely, I think there's some learning curves, but the internship definitely helped with that. And then obviously was more practice in the industry.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And and like you said, I think that it is important to have even just any experience. So, whether it's an internship or a fellowship, anything, any glimpse of what the field looks like is gonna be helpful. So, do you have any advice for those who are planning to go into healthcare and they feel like their academic experience has uplifted them, but they're nervous or anticipating maybe falling short in some areas? And you briefly mentioned how it's not always just sitting and doing research. You also have meetings and other things. So, what advice would you have for better preparing you to step into industry?

Lulu Chu

That is a complicated question, but I think you know the first advice is always like, you know, look into the job descriptions or like internship descriptions what they're looking for. If you feel like you're, you know, you have shortcomings or you're lacking some skillsets that they have, you can take more classes or like, you know, talking to people who potentially have more experience in that area to learn or to prepare yourself before those interviews. My advice is always like you know, give it a try. They're not looking for like 100% fitting into a job. So, I think that that's something from a women's perspective too. I was always told that like men always apply for something as long as they tick off 50% of the job requirement and women it’s always like, oh, do I have everything they're asking for? Do I, you know, tick off 90%? You can always give them the idea that you can always learn. But you know, but you want to better prepare yourself before going into those industry as well. And a lot of times you, you really just learn on the job.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, you you briefly touched on this on the sense of identity, and I think that for a lot of people, like I said before, Healthcare is just this big thing. It's almost daunting to want to pursue a career in that industry, but especially for, you know, women, or for any identity that we may hold, that we are a minority in that field, how has that looked for you? And do you feel that it's best to find a community or or you know, how did you go about seeing yourself in an industry that doesn't necessarily always hold those who look like you or share the same experiences as you, and how has that looked like?

Lulu Chu

Well, that's a good question. I think I I actually was just listening to a podcast yesterday talking about female surgeons in the medical field yesterday. I think oftentimes like as maybe it just like growing up it initially the way I grew up, my parents always encouraged me to do whatever I want. So, growing up, I always had the idea that I can do anything that I want to. But, I completely, you know, like understand as I started working or even back in grad school, people would point it out like, you know, women is a minority in engineering field and then in healthcare I think it depends on the sectors that you're looking at. There are certain areas where women are there are more women, but then certain areas like quantitative modeling, quantitative methodologies for like healthcare or like certain higher as you go higher level people will point out that there are less and less women in this field. I think absolutely one, like I think when I first started in AstraZeneca, I joined the network of women and you start sharing stories and hearing about others perspective, how they potentially act or like how they've been experiencing the difference in the industry. And you learn from each other. Like one thing I didn't even know, like for, for my first job, I didn't negotiate. But I talked to other people. They're always like you always have to negotiate because men negotiate, even though they don't have another offer. Nothing against that. I think that's just something I've learned about over the years that what I need to do and then how you carry yourself or present yourself in front of other people. I think that's something you learn through experience and through talking with other people as well. And always like I have like, very great male mentors in the companies as well and they will help me, you know in different aspects either technical or soft skillsets. They will point out how I should behave and what I need to do better to you know, survive in a in an industry like healthcare.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Definitely so. So, you talked about the way you grew up and having that that sense of motivation through that and finding that network of women and that that sort of sense of community, and now the mentorship with other people you've worked with. And so, I'd love to hear more about the professional mentors that you've experienced or the relationships you've had within your career and and really how they helped you go deeper into your your own progress and your personal and professional progress.

Lulu Chu

Like I mentioned earlier, I think it’s a very important aspect of professional development. And also, I've had both female and male mentors that are have been absolutely essential for my growth. I think there are different aspects you you wanted to identify. How potentially, what are the areas that can potentially help you with either technical or like leadership? Or like how do you have the executive presence in front of people? So, like you wanted to identify the different areas that you wanted to grow and match with the person that, like some of those relationships kind of like grew out like organically from you know the line managing relationships, like some of my managers, they just really, they're just really into mentoring people as well. They're absolutely wonderful in the sense that giving me tips about like how do I prioritize things in my work, how do I focus on different areas to grow, what additional trainings that I should go to to like, you know, their other mentors that I had that I talked about, they're like you need to be more confident in meetings. Speaking up about the, your results your work in front of other people and then they will connect me with other people to talk to as well or to collaborate. So, I think there is definitely, I’ve been benefiting definitely from different different ways in areas for myself.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Within the work that you're doing now, has there been any significant surprises to to things you've discovered or projects you've had, or even just personal areas of growth? Have you surprised yourself in any way?

Lulu Chu

What do you mean surprise myself in any way?

Brooklyn Arroyo

Have there been moments where you you didn't necessarily see yourself growing in a certain area or falling into a certain subject?

Lulu Chu

So, I mean, in my current role, it's a, it's a combination of clinical pharmacology and modeling. So, I am basically a like a representative for my function in the drug development project team. Under this structure, basically I would oversee from my function on a particular program what is the the clinical study design, the strategy, dosing strategy, dosing optimization. I think that was I mean, even though I worked towards it at the same time, there’re new things about this role in the sense, like, I feel like as a as a modeling scientist, you're seeing things more like a a specific question coming from the drug development that you wanted to use mathematical models to apply. But now it's more of a, there are more practical things to think about. How do we optimize the trial essentially to help the patient? There are little things in terms of the operations of the trials that I've never thought about before, but those are the interesting things to, you know, how do we help the patients not not only by giving them the right drugs and everything, but also help them live their lifestyle better as well and how do we make sure that we make it easy for them to be a participant for the trial? So, I think that aspect has been really interesting to me.

Brooklyn Arroyo

I also think that that's extremely interesting and it's not just because I am also pursuing a field in in healthcare. So, for you, what does the next phase, if there is one, for your career look like?

Lulu Chu

For my next phase I would love to to see, you know, to grow as a leader in my field. Basically, in a in a therapeutic area, I want to be leading the clinical pharmacology and modeling activities so that we can optimize this process for a certain disease area and then the you know like helping newer graduates, you know, like people who wanted to join the industry, to learn about it, because I came from a different field than a lot of people who actually have the right different backgrounds than me. So, I think they're, you know, I'm just trying to advance my own career, but helping other people as well.

Brooklyn Arroyo

That's amazing and definitely amazing pursuit to have within any career. You know, I think I could definitely see you getting into that leadership role and having a big influence, even just in this conversation alone, I'm influenced by your leadership. So, our final question that we ask of all of our interviewees is sort of the grand finale. What inspires you right now?

Lulu Chu

I think this hasn't changed since I started working. I think it's the patients that we are treating. They are the ones who especially right now I'm in a suit like oncology right now. There's so many cancer patients. Even though I think the field has advanced so much in the past decades with the immunotherapies and new modalities of therapies coming up. But there has been like whenever you hear the stories of patients, you know, suffering from multiple lines of treatment. And they're not able to get better, I think those are the number one thing that gets me up in the morning basically inspires me to do what I do. We want to design the best drug, design the best trial to help those patients.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And I think that you are doing an amazing job and amazing work and in a really important area of of research and study. And so, thank you for all that you do within your career and and thank you for coming onto the PHutures Podcast.

Lulu Chu

Of course, I'm happy to.