The CiRA Research Promoting Office has offered the Career GPS Seminars since March 2023. On July 14, several employees from Nippon Boehringer Ingelheim Co., Ltd (NBI) at the Kobe Pharma Research Institute (KPRI) joined as speakers for the "Career GPS: Working in 'Big Pharma'" seminar, the second event of the seminar series.

The July event, hosted by Drs. Haruhiko Banno (Inoue Laboratory, Dept. of Cell Growth and Differentiation) and Kelvin Hui (Research Promoting Office), introduced various career paths available in the pharmaceutical industry for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. Dr. Takuma Katayama, Head of the Pharmacokinetics and Safety Research Department at KPRI, introduced the German-based international pharmaceutical company with a global network of research facilities and the research taking place at KPRI to seminar attendees from CiRA and various life science graduate departments at Kyoto University.

In addition, other researchers from NBI joined Katayama in answering questions from the audience about the working environment and career opportunities available at the company. The KPRI internship program made possible through a collaboration with C-ENGINE, a project organized by an industry-academia collaborative body to support graduate students in Japan to join internship programs at companies, was also introduced to the trainee audience.

"I find the possibility of being a postdoctoral researcher at a pharmaceutical company very appealing," a CiRA graduate student in attendance explained. "Now I have a new option for my career plan for the future."

Hopefully, with the help of this and other career development events, graduate and postdoctoral trainees at CiRA and Kyoto University will find rewarding careers ahead of them.

(From Left) Drs. Takuma Katayama, Masanobu Sato, Haruka Niikura, and Florian Prodinger from NBI took audience questions at the CiRA Auditorium.

Dr. Takuma Katayama of KPRI gave a presentation on
his career path and work at Boehringer Ingelheim.