Bridging the Culture Gap Between Academia and Industry

The biotech boom is creating a wealth of jobs for life science researchers, and not just in the laboratory. Yet doctorate training rarely includes preparation for industry roles.

One part of the sector hungry for doctorates is venture capital, or VC, where advanced research skills developed during a PhD are highly valuable in spotting new investment opportunities. To encourage academics to consider a career in biotech investment, EQT Life Sciences is partnering with universities to give researchers a taste of the job.

“VC can be a bit of an enigma for academic researchers,” says Oscar Marshall, an EQT Life Sciences associate who studied for his PhD at Imperial College London. “There’s not really an obvious stepping stone to come out of the lab and go into evaluating businesses and understanding their commercial potential or how they might address unmet needs.”

Academic researchers, guided by EQT Life Sciences partners, work in teams of three or four to scout companies in a particular therapeutic area, culminating in a detailed investment thesis for their choice candidate as part of a broader project. After pilots at Cambridge, Harvard and Utrecht universities, EQT Life Sciences is seeking to extend these programs to even more students at those institutions.

“It’s a win-win,’’ says René Kuijten, partner at EQT and head of EQT Life Sciences. ‘’Participants gain valuable experience in venture capital, and our team gains from the insights that they produce from their research. We need to cooperate to get the best people and the best ideas to the industry.’’

The projects, which so far have focused on neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease and oncology, sometimes help EQT Life Sciences unearth new investment opportunities in the initial stages of due diligence: The team is currently evaluating one of the companies spotlighted by researchers who have just completed one of the most recent programs.

“I wanted to be able to create more impact, and things move much faster in biotech companies or the VC firms that invest in these companies,” says Yaiza Andrés, who participated in EQT’s first university project in 2024 while completing her PhD at the University of Cambridge. “The time at EQT Life Sciences and some other programs showed me that this is the sort of thing I wanted to do.”

Frank Obeng Addae, who is partway through a PhD focused on malaria at Harvard University, plans to pursue a career in VC after completing his studies next year. Taking part in the program “really reinforced my interest,” he says.

The business of biotech

For many participants, the most valuable aspect of the program is seeing how experimental work in the laboratory translates into improving patients’ lives.

Addae says the project opened his eyes to the pace of decision-making in VC. Participants also have the ability to hear from leadership teams at the cutting edge of novel science, understand the approach that EQT Life Sciences takes to assess companies and even get an opportunity to probe a scientific hypothesis.

“I was able to ask all the questions I was thinking about, and I also had the opportunity to see how investors ask questions when they meet the company management,” he says.

Beyond the program

Stijn van Breda Vriesman, a doctoral researcher focused on gene editing at Utrecht University, is already putting what he’s learned to work. Alongside his research, he and his colleague, Paul Schurmann, who also participated in the EQT Life Sciences program at Utrecht, are working on a start-up idea. The experience helped them make many of their early decisions, such as which patient populations to target, he says.

Jeske, of the Cambridge cohort, is now working on spinning out a company based on research at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona. She says her insight into how VCs operate has been valuable in laying the ground for the start-up. One example, she says, is knowing what “killer experiments” to run to produce the kind of compelling data required by investors.

Another Cambridge participant, Lalanti Venkat, went on to work for EQT Life Sciences after finishing her postdoctoral academic research. She subsequently joined one of its portfolio companies, Aerska, a developer of RNA-based treatments for brain diseases.

The program equips researchers with new skills and knowledge to ease a path into industry. But it also highlights the relevance of their training to a career beyond academia.

Addae says he almost didn’t apply for the program because he didn’t have a background in cardiovascular disease, which was the focus of the EQT Life Sciences project at Harvard. He was surprised to realize his research and critical thinking skills could be applied so directly to scouting new investment opportunities in other areas of medicine.

“If we can also reach out to people for mentorship, that will open our eyes to some of the areas that we can improve to get to where we want to get to outside academia,” he says.

Are you an academic researcher at Harvard, Cambridge or Utrecht interested in participating in an EQT Life Sciences program? Get in touch with Oscar Marshall on [email protected].