Congratulations to Shubham Vishnoi, University of Limerick, who has won the SSPC Industrial PhD Placement Award for an exceptional and impactful SSPC PhD placement experience at APC Ltd. An award sponsored by MSD and presented by Tom O’Ceallaigh, Technical Associate Director MSD.
Shubham under the supervision of SSPC Director, Prof. Damien Thompson works on Computational modelling of peptide-based therapeutics for next-generation biopharmaceutical formulation design. He took up his placement with APC Ltd., Dublin in July 2021 joining the Innovation team, reporting to Dr Brian Glennon. As digital technologies are rapidly changing how pharmaceutical professionals engage with drug discovery and process development, keeping pace with the world’s innovation, our home-grown Irish pharma company APC has made great progress in digitalization in recent years.
In his own words, Shubham explains how he worked on designing and developing the tools that can process and analyse a large amount of raw pharmaceutical data. During my placement with APC, I got a chance to work on two of their ongoing projects, the first project where I was dealing with the algorithms of applied machine learning to demystify the drug solubility problem which is a critical challenge in drug development. I also had the opportunity to work in a collaboration with the Up Stream Bioprocessing team at APC, as my second project was more of a tool development task to expedite high-throughput screening data visualization and interpretation.
One way or another, I learned a lot more about how information technologies can be effectively and efficiently deployed in the current pharma processes. Over the placement term, I had the opportunity to dive deeper into machine learning modelling. I know it is just the beginning of my journey, but it is so exciting to be on a digital ride toward the future. Outside of the two main projects mentioned SSPC Industrial PhD Placement Award above, the placement continually offered opportunities to gain experience and knowledge about innovative research being carried out in the industry?
Working at APC, I had the invaluable experience of working in a technically advanced environment. I have truly enjoyed embarking upon a new learning process and feel fully supported by my teammates and team lead. In the innovation team, each PhD intern had a mentor whom we worked with. My mentor was very helpful and offered invaluable timely expert guidance, support and appreciation for my work. She allowed me to have work that I could own throughout the placement. Outside of project work, I also had the chance to attend several outreach and engagement events, theme meetings and workshops (especially, the modelling focus group). This was extremely interesting as it allowed me to get a greater insight into the research environment at APC.
I consider myself a very lucky individual as I was provided with an opportunity to be a part of such a placement and with APC Ltd. who have been partnering with SSPC from the beginning. The time I spent in APC Ltd. has completely changed my perspective and as I get closer to my final year of PhD, I hope to, one day, make the move to industry and who knows APC could give me a great start!!
Shubham pictured with Charlie Dolan and Brian Glennon, APC Ltd.
“I would like to express my sincere admiration for his outstanding efforts. He has excellent written and verbal communication skills. He is extremely organised, can work independently, and is able to effectively multi-task to ensure that all projects are completed in a timely manner. The projects he completed are put to good use in APC now. I have been consistently impressed with Shubham’s attitude and productivity during the time that he worked at APC.” Melba Simon B.E, PhD Research Engineer APC Ltd
LinkedIn Article: My First Month at APC Ltd., Dublin (Ireland). Published on August 16, 2021.
