Being busy in BioBusiness

I’ve been quite busy the past couple of weeks, and now I find that I only have 46 days left of my thesis! I’m head of an organization which hosted an exhibition at Rådhuspladsen in Copenhagen on the 19^th – 21^st of November, and since I’m the managing director, I’ve been handling budgets, preparing press releases, helping my employees and a million other things for the past weeks. Now, as I explained in my previous post, since I’m here in Denmark where I live, and still have a project at DTU and my jobs while doing my thesis, I am not spending all of my time at Novozymes. To tell you a couple of things about what I am doing when I am not at Novozymes, I can mention managing Green Vision, being part of Biotech Academy, practicing yoga, cooking and seeing friends and family. And then I actually work at Novozymes as well, as a student helper… Normally I would consider myself as a normal student, but I guess I am quite busy most of the time. But I looove coming home after a long day in the lab or at work, put up my feet, have a cup of tea and just relax – who doesn’t?!?

But as a student, the bad conscious is never eliminated, which is why I spend considerate amounts of time on my thesis. I decided to fast forward and tell you about my switch from R&D to BioBusiness!

After three months in R&D, Technical Application, working with manure, I felt that I had made some progress on the project, and could leave R&D to expand my project into the business area. The difference, at least as I experienced it, between being in R&D and in BioBusiness was huge. In BioBusiness things are more fast-pace, people travel more, go to more meetings, and the environment is a bit more creative. I have to say that I liked both departments – they are just different from each other. Switching between the two departments was quite tough I think, since I had to reassign myself to an entirely different way of working and instead of doing my research in the lab, I was now doing it from my computer. It was a nice change, but it took some getting used to. I really liked the combination of business and R&D though, and I feel as if it has made me understand the entire business and company better. So my work went underway, and after spending some time getting used to all the new stuff, I actually felt as if I was getting the hang of it J I liked how I could see the connection between the basic R&D work and how to make money from it.

What I also liked about this department – and actually in R&D as well – was that I got considered pretty much as any other employee. Of course I didn’t have the same responsibility, but in both departments my work was actually used for something! One criterion I had before starting was that I didn’t want to get treated as the useless student sitting in a corner. And I sure wasn’t! It’s a really great experience to be taken seriously by the real employees, and to feel useful and as if you are making a real contribution to the company. It’s so great!  Another thing that is common in the two departments is Friday morning breakfast – I think that’s the same in every company J

In my next post, I’ll tell you more about BioBusiness, and how I ended up back in R&D again!

Going abroad vs. staying home.

Being at Novozymes in Denmark, quite close to where I live, close to DTU and to my friends, means that the work in the company simply got integrated as part of my normal life right away. Compared to if you go abroad where you don’t know anyone, and have to build an entirely new life, I still have all of my friends, my fiancée, my family and my hobbies. This means, that while I have of course started at a company that has a lot of other students and great colleagues, I am not spending time with these people outside of Novozymes, basically because I already have a full schedule. Of course I could just “abandon” my old life and surrender to the complete world of Novozymes and its employees, but I didn’t really feel like doing that. I think it’s an important thing to consider when choosing where to do your Master Thesis or any other project or internship – do you want it to be like a regular job, or do you want it to be an experience bigger than that? If you want a once-in-a-lifetime experience, then I would suggest you applying for a project in a part of Novozymes situated outside your own country, or at least in a part of the country where you have to move to be there. But for me, there was no doubt that the decision about staying in Denmark for my thesis was the right one. I still have other projects at DTU to finish, and have a job here in Denmark which I wouldn’t give up, so for me, travelling was not an opportunity at this moment.

I think that you learn something from both experiences whether being abroad or being in your homecountry. The entire experience of starting a project in the industrial world compared to the university was a change from everyday life, and quite exciting. In my case, I travelled a lot during my high schools years playing for the Danish national team in squash, and therefore I did not have a strong yearning to go abroad the first couple of years of my education. Now I have such amazing jobs here in Denmark, that I decided to wait with travelling until I finished my education – and then do it as part of my job, maybe work abroad for a couple of years. So now you know why I am a Dane working at Novozymes in Denmark and not in Japan J

The first real encounter with manure and some nice colleagues

So came the time when I had to start actually working with the manure. I was quite excited to see how it would be to work with – simple things such as: What is the density of it, and thereby how large volumes will I have to work with? What is the pH? How do I stir it without getting it everywhere? The first two questions were easy enough to answer, but even after a couple of months in the laboratory, I have still not answered the question of how to avoid getting manure everywhere! I’ve had it in my face, in my hair and on my clothes (call me clumsy)! No one’s going to tell me that working at Novozymes isn’t exciting J However, despite small problems with the manure-handling my lab-work got underway, and I actually started generating some results.

One of the things I find different, being in a company instead of at the university, is the feeling of being in a department. There are far more lab technicians and employees at Novozymes than at the university bio-department, so the relationship between co-workers is really strong within a single department. A simple thing as everyone going to lunch together every day is really nice. And instead of half of the department being students as at DTU, here I am the only student. The fact that the people I work with are doing their jobs and going home in the afternoon, not bringing home their jobs or things to read is very different from what I am used to from university. At DTU students are in the lab during evenings and even nights sometimes, there is always someone else in the building you are in. In my department at Novozymes, people go home between 15 and 18!

My colleagues in the lab are fantastic. They are always happy and helpful, and the atmosphere is really nice. If I need help with taking out samples from incubation or ordering more equipment for my experiments, I can always get help from one of them, and it makes it so much easier to get up in the mornings, when you know that great colleagues are waiting in the lab.

Oh, another really great thing about being in a company vs. the university – I don’t have to package and autoclave my own pipette-tips!! J

What am I doing working with manure?!?!?

After writing an initial project description and having had a couple of meetings with Hanne Høst, the science manager who was going to be my supervisor on the research project, my work at Novozymes went underway.

I was going to work with pig manure within the biogas industry, and as the day of beginning approached I began to think about this whole “working with manure”-thing. Mostly because most people had the reaction “Eeeew, manure! Are you going to touch it??” When I was a little girl I didn’t like going to the circus as I found that the animals smelled too bad. Going to the zoo was a challenge as well, and getting me inside the monkey- or elephant-house was virtually impossible! Why in the world had I planned on working with manure??? But I told myself that it was simply going to be a personal challenge, and that it was a substrate as any other – the things we do for science J

Hanne had been considerate to package the first manure samples we got home, after processing it through a meat-chopper – not something to be repeated, ending up with a broken meat-chopper and a very nasty mess in the flow bench. I therefore simply had to take out the samples from the freezer and work with them. When keeping it inside the flow bench, the manure is as any other substrate (although very brown and gooey) and I was surprised at how painless everything went! But then I accidentally forgot to take off my gloves before taking my hands out from the flow bench and yuck! The smell of it took me back to those hot summer days where farmers spread manure on their fields and the entire village smells of pig, only now it was directly in front of me. What an experience J I must say though, that even though the smell was bad, it did not exceed my excitement about the project, and unlike when working with yeast genetics or bacterial screening, I somehow always had a funny story to tell when I came home after a day of working in the lab!

Stay tuned for next time where I get up, close and personal with the manure J

Do I really get my own office?

As a student I am not used to having my own office, let alone having a lab almost just for me and my research! This was however what I experienced when I started my project, and I can’t tell you how excited I got when it turned out that I could have my own desk with no one moving my stuff when I was in the lab, no one spilling coffee over my papers and no one using my computer when I’m away J The similarities to DTU were few…

On my first day I was introduced to the other employees in my department, and I quickly found out that I was the youngest person in the entire department! This however, proved not to be a problem, since people were so nice to take me in and treat me as part of the department.

Working in a company instead of at the university is of course very different. There were no other students in my department, except for a student assistant being there once or twice a week, and the days are much more structured. People go to the cafeteria for lunch together somewhere between 12 and 13 o’clock, as oppose to at the university where I experienced that people eat at different times and in general does not have that structured work hours. It was really nice to be able to work during the day and then take the evenings off without necessarily having to read a bunch of pages in some textbook. I worked from 8 or 9 in the morning to around 18 o’clock in the afternoon (and still do), reading articles and writing while my experiments were taking care of themselves in the lab.

During my first days I was really tired when leaving in the evening. Getting to know a new lab and new people is always exhausting, but luckily the research assistants were always happy to help when I found myself completely lost and not able to find anything. And how great it was to discover that at Novozymes you do not have to package your own pipette tips and autoclave them! At DTU, students autoclave everything themselves, prepare media for petridishes etc. – and here I could just go to the cupboard and get whatever I needed! It was heaven on earth J

That’s all for now – stay tuned for my first experience with the pig manure!

Getting started at Novozymes

Hi everyone, and welcome to my blog.

I am a master student at Novozymes in Denmark, Bagsværd, studying at Technical University of Denmark (DTU). I actually started working on my thesis three months ago, but since I haven’t had the opportunity of blogging until now, I figured that I’d take you with me, back to where it all began.

In April 2009, I started thinking about my master thesis. I knew that I had to write it during fall this year, and that I wanted to combine my biotechnology education with some sort of business development, but other than that I was open to any challenge. Looking through the project catalogues at DTU I didn’t really find any projects appealing to me, since they were either pure biotech research or pure marketing – the kind of project I wanted to do was clearly not a normal choice for ones master thesis at DTU! Through my student job I was familiar with Novozymes, and decided to try and piece together a project there. The company was appealing in that things are fast-pace, the industry is moving towards interesting sustainable solutions and I wanted to get some experience with the work in a company prior to finishing my education.

I started to find out if any interesting new projects were starting up in the company, as I wanted to be part of something new and exciting. As I have worked with yeast genetics and metabolic engineering during most of my education, I wanted to try something entirely different, in order for me to acquire practical knowledge within a broad range of biotechnological applications. Renewable energy was also appealing to me, and through this I found a new research project working with Novozymes product application within the biogas industry under Henrik Lund. I had no experience with biogas but figured that I had to start somewhere, and thus took on the project. As the project was brand new I got to start from scratch on it! I’ll tell you lots more about this during the next couple of blog entries.

I had the biotechnology research in place, but didn’t feel that my project was complete without the business development, so I got in contact with Tina Sejersgård Fanø, Senior Director in NZ Biobusiness Development & Acquisitions (BDA), working with biogas. I told her that I wanted to do part of my thesis work on biogas business development but didn’t have an exact project description yet. All I had was ideas and apparently this was enough, because Tina accepted my proposal and said yes to me working in BDA from September to January, doing my project. Now followed a journey of completing a project description, learning all kinds of new things about marketing, economics, organizational structure and last but not least, getting to know a new department and getting use to working outside the university – there is so much excitement going on for me right now!

Overall I was positively surprised of how enthusiastic Novozymes employees were about my project, and still are! It feels great, having pieced together my own project, and this just goes to show that if you want something done or create a new exciting type of project then all you have to do is ask! The opportunity of combining research with business development is fantastic, and it really gives me a great perspective on both worlds.

I am looking forward to telling you more about my work and Novozymes, and I hope that you will follow me on my journey from confused student, through manure and water baths onto apprentice in the biogas industry development – and hopefully finishing up as M.Sc.Eng in biotechnology in the end!

What did I get out of the internship?

6 months ago I left Denmark with a lot of expectations. I had already spend a lot of hours in a laboratory working on other projects and been through the entire research process from finding a hypotheses to a final discussion and conclusion of the work. However, to start this process over again was something I really looked forward to. The fact that I could start from scratch and explore the research process in new laboratories and with a new team of colleagues was another advantage. I also looked very much forward to communicating my research and experiences. Not only to improve my oral and written English skills, but also because I hoped (and still hope) that I could inspire other people to be interested in science. Apart from the working part of my stay in Australia it goes without saying that an active 19 year old girl looked forward to adventures in the Australian nature and learning about a new culture.

Despite exhaustion due to jet lag and new impressions it was really important for me to socialise and be active from the beginning. My contact network expanded quickly and that was one of the factors why my stay abroad has been such a success. The active attitude meant that no two days have been the same. Below is listed some of the interesting challenges I’ve faced during my internship:

o Interesting lab work
o Fortnightly meetings with presentation of results
o Weekly Danish lessons for colleagues
o Writing my blog
o Talk at R&D seminar
o Arrangement of guided tour in the labs and presentation of company for university students

More experience with scientific thinking and laboratory work
The many hours in the laboratories have of course taught me more about methods and technologies used in biotech research. However, I have learned much more than just improving my pipetting skills. The fact that I have worked on my own project (which is a sub-project in my supervisor’s research) has meant that I have gone through every step in the scientific method and not only the work in laboratories. Background articles have been read, hypothesis and aims were set, experiments were carried out, lab books were written and data has been analysed. All of it with great support from my colleagues and my supervisor in particular. Through sparring and kind help from colleagues I have learned to be more independent and secure in every step in the research process which without doubt will be beneficial in my further career.

Improved communication skills
One of my expectations was to inspire other people to be interested in science and what I did during my training. This was the reason why I invited a group of university students to visit Novozymes. This initiative as well as the talk I gave at the R&D seminar and the fortnightly meetings definitely trained my oral presentation skills and how to communicate my research.

A way I practiced my written English was to write blog posts. It has been good fun and very interesting to reflect over small things in my everyday life as well as discuss deeper issues such as how we inspire more young people to go into science.

Networking
Half of my time in Adelaide I worked in the laboratories at the University of Adelaide on a collaboration project. According to expanding my network of scientists it has been great for me not only to work in Novozymes laboratories, but to meet scientists from around the world at the university.

The conclusion of my internship in Australia is very clear: it has been a huge challenge, an experience for the rest of my life and a major learning experience. My expectation of an interesting time with many learning experiences I can use later in life was completely fulfilled.

Where are the science students?

After a hectic morning in the lab I went downstairs for what I thought would be a relaxing morning tea break. When a saw the chairs lined up as in a cinema my first concerns started to take shape. What was going on? My apprehension was confirmed when I was told an hour long faculty meeting would take place. In 4 weeks my time at Adelaide University is over so what interest do I have in the future strategy for the Science Faculty? However, since I was in a friendly mood, I decided to give the speaker a chance to convince me that this morning meeting wouldn’t be a waste of time. Whether it was due to a good speaker or my habit of suddenly being deeply interested in odd topics, I don’t know, but all way through the speech I was listening intensely.

The entire talk revolved around the faculty’s budget problem because not enough students choose science as a career. The issue is the faculty has two major tasks; to teach students and to perform research. The universities reputation relies on the level of research. However, money to fund the research partly comes from the teaching. The more student the more money. More money means better research which in the end gives the university a better reputation. So it’s pretty simple, if the university wants to improve its reputation more students on the courses are a necessity.
The button line from the talk was that the Faculty of Science at Adelaide University struggles with the same problem as other education systems all over the world: to make students interested in science. The South Australian Minister for Science has pronounced what most governments around the world recognize: 

… science as a key driver of our economic growth, our international competitiveness, and the wellbeing of individuals and communities.

If it’s so obvious that good scientists are needed to develop the world now and in the future, why do so few students subscribe into science courses?

If you take an engineering course, you can help to improve the world by designing bridges, building, machines and other items and systems. Most students who start at medical school become doctors who can rescue people’s life. However, taking a general science course leads to a job in a dark lab where the only company is strange machines, test tubes and dangerous chemicals. That’s the picture most people have and of course it’s completely wrong. The problem is that the world of science has so far been too mysterious to many students. Only by showing people that science is relevant in everyday life and not only for people who look like Einstein and speak a strange language, we can break down wrong stereotypes and make more students interested in science.

The important question is of course: What can be done to make people more interested in science? From my point of view communicating science on a level that people understand is the key issue. I don’t suggest that busy staff members at uni skip half of the lab work to go down on the street and tell the public about their magnificent research. However, students on science courses who still have a huge curiosity to explore the world of science can do a great job showing their passion to younger school kids. Thereby they teach youngsters that science isn’t boring and at the same time prove that scientists not necessarily have white hair and thick glasses. But where and how should the great message about science’s excellence be spread? Schools are obvious places, but more can be done. Good examples on activities focusing on communicating science are the Danish “Forskningens Døgn” (the Research Days) and the Australian “National Science Week”. We need to welcome more of such initiatives in the future to deal with the daunting challenge it is to attract more students to the field of science.

An exciting Saturday

If you need a bit of excitement…..

You should put on some ugly clothes…..

Get the right gear…..

And then jump put of a plane

That’s what I did today and it’s so much fun!

Why travelling is wonderful!

Busy airports with countless security checks and frisking. Lots of hours spend in uncomfortable plane seats. Sleepless nights because of jet lag. The negative aspects of travelling are obvious so why on earth do I travel around the world optionally? I simply love it because it opens my eyes for the great diversity in our wonderful world.

In Frankfurt I had some waiting time the other day between two flights. On my way down to the rest area in gate where I intended to take a necessary nap I grabbed a bunch of German and American newspapers. It didn’t take long before I found myself deeply engrossed by the newspaper articles. A historical article about the American court system gave me deeper insight into American history and policy which was very interesting and led my thoughts back to history lessons in High School. Another article about Memorial Day taught me not only about this American tradition itself, but also about the American view on military which is different from the Danish one. At least if the article’s view represented the general view of Americans. In addition I read about the Congress which had allowed people to carry loaded guns in national parks. Interestingly it was just written in a small note. I already knew that the American gun policy was radically different from the Danish one, but the fact that I should find such important - from my perspective - news barely recognisable in the corner of page 5 actually surprised me. Loaded guns in parks would definitely have created alarming headlines on front pages in Denmark. In the end of the newspaper I found an article about the American health care system which made me happy I grew up in Denmark. Just before I turned the last page I found the weather forecast and it answered a question I had had all week. How do I convert Fahrenheit degrees to something that makes sense in my way of measuring temperature? It isn’t knowledge that broadened my horizon that much, but it’s just very convenient to have an idea about this when you are in a country where the metric system isn’t used.

So from just one single American newspaper I learned about American policy in the article about selecting a new Supreme Court Justice. I discovered more about American society in the health care article and both the article about Memorial Day and the gun policy note gave me a deeper insight into American traditions and values. I was bored in an airport, opened a newspaper and suddenly I had obtain so much interesting knowledge. Some people would claim it’s useless, but for me who live and act in a globalised world it’s both necessary and extremely interesting to know how people are thinking all over the world. Exploring new places such as America and Australia and comparing them to Danish life just made me more curious about how things are working all the places in the world I haven’t had the chance to visit yet. I think it’s fantastic how much you can learn about the world if you just open your eyes and travelling has definitely opened my eyes.