Jeffrey Chu, PharBE ’20, at Genentech’s South San Francisco campus. Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Chu.
Jeffrey Chu, who earned his PharBE degree in 2020, recently accepted a position with Horizon Therapeutics in San Francisco as manager of biologics technical development. After working for Genentech in San Francisco, where he characterized and qualified new molecules, Jeffrey is now focusing on formulation work and engaging with contract manufacturing organizations on tech transfer across different sites. He’s also helping build and standardize an analytical lab in south San Francisco.
“Most programs, at least for master’s, are very rare in terms of the breadth that the UW PharBE program offered, from clinical to commercial to process development,” Jeffrey says.
It was that breadth of learning and the process development course in particular that spurred him to enroll at UW, rather than in a similar online program at Johns Hopkins University, he says.
Jeffrey also felt UW was a high value program, especially for the tuition. “It’s very clinical focused but still extremely applicable to what I do, and it actually helped me understand where my interests are and where I want to go.”
As a technical development research associate, Jeffrey has a keen interest in process development, and now he says he understands how his role plays into the greater company and the industry. He hopes to be in a role where he can see that oversight between end-to-end and early-stage to late-stage projects and how they can progress to market.
“The takeaway here is if folks work in the pharmaceutical industry and they’re interested in the overall process, understanding clinical work and progressing in their career – it doesn’t even matter what department they work in – this is the program for them.”