We recently attended Pfizer’s Annual Postdoc Symposium, held at our La Jolla, California, research site, to bring you a special miniseries of the Get Science Podcast. Pfizer’s postdoctoral training program offers recent PhD graduates the opportunity to gain firsthand industry experience and to contribute to cutting-edge research that makes a positive impact on patients.

For this three-part series, we interviewed a handful of postdocs – and, in some cases, their Pfizer mentors – to hear how they’re advancing science. As part of these conversations, we’ll learn about their scientific backgrounds and how they’re using specialized skills, such as multi-omics data analysis, to develop next-generation therapies at Pfizer. As these young scientists embark on their careers, we’ll also hear about the importance of the mentor-postdoc fellow relationship.

First up, we’ll speak with Sydney Lavoie, a postdoc in the Inflammation and Immunology research unit based in Pfizer’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, research site, who’s interested in the gut microbiome. Later in this episode, we’ll meet Sharon Campbell and her mentor, Orla Cunningham, who are based in the biomedicine design research group at Pfizer’s Dublin, Ireland, research site. They’ll tell us an interesting story of how Sharon came to Pfizer with no experience in next-generation sequencing skills but quickly got up to speed to make a big impact in her current research project.

Tune in to learn more.