Life Sciences Lead

So, what do you do?

Hello, my name is Suki Balendra and I'm the Life Sciences Lead for the NIHR Clinical Research Network. And the NIHR is the National Institute of Health Research. So I'm based at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

And my role involves working with the life sciences industry, which I'm extremely passionate about. I have the opportunity to work with industry from the NHS perspective across organisational boundaries. We share ideas and expertise.

And the main aspect of my role is promoting the Northwest London region to the life sciences industry to showcase the expertise and the opportunities in working in our region.

What does your typical day involve?

So a typical day for me involves working with a company perhaps meeting a new company that I have not met before. They could be a large life sciences company, or a small biotech company.

And the format of the meeting if we've never met before would be to meet representatives from the company, alongside my colleagues from the partner organisations within our region so that could be staff from the research and development teams within the trust and clinical leads from across the organisations. And we work regionally together to showcase what we can do in a region and showcase the opportunities and working within our area.

What about the social aspects?

So socially, it's a great place to work, we have quizzes and various opportunities for us to socially interact. Of course, things have been difficult in the pandemic but we have tried to ensure we maintain that contact, even if it's online and where restrictions have eased and where we've been allowed to I've always taken the opportunity to meet colleagues face to face whether it be for coffee or for lunch, because I believe it is so important to keep that face to face contact as much as possible with the people that we work with.

How long have you worked there?

So I've been in my current role in one shape or form for the NIHR for just under 15 years.

What qualifications and experience do you have?

And my qualifications and experience started with a BSc in biochemistry I then went straight on to do a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Warwick and my first role of the graduating was straight into industry. So in a manufacturing environment. I worked for Abbott diagnostics for just under five years. And it was there that my interest in process improvement in a manufacturing settings started and I was able to carry on that interest through into clinical research and academia and that is where my passion really grew for working with the life sciences industry.

When and why did you decide on a career in the pharmaceutical industry?

I decided on a career in the pharmaceutical industry quite early on whilst I was doing my PhD at the time. The feeling was that it was really important to get straight into industry. And I felt that was the right path for me rather than pursuing an academic career path. Although in the end, I ended up working in academia again, I'm very fortunate to have ended up in a role that I really get the benefits of working both in industry and NHS and academia.

I also had the really privileged experience of spending a year in central government so I was working in the office for Life Sciences for one year. And that gave me the opportunity to really see the policy development from government and how that develops and cascades down into the NHS.

And so some of the policies that I was involved in working on in the office for Life Sciences when I went back to my role in the NHS, I was able to be involved in the implementation of that policy at a local level.

And that was a hugely rewarding experience.