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MSc Bioengineering - Job Opportunities
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16-04-2012 3:14pm#1
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This is true. Most of the action, especially small to mid sized is out Whest. I can only think of two people in Pharma/Med Dev in Dublin.
Pfizer employ well over 1000 people at Grange Castle (previously Wyeth). Takeda are also in Grange Castle. Amgen now operate the old Pfizer site in Pottery Road. You also have two BMS sites, there's a fair few Pharma sites in Dublin to be fair
Where abouts are you? would you try any of the big pharmaceutical companies in Cork? like Stryker? check their website jobs.stryker.com for more info, and no I don't work for them but I wud like to!
Stryker is a med device company, neither of the Cork sites make pharmaceuticals 0 -
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............ currently working as a sheet metal N/C programmer for a company in Kinsale.
Found it very difficult to get a job that was in some way related to what I did in college, theres a lot out there but no one seems to want to hire a graduate they want 3+ years experience I find... everyone has to start somewhere...
Only saw your reply now
Once you have 6 to 12 months experience you'd be surprised how many job specs that specify 3+ years experience will be happy to interview you.
If you can program and have an understanding of geometric tolerancing etc along with your academic credentials the doors will open sooner than you expect, of course there may well be no point rushing out of your current position either
Many people who get into "decent" companies as graduate engineers find themselves working on the most boring sh1t imaginable that no one else wants to or will do for quite a while, sounds like you might be bypassing this phase while getting very decent experience.0 -
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redsheep100 wrote: »I was just wondering if anyone could give me a rough idea of how much time you spent in college outside of lecture hours, for this course. I'm applying this year and planning to commute (1.5-2 hours each way), so want to be realistic about the hours, and how much work I can do from home.
You should be able to do most, if not all of the assignments from home. Nearly all of the assignments just require researching a topic using published papers either supplied to you by the lecturer or which you search for yourself using online databases like Pubmed or IEEE. These databases can be accessed from home by connecting through the college library's website page.
This year we had 2 assignments which required matlab so unless you have that at home you would have to use the computers in college.
I personally did all of the assignments at home (matlab is fairly easy to find online if you really want it!
) and had no problems. Some of the others from our class were in college a fair bit doing the assignments but I think that was mainly because they get distracted too easily at home. 0 -
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................. checking paperwork as that is all half the 'engineers' in these places do. no need for biomed degree for these quality and manufacturing jobs. i packed the whole thing in because the work is crap (mindless and repetetive), they treat you like a dog and at best youll get a contract for a year or so off them................................. by the way anyone coming from a background that is any way creative or requires problem solving skills avoid these jobs. there is no room for any creativity. ........................................ Any civil engineer thinking this is a good career move dont be fooled by the media. there are very few engineers employed by these companies in the overall context of staff numbers. if there are 200 jobs announced, i guarantee only a few are for engineers and these companies use that term loosely. I saw no engineering (not even a calculator) in my time. ................................................... Also I dont think this work is skilled because I could have done the job as effectively straight out of leaving cert I was only getting in deeper into something with poor prospects and boring work. That said there are people who would be suited to this type of work. People who like order and clearly defined work methods with little scope for lateral thinking and don't mind working on tasks that are on a daily/weekly or monthly cycle................
If you have no interest in quality or manufacturing jobs in med devices etc you are essentially sticking the two fingers up to regulated environments.
Many of the issues these companies face with their products in the field or before the products get to the field are often design related and due to the design lads not having a clue about manufacturing etc.
Given the amount of actual med device and pharma engineers currently in roles that they reckon are a pain in the hole due to the regulated nature its not overly surprising that folks transferring into the industry aren't treated like gold dust.
Most of the successful "engineers" (you seem to not consider them true engineers as they don't pr1ck about on construction sites with clipboards under their arm, sweeping generalisations work both ways ) in med device and pharma would have primary qualifications in mech eng or science, they wouldn't have done bio med etc etc.
They work in med devices/pharma as that's their thing, they understand why it is why it is and also appreciate that every single piece of paperwork is required.
The R&D lads do indeed design stuff, but to get the product from design to the market is often done by manufacturing/project engineers, the very folks you reckon aren't engineers at all, and if the quality folk weren't keeping an eye on proceedings the end product would more often than not be dodgy as f**k.
If you genuinely saw no actual engineering you must have been either pigeon holed in the most basic role imaginable or you genuinely didn't/couldn't see the wood from the trees, I suspect it's the later as even students on work experience can appreciate what goes on in places while they are finding their feet
Your posts will no doubt be very helpful for many though, people need to ask themselves why back in the day did they chose the likes of civil eng etc etc.0 -
RoverJames wrote: »If you have no interest in quality or manufacturing jobs in med devices etc you are essentially sticking the two fingers up to regulated environments.
Many of the issues these companies face with their products in the field or before the products get to the field are often design related and due to the design lads not having a clue about manufacturing etc.
Given the amount of actual med device and pharma engineers currently in roles that they reckon are a pain in the hole due to the regulated nature its not overly surprising that folks transferring into the industry aren't treated like gold dust.
Most of the successful "engineers" (you seem to not consider them true engineers as they don't pr1ck about on construction sites with clipboards under their arm, sweeping generalisations work both ways ) in med device and pharma would have primary qualifications in mech eng or science, they wouldn't have done bio med etc etc.
They work in med devices/pharma as that's their thing, they understand why it is why it is and also appreciate that every single piece of paperwork is required.
The R&D lads do indeed design stuff, but to get the product from design to the market is often done by manufacturing/project engineers, the very folks you reckon aren't engineers at all, and if the quality folk weren't keeping an eye on proceedings the end product would more often than not be dodgy as f**k.
If you genuinely saw no actual engineering you must have been either pigeon holed in the most basic role imaginable or you genuinely didn't/couldn't see the wood from the trees, I suspect it's the later as even students on work experience can appreciate what goes on in places while they are finding their feet
Your posts will no doubt be very helpful for many though, people need to ask themselves why back in the day did they chose the likes of civil eng etc etc.
I can accept some of what you're saying but to be honest the majority of the Quality work I saw really required nothing more than knowing the procedures and systems that are in place in the organisation (which takes a while to be fair). Manufacturing by it's nature is very repeatitive work and this really got to me quickly. The monotony of it seemed to get to me quicker than other people who had been doing the job for years. I still maintain that to call this engineering is a bit of a stretch thou. As far as I can see the only reason that they want someone doing this job to have a degree in Engineering/Science is because they need someone reliable who can be trusted and I suppose having a degree shows that you have some kind of work ethic, but that can be said for a lot of jobs in fairness. This kind of work really isn't for me and I know a few people working in this area now and a lot of them feel the same way as I do about it after transferring from other areas. I think if I had taken this job as my first job then I would have found it more tolerable because I would have had nothing to compare it to but given that I transferred into this industry I found it SO BORING because I've had jobs that didn't revolve around checking paperwork and ticking check sheets and know that most people in my boat feel the same. The reason for my post is to inform people thinking of going down this route about the reality of working in this industry as I found it. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to anyone doing this job but it's kind of hard to get my point across without doing so either so for that I'm sorry....Yawn...I'm falling asleep even thinking about the work....zzzzzzz0 -
You must really have worked in a very boring role.
I worked as a line support quality engineer for 12 months a few years ago (unexpectedly), it was an automated (to an extent) production line manufacturing balloon catheters.
There was so much going wrong all the time it was far from boring.
I have met plenty of quality engineers who don't actually carry out any engineering function so I can see where you are coming from, they are another problem in the industry, many of the "gate keepers" have no f&cking clue about production, processes or how to apply the procedures in a practical fashion. They are best suited to reviewing batch records (best done by technical folk though to spot any fishy business with data etc at times) and redlining procedures to ensure the references are correct.
Now I can't comment on the majority of the quality work you've seen but to be honest it's quite obvious your experience is fairly limited, also as you struggled big time to find work in the industry I reckon the role you eventually got was fairly unchallenging
Civil engineering etc would bore the bollocks off me tbh, horses for courses
I wholeheartedly agree that most people who've chosen careers in civil eng etc are completely unsuited to working in the pharma/med device industries in roles that are product related so you're as well off out of it.
In saying that I know two carpenters who have gotten jobs as production operators on a transfer project and they are head and shoulders above their colleagues from a technical aptitude viewpoint. As it's all new to them they're both enjoying it though.0 -
Hi, im a newly graduated bio pharmaceutical chemist from NUI Galway. I'm currently looking at the bioengineering masters in TCD. I was wondering would I be accepted into the course having came from a chemical background rather than an engineering background. I do enjoy maths but have never did anything above 1st year Calculus and Algebra. I have did relevant modules such as drug delivery, pharmacology, industrial biochem.
Next, the course is expensive so obviously, I am hoping to gain employment soon after graduating. What are the employment prospects from the masters and would it be difficult finding a job without the engineering foundation and no experience.
I'm still on the fence about applying and could just as likely take my degree and attempt to get stuck into QA/QC if I am fortunate.
Finally, I like the idea of living in Dublin, however from reading these forums, its seems that all the relevant companies ;ie: medtronic, are situated elsewhere.
Read somewhere that the matter hospital, Dublin coordinates with this masters?
All help appreciated !0 -
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I just graduated from that course (although in a slightly different incarnation, there were 2 other colleges involved, but Trinity have since decided to go it alone).
Maths was not really a major feature in most of the subjects. Biomechanics had an element of maths to it, and some of the neural engineering stuff did too (interpreting readings measured from the brain). The toughest course for me was the biomaterials course, just because of the sheer volume of information. If you had no understanding of material science at all, that would be very tough to do, but I'd say you would be ok with your background.
I honestly don't know about employment prospects. Med industries are unfortunately mainly outside Dublin (And I'm stuck in Dublin )
There was a huge variety of people doing the course with me. Many of the students from Trinity were European students. Backgrounds varied wildly - civil engineers, mech engineers, a medical student, architects with structures, a food science grad and even a financial maths grad If they can do it, you absolutely can. I will say that many of the lectures we had in Trinity were some of the best lectures I've ever attended (and I'm a UCD grad:P). What I will also say though is that Trinity's bioengineering tends towards neural engineering, cell and tissue engineering, medical devices for physiological measurement and the like. UCD are more into the biomechanics and materials side of things. I'm not sure how Trinity handle that now. They also both share a lot of lecturers and work with a lot of the Dublin hospitals - they often share lecturers with RCSI etc too. It's a small enough pool of people, but it's very interesting.
Hope that helps. I suggest you also talk to the college.0 -
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