Marnie’s placement with PBL Technology

Marnie Barham, a Quadram Institute student completed her placement with PBL Technology, an intellectual property (IP) management and technology development company investing in emerging technology across the life sciences, particularly in plant, food, and microbial sciences.

Marnie wanted to gain skills and knowledge in commercialisation and IP of research technology and innovations. She is considering this as a post-PhD career so wanted to gain valuable experience alongside developing her communication, teamwork, and organisational skills.

During the placement, her main project focused on developing marketing materials for one of the technologies within PBL. She helped collate information to produce a website, flyers, and documentation. Additionally, she conducted market and technical research on a range of new PBL technologies. The completed marketing work plus summarisation and communication of scientific research in a concise way was an enjoyable and interesting aspect of Marnie’s placement.

She found her PBL colleagues to be very supportive: helping her to develop self-confidence; create marketing collateral which she had never done before; and explore a range of different scientific areas rather than her one PhD area. All of this helped to increase her knowledge, creativity, and problem-solving skills plus as there were strict deadlines her organisational and management skills developed.

Marnie undertook her placement towards the end of her second year and the beginning of her third year and said, “I felt well established enough to leave what I was doing and create a plan for my return. I also felt like it was a good time to take a break from my PhD research and step back, so I could return feeling more refreshed.”

Her advice to other PhD students yet to embark on their placements is, “consider an area you are thinking about as a possible career as it is a good opportunity to understand if you will enjoy the work and find out if it meets your expectations.”