I joined Vectura in 2003 and in my time here I’ve worked on a lot of products that have gone to market, which is really rewarding. I’ve also been sponsored to do a second degree at the University of Manchester, which really helped my career development.

There’s an emphasis on sharing, so we all get to understand how the business works. Initiatives such as Science Live give you the chance to hear about what’s going on across the business and in the wider industry.

In Pharmaceutical Development, we develop the physical product – the drug and the inhaler or device that delivers it. We’re at the scientific heart of the organisation, developing the physical product.

The facilities are as good as you’ll find anywhere. In fact, in some areas, we have technologies that the big companies don’t have. And we’re committed to maintaining the latest facilities, so there’s a lot of investment in our scientific capabilities. It’s always directed at what we do – science.

Progress is identified and encouraged here, so you get to move as the opportunities come along. You have the chance to experience lots of different scientific areas, so you need to be able to adapt to different challenges.

I’ve learned about dry powder inhalers and nebulisers in the past and now I’m looking at formulations, which is something I haven’t done before. You’re learning all the time, because you get to look at different stages of the pharmaceutical process and understand how it all fits together.

There’s a wide array of opportunities available here. I’m a zoologist by training, but I learned on the job. I’ve gained broad experience, not just in terms of science and pharmaceuticals, but in areas such as quality and management too.

My particular team focuses on enhanced therapies for nebulisers, so there are lots of interesting challenges. For example, we look at repurposing known drugs for enhanced therapies. The molecules have different challenges, so it’s not one size fits all – you always have different problems to solve.

When I joined Vectura in 2015 I hadn’t worked on inhaled therapies before, so it was a fresh challenge and a chance to develop skills in a new area. 

The site at Muttenz is a very interesting, multi-cultural environment. It’s not a huge site – around 75 people – so it’s easy to get to know people, because we don’t have the barriers that you find in bigger organisations. This improves the efficiency of our teamwork. It’s a small team, but the variety of cultures and expertise means we have plenty of good ideas and can put them into practice. 

The opportunity to lead a group and manage project work was a big attraction for me – it was an opportunity to develop my career and continue improving my skills with a business in transition. 

I’ve been helping the move towards new project planning methods, introducing new behaviours and project management tools. ‘Change agents’ who are helping to lead transformation here give us the tools and we feedback on how they work so they can finetune and customise them. We’re seeing positive outcomes and they’re helping us to plan how we use our resources more effectively. 

This was all supported with a lot of training. The company’s very good at making sure you have what you need. I expressed an interest in running our chromatography systems, so in-house training was arranged and I was analysing samples within a couple of weeks.

There are so many things to like about working here. The people are very encouraging, it’s a positive place to be and there’s a good amount of interesting and varied work.