Purdue Biochemistry Club

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Qdoba was served

Club meeting was called to order by Anna Hurlock.

This week's announcements:

Austin Williams has offered to design the club t-shirts.
Dr. Karl Brandt, professor emeritus, will be speaking at our next meeting.
The October 28^th meeting will be a costume party - so start planning!
Be considering whether you're interested in joining ASBMB; the deadline to start a chapter at Purdue is December 15^th.
Outreach is having a bake sale October 15^th. If you are willing to make something or work the booth, contact Natalie (ntaylor@purdue.edu).

Lorne Nelson and Jeanne Severin-Cabel came from Abbott to talk about their careers, give advice, and inform us about employment opportunities at Abbott.

Jeanne's advice:

When working in science with a bachelor's degree, the best thing you can do is learn a lot of techniques early on. She recommends working as a lab tech in academia before trying for a job in industry.
On your resume, make sure you emphasize the difference between techniques you've performed and techniques you are actually comfortable with.

Lorne's advice:

If you're having trouble getting into the R&D department of a company you're interested in, try applying for a job in manufacturing at first. It's a great way to learn about the company and get your foot in the door.
Having experience with tissue cultures is a huge plus for many R&D positions.
If you're working for a large, global company, being multilingual is very valuable and can bring you a lot of travel opportunities.

About Abbott:

Abbott is a large company (about 90,000 people) with a wide variety of job opportunities.
It's currently trying to step up its internship program and begin hiring more students.
Hours are very flexible.
To work in industry, you have to be comfortable with changing projects at the drop of a hat.

Jeanne and Lorne have offered to be our contacts at Abbott, and are even willing to critique resumes!

Their emails are below. Lorne also handed out business cards; extras will be brought to the next meeting for anyone who wants one.

Lorne: lorne.nelson@abbott.com
Jeanne: jean.severin@abbott.com

Our meetings for the rest of the semester have all been scheduled:

Oct 14: Dr. Karl Brandt will be speaking about the intersection of biochemistry, Third World diseases, and ethics.Dr. Brandt is always a great speaker, so this should be a really interesting meeting!
Oct 28: We're having a costume party and decorating cell cookies, because nothing's more delicious than phospholipid membranes.
Nov 11: Mark Brandyberry, the Las Vegas magician, will be giving us a very entertaining talk about good interview skills.
Week of December 2nd: Sometime this week we'll be having the Faculty Dinner.