Profile
Andrew Stark
My CV
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Education:
Breadalbane Academy – This has a catchment area the size of Manchester, but the whole school population was smaller than each year group at my daughter’s school.
MSci Chemistry Degree @ Strathclyde University with Industrial Placement.
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Qualifications:
Credit marks across 8 standard grades.
5 Highers (A in Physics, B’s for English, Maths, Chemistry, Accounting)
2/2 MSci Pure & Applied Chemistry
Member of Royal Society Chemistry -
Work History:
General dogsbody in local supermarket. I would work the tills, stack shelves, mop the floor before being trusted to work on the deli counter and be in charge of preparing the freshly baked bread (although it was just warming from frozen). I also got to cover the freezer section and do some ordering to make sure that we never run out of essentials such as frozen peas.
As part of my degree I had to work for a year in Industry, so I got a position at Sanofi in Northumberland and was lucky to work in a small group of about a dozen chemist’s working on drug molecules where we made Isotopes so that Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics (DMPK) can work out how the molecule breaks down in the body.
Working daily in a lab making molecules and applying what we did in lectures to the real world was brilliant and I knew that my choice of working in Pharmaceuticals was the right job for me.
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Current Job:
I’ve been employed by Astrazeneca for 18 years in Process Chemistry. I must have now worked on dozens of projects and made hundreds of different molecules working from 100 mg trial reactions to 250 Kg pilot plant reactions.
At the start I was just working on single reactions, but now I have to deal with whole projects and keep plates spinning to plan / develop / execute the production of drug substance to meet timelines and demands for clinical trials.
In my spare time I’m also an employee representative, so I get to attend meeting with our leadership teams to make sure that the policies and governance of the company is running smoothly. This is effectively doing the same job as the trade union where if staff are not happy with anything relating to terms and conditions I get to utilise my ability to challenge and ask difficult questions.
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About Me:
I have a chemistry degree and now I get to paid to play with a large scale chemistry kit and make molecules that might become medicines of the future.
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Since joining Astrazeneca I’ve been able to organise school visits and host work experience to help show off the chemistry labs and large scale equipment that we use to make the initial Kg quantities of the drugs that will become medicines of the future.
I think that I have a positive outlook on life, as in the 18 years I’ve worked for Astrazeneca none of the projects I’ve worked on have been able to meet the standards required to become a new medicine. However the work we do in Chemistry can always be applied to other projects, and without experimentation the world would be a dull place.
Outside work I now have 2 children at secondary school and spare time is spend doing DIY, acting as a taxi, or going out walking the dog.
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In the discovery phase Astrazeneca will make thousands of different molecules on mg scale to run tests on the physical properties and evaluate performance in a pre-clinical environment.
The results will then narrow down to a smaller group of molecules, and the most promising structure’s will come to me in early chemical development with a view to making anywhere from 100 g to 100 Kg to allow the project to move into clinical trials.
My role is to make sure that the chemistry is akin to a factory where we take a prototype and figure out how to mass produce the item ready for customers to buy in the shop. If you’re used to playing with Lego then the world of discovery chemistry is about taking a pile of bricks and making as many different things as you can imagine. Then once happy with the final design it’s my job to find the best way to take it apart and create instructions so that other people can easily rebuild the same structure.
If a car was chosen as the final structure we wouldn’t start with the wheels and the way that instructions are written could and should be very different to the way that it was first made.
We also want to have reactions that go from solid to solid, and gives high chemical purity. Ideally these solids would be free flowing like sand rather than clumpy mud, and they should be air stable as we know from dried up curly cheese sandwiches that the oxygen in air can make things go off.
Sadly all of the simple molecules like paracetamol have already been found, so typically we have to make complex structures, and it is not uncommon for it to take over 25 different transformations to reach the end, and the cost be in excess of 1 million dollars.
Our labs don’t contain test tubes and Bunsen burners, as when you move away from using water to dissolve things the common solvents we use are all flammable, and the last thing we want to do is start a fire when we just want to put heat into a reaction.
We have to work with engineers to solve problems like this, along with working out the differences you get from scale-up. They have created demonstrations around simple household tasks, like making a single of tea or baking a cake. These are simple tasks a kettle will quickly boil a single cup of water, and you can hand mix your cake and bake it in a normal sized oven. However, if you had to make tea and cake for the whole of Manchester then it becomes a bit more difficult.
Analytical thinking is also critical, as we need to understand how and when reactions have happened. We can’t rely on a colour change, and when we have valuable chemicals being used we have to make sure that we get as close to 100% yield as possible.
Lastly we have to consider our impact on the environment as the chemicals used routinely in the 20th century are now coming back to haunt us, think CFC’s, single use plastic, diesel engines, and dozens of other things that our Grandparents invented are now frowned upon due to unexpected consequence. I’m sure that in 50 years time the electronic waste of phones and the mining required for all the precious metal’s used in these small semi-conductor’s will come back to haunt my generation.
Chemistry is always evolving, and already we’re using reactions / technology that hadn’t been invented when I left university in 2002, so it’s important to have a mindset where you’re constantly adapting to change and new / better ways to do things based on the way that the world / culture changes around us.
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My Typical Day:
Each day will be a different chemical reaction and problem to solve.
It’s very much like this Thomas Edison quote
“Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
Since Covid-19 has struck I’m lucky that all I need to work is a laptop, but that is because I’ve spent the first 15 years gaining the practical skills and knowledge to now be more of a remote manager / coach who can understand and access chemistry remotely.
When doing lab work it was always exciting to come in and see if the experiment you left overnight has done anything? Often we are taking a known reaction but applying it to a different molecule and creating new science that hasn’t been reported yet.
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Due to the global nature of the chemical industry I have moved away from doing my own experiments on single reactions to managing projects which having moving parts in all corners of the globe. Mornings will be spend getting updates from China, and afternoons hearing about updates on clinical trial results in America.
To do this you need to have a good imagination and visualisation skill set, and really have a strong ability to question things. Chemistry can go wrong in so many different ways, and you need strong communication skills to make sure you know that your recipe is as close to perfect as you can get it, as forgetting to add the backing powder into your bake to feed the whole of Manchester will result in you being unpopular as no-one likes a flat cake.
Astrazeneca also has a lot of internal projects, so I still get to go into our labs and see what the latest technology and lab equipment now looks like. The experiments today gather so much extra data through probes that are connected to computers and this allows you to fully understand how the chemicals are interacting from the comfort of your home office.
We also have regular seminars with academic staff from all over the world, and project updates to make sure that we share best practise and keep updated on new rules and regulations.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I think I’d like to design an experiment to help get people thinking about how to scale-up a simple chemical reaction as this wasn’t something I ever really considered until I’d started working.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Scientist, Challenging, Unconventional
What did you want to be after you left school?
Weirdly I did find some notes from school that mentioned pharmaceutical industry, and I knew that I would be rubbish at taking on the farm I grew up on.
Were you ever in trouble at school?
Always, some teachers didn't like being asked questions.
Who is your favourite singer or band?
All music is great (apart from skrillex) but mostly guitar based bands
What's your favourite food?
Anything that doesn't involve tinned tuna, always willing to try new things
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
To be better at finishing tasks, Work on a project that actually cures cancer, I hope that I can help reverse the impact of the chemical industry on the planet
Tell us a joke.
Did you hear about the magic tractor? It turned into a field...
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