The journey of a lifetime
Expert Engage with Dr. Narendra Chirmule
Gist
This Expert Engage episode with Dr. Narendra Chirmule marks the launch of the SciKonnect Podcast by Biopatrika. Whether it’s Science or Music, the idea of being successful in any field is to chase your dreams with passion. In this very first episode of SciKonnect, Dr. Chirmule talks about his life journey as a Scientist, Musician and Entrepreneur. Dr. Chirmule is a respected Immunologist. He has held several leadership positions for almost 30 years in pharmaceutical companies like Biocon, Amgen and Merck. He worked in the clinical immunology department in these companies overseeing drug and vaccine development. He is now an entrepreneur and co-founded a data analytics company, SymphonyTech Biologics, where he currently serves as CEO and Director. Dr. Chirmule discusses his experiences during his tenure in the Biotech Industry. He also talks about his book “Good Genes Gone Bad,” where he elegantly describes how success is built upon the colossal failures in the process of drug discovery. Tune in, won’t you?
Transcript
Vikram:
Biopatrika, your very own online science communication, brings science closer to you in so many ways. Today SciKonnect by Biopatrika welcomes all science enthusiasts to expert engage with Dr. Narendra Chirmule. I, Vikram Gujar, with Charu Gupta and Shreyansh Tiwari, have been given the honor to hear of a unique journey traversing academia and industry, culminating in an imminent personality that we all aspire to be. Dr. Churmule, a respected immunologist, has spent 40 years long career facilitating vaccine development and overseeing drug development in academia, as well as with his directorial time in clinical Immunology departments of Biocon, Amgen and Merck. As an entrepreneur, he cofounded Symphony Tech Biologics, a data analytics company and currently serve as a CEO and director. On several disease importance advisory boards in India and USA, Naren manages to find time to explore his love for Indian classical music, too. We welcome this excellent scientist, writer, orator and magnanimous personality, Dr. Narendra Chirmule.
Charu:
Naren, we are guilty of stalking you on LinkedIn, and we already know quite a lot about you. However, we want a deeper insight into what is unsaid. So, we want to know more about your journey and early experiences. Let’s begin with a look in your early beginning, so maybe up till your Masters, how did you get hooked on to science?
Naren:
Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you for the kind introduction Vikram and Charu and Shreyansh. Thank you for having this session. I think I’ll try to give short answers so that maybe we can get through more questions. And if there are anything to elaborate, then we can elaborate. Just to plug in my book, which I’ve recently written, a lot of questions that I think people ask me. The answers for them are in this book. So I’ll give the short answer, then you can read up a little bit more on the later part. So the short answer to the interest in science is my learning that I’ve had over the years that it is the teacher in the school who influences what you work on. So there were teachers, Dr. Ajay Gaun and Dr. Khan, who are really the chemistry and biology teachers who influenced who I love their way of teaching. Right. And so that’s how I got hooked onto science. Later on. Dr. Akshok Bhagwat in my College was a big influence to me on how biology is perceived. And over the years, those mentors helped in understanding how to get into science, but also for my parents, both my parents have been sort of in the Sciences. My father was an engineer. My mother taught mathematics all her life in high school, and so I’ve been influenced quite a bit on the science side of things.
Charu:
Yeah. It’s really your early experiences that kind of shape you into becoming who you are. And it is really nice for you to mention your book, because we do have some exciting questions about it later in the podcast. So, you carried your love for science throughout your career, and you still have it today. You spent several years in academia. You have a PhD on leprosy vaccines, postdoctoral contribution to HPV, Shingles Rotavirus and HIV drug. I mean, wow. And you also developed several vaccines, much to pure claim. What was the one thing that you loved about academic research and the one thing you absolutely abhorred.
Naren:
Hate is a strong word. But let’s see what I liked in academic research. I think what I liked in academic research is the constant curiosity that you have and the constant curiosity that everyone around you has. And it sort of feeds the academic environment, whether it’s students in the College or University, whether they are professors, whether they are people visiting from outside places like UPenn, that I was fortunate to be in you know you used to have lectures from outside visitors all the time, and they’re presenting completely different things. Right. So when I was at UPenn, I used to go and listen to lectures on physics, on social Sciences because they’re just available, they have access to them. So this curiosity aspect of being in academia was very interesting for me. In retrospect, it’s not so acute at that time. I don’t know why I was doing what I was doing at that time, but in retrospect, I was curious. I was trying to learn many different things and maybe connect the dots later on. What I like about industry is the almost regimented way of doing work. You have goals, you have quarterly reports, you have quarterly things that you have to complete, and it’s a very regimented way of doing things. So the organized way of doing things is what I like about the industry. What I didn’t like about academia, not much I didn’t like about academia, other than the fact that academia, for whatever reason, pays less than industry.
Charu:
That is something that we absolutely hate, that we do not get enough benefits for our contribution in a way.
Naren:
But we don’t put a value on the things that we get. It only comes down to money. Yeah. It’s not really the money, right. Satisfaction can be a contribution of many different things. But we don’t realize that we’re getting much more than we bargain for. Yeah. And in industry, just to finish that circle, the thing that I didn’t like, I guess everybody goes through this, and it is not specific to industries anywhere. As you grow up in your career, the politics of how to work with people, the politics, interactions, the egos, all the things that the human nature brings becomes very competitive. That part is what I didn’t like about industry, but it was a very small part of the overall experience.
Charu:
Yeah, of course. This was sort of a bare all answer. And I feel like this expressed a lot of our feelings as well, and it’s nice to hear it from someone like you because it kind of just inundates that. Yes. What we are feeling is also somewhere or something that it gives the community kind of a feeling with academics. But what I have to definitely agree with you is that we have kind of a symbiotic relationship in academia. We sort of Leech out passion from people. Maybe not Leech out. But if someone is passionate and excited, then we get passionate and excited. So it’s an electric environment throughout academia. But would you say that you said that industry is very regimental. It’s very goal oriented. Is the passion still there?
Naren:
Yeah, you know passion is something that has to be intrinsic, right. So, the company may go through ups and downs and everything, but your passion should be consistent. It’s nice to say that on paper, but you go through ups and downs. You have very high is going on. You have some great accomplishment at work that’s going on, but something not going on great in your life. You may not be healthy, or you may something may be happening or your family, your Yin and Yang is never always balanced, right. Sometimes that is up, sometimes this is up, and whichever is down, you keep focusing on what is down and you don’t worry, and you don’t think about what’s up there. So we always gravitate towards focusing on the negative things. So somehow, I’ve learnt the processes of keeping on focusing on the positive things and not worrying about the negative things.
Charu:
That’s a very nice thought. And it’s something that we should all live by, I think. It doesn’t hurt to be an optimist.
Credits
Editing: Samriti, Virender, Vikram
Social: Charu Gupta, Albertha Joseph-Alexander
Music by Aditya Sutar
Meet the Hosts
Charu Gupta
Expert in hematological diseases and malignancies, Dr. Charu Gupta is dedicated to improving the quality of patient life. This multi-talented cancer researcher enjoys creating content for her food blog “The Indian Food Explorer”, travel, horse riding and swimming.
Vikramsingh Gujar
An experienced Biomedical scientist with focus on inflammation research, Dr. Vikram Gujar is working as a postdoc at Northwestern University, Chicago. Besides science, he enjoys hiking, cooking and playing Bansuri.
Shreyansh Tiwari
Shreyansh Tiwari is an inquisitive person who is always on the search for new things to investigate and learn from. He is now pursuing a master’s degree and is interested in neuroscience and endocrinology. He likes to read, listen to podcasts and music in his spare time.
About the SciKonnect podcast
SciKonnect Podcast provides a glimpse of daily life in academia and industry. Our hosts from different countries take you on a riveting, emotional & insightful journey that bares it all on how we do science and how we succeed. These are the stories you ‘want to learn’ rather than ‘had to learn’.
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Jan 15, 2022 at 6 PM EST.
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