QSP Student Placement

Overview

Certara accelerates the potential of bringing medicines to market and to patients using biosimulation software, technology, and services to transform traditional drug discovery and development. Our clients include more than 2,400 biopharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, and regulatory agencies across 70 countries.

Our goal is to enable the life sciences industry’s use of data, modeling, and analytics to make better decisions across the various phases of discovery and drug development. Our software and scientists incorporate modern advances in scientific understanding, drug development experience, data analysis, and AI resulting in significant opportunities to decrease the cost and increase the probability of success for new drug approval and commercialization.

We are seeking undergraduate level first degree students who share our passion for using quantitative approaches to understand and impact complex drug discovery and development questions. The students will learn about the exciting breaking science of quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP), utilising mathematical systems models of disease to discover and develop novel medicines.

They will work in close collaboration with Certara staff to help generate state-of-the-art QSP models for users in pharmaceutical R&D. The models will be designed in dialogue with the clients and developed with a view to creating user-friendly models that will inform drug development programs from discovery to regulatory filing. This role does not include laboratory work.

Responsibilities

• Work with QSP modellers to find and interpret relevant data via literature searching and, where appropriate, capture this data.
• Rendering data in appropriate format for fitting and/or analysis.
• Data fitting, plotting, and model building as appropriate.
• Introductory knowledge of pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, pharmacology, and biology (including immunology).
• Experience in basic programming, for example using R, Python or Matlab.
• Experienced in working in multi-disciplinary teams.
• Contribute materially to mathematical Systems Pharmacology model development.

Qualifications

• A-level or equivalent in biology and mathematics, physics, or computer science.
• 2+ years undergraduate degree education in biomedical/life sciences, bioengineering, biochemistry, or similar.
• Good interpersonal skills.
• Passionate about using mathematical approaches to improve drug discovery.
• Self-motivated.
• Willing to work in, or relocate to, Canterbury or Sheffield, UK.
• Computer literate and familiar with modern communications technology.
• Familiar with Excel, PowerPoint, Word etc.
• Some familiarity with the use of search engines/PubMed etc. to find biomedical scientific data.
• Some experience coding, for example in Python, R, or Matlab.

Certara bases all employment-related decision on merit, taking into consideration qualifications, skills, achievement, and performance. We treat all applicants and employees without regard to personal characteristics such as race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, nationality, marital status, pregnancy, physical or mental condition, genetic information, military service, or other characteristic protected by law.