Kirsty Tinto joined the BioAscent team for a second year as our marketing and business development intern. In her blog, Kirsty reflects on her summer with BioAscent, and the challenges of completing an internship in lockdown.

Work experience and internships have been in short supply this year due to the pandemic, so I was delighted when BioAscent invited me to return this summer as the marketing and business development intern.

I am currently an undergraduate BSc Hons Immunology and Pharmacology student at the University of Strathclyde. Last summer I carried out a marketing internship with BioAscent, and I was keen to have similar experience for my CV this year.

This internship was an exceptional opportunity for me to build on what I learnt about marketing as well as develop my understanding of what is involved in business development for a fast-growing drug discovery contract research organisation.

Working for BioAscent this summer has been very different to last year. For a start, almost all of the work I have done has been done from home. Several of the BioAscent team, who aren’t lab-based, have also been working remotely so I had to both rely on my organisational skills and upskill quickly on the world of Zoom and Microsoft Teams. I was in the fortunate position of knowing most of the team having worked with them last year, and this helped me feel an integral part of the BioAscent team.

For me, the internship experience has been extremely valuable and involved my own tasks and responsibilities, allowing me to gain high-quality work experience in the industry. This experience has allowed me to network with a supportive team, gain confidence in my own ability and taught me skills which will not only be useful to help me succeed in my degree and my future career, but in my everyday life, too.

This summer, I have assisted the marketing and business development team. Some of the tasks I completed include:

• Writing blogs for the BioAscent website

• Creating a customer index

• Identifying potential customers in the UK, EU and US

• Updating the mailing list

• Updating contact’s information on Salesforce

• Using Google Analytics to understand the performance of the website and recommend areas of improvement

• Increasing BioAscent’s profile and audience on social media

• Helping to create new company straplines

This is the third year that BioAscent has offered a student internship for life sciences students, which gives scientist undergraduates invaluable experience and the opportunity to gain first-class work experience.

For more information about careers at BioAscent, click here.