Being in my third year of my DPhil, I decided that I should try to see what the world of industry looks like. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to be able to complete an industrial internship at Exscientia here in Oxford where I spent most of my time on scientific software engineering. I expected this to not be too different from what my work looks like here at OPIG, but quickly came to realise that this is not the case. What followed were three months of building a software package, getting to know all the new people around me, and getting used to all the new tools and infrastructure. Below are a few things that I am very happy to take back with me.
Read more: Three months in industry and returning to my PhD
A PhD can often be very solitary work. You are the expert in your project, and also have the highest stake in your project. At times, the freedom of what to explore next this affords is fantastic, but can make things difficult when problems arise. In industry, projects are a lot more collaborative. Your work direction will be aligned heavily with company needs, and depending on company size there might be specialised teams to support you in specific aspects of the project.
Emphasis placed on code quality is also a stark difference. Internal software written for company use has to be readable and well-documented. The codebase must also be standardised to maintain consistency. This will make life for newcomers easy and ensures that if the author of some software leaves the company the next person can easily take on the task of maintaining their code. Here, academia is catching up. Scientific software engineering is becoming more focused on maintainability (one of the core values of the SABS programme), but sadly Github is still full of legacy code that was written in ways that make maintaining the code difficult after the author stops being involved with it.
Lastly, on a more personal note, it was also fantastic to be surrounded by people in a team who work with the same techniques as me. In my PhD, I am one of two people at OPIG regularly using molecular dynamics simulations but I also spend a lot of my time working in the Biochemistry Department with the Higgins Group which is an experimental structural biology group. This being the case, my internship has been a fantastic way of picking up some additional techniques from people who are already familiar with them. I would highly recommend giving yourself the opportunity to do this if possible, either via something like an industrial internship, or a research visit to a collaborating academic group.
The past three months have been invaluable. They have given me the opportunity to see what industry is like and given me experience with new skills that I can take back to my PhD. Best of all, I got to meet a fantastic team who were always ready to take time out of their days to help and who made the time I spent at Exscientia as fun as it was!
