The School of Medicine Basic Sciences has seen remarkable and diverse trainees come through its doors, collaborate with and learn from distinguished faculty, then graduate from one of our nationally ranked departments. But where are they now?
They go on to become leaders at notable institutions, universities, governmental entities, and research and development companies, among others. Some of the places where our alums work include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Pfizer Inc., the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to name but a few. And some even decide to stay at Vanderbilt!
Meet Corey Hayford, PhD’21, who graduated with a degree in chemical and physical biology and is now a principal data engineer at Cellarity, a biotechnology research company founded by Flagship Pioneering. There, he is working to build scalable and automated platforms that can lead to new drug candidates in a vast array of diseases.
We sat down with Hayford to discuss his experiences studying basic science and how it played a role in his successful career.
Graduate program: Chemical and Physical Biology
Graduate lab: Vito Quaranta
Current role: Principal data engineer at Cellarity
How did Vanderbilt help with your career path?
Vanderbilt had the most interdisciplinary program and faculty of all of the universities I was considering. Also, the direct interaction with the medical campus provided the clinical education I was hoping to receive.
I went to just about every BRET course you could attend! I enjoyed ASPIRE modules, especially the networking course taught by Ashley Brady.
How did the networking opportunities at Vanderbilt contribute to your professional connections and career advancement?
BRET’s ASPIRE on the Road program helped get me interested in the Boston area and convinced me that I could make that leap directly from my Ph.D. I live in Boston now and we have a large community of Vanderbilt graduates who live and work in the area. I maintain relationships with several of those individuals, some as friends and others as mentors. Additionally, members of the BRET Office connected me to other alums and helped me set up visits to different biotech markets beyond Boston, including Seattle and San Francisco, as I was planning next steps after graduate school. I can’t overstate how much they helped get me on the right track!
Can you share a pivotal moment or decision in your career that was influenced by your experiences at Vanderbilt or with BRET?
When I was looking for jobs about six months prior to graduation, I was interested in many different paths. I had gone through the interview process for management consulting and technical sales roles, as well as highly technical roles in bioinformatics and computational biology. Ashley sat down with me several times, and we organized a trip to Seattle to meet with half a dozen Vanderbilt alums after a conference I was scheduled to attend on the West Coast. Although I did not end up moving there, the process of scheduling those informational interviews and gathering perspectives from those alums helped guide me in the right direction as I moved through the job search.
Were there any specific mentors or professors who played a crucial role in shaping your career aspirations?
Ashley Brady was a great mentor and influence on me at Vanderbilt. She always puts the interest of the trainee first and goes above and beyond to help them find their path. She helped me become more confident in my plan to jump straight into industry after graduation and navigate offers.
Were there any unexpected twists or turns in your career journey?
Yes, there were definitely lots of twists and turns! I think my biggest hurdle was having to pivot my research project three and a half years into my Ph.D. I had a National Institutes of Health F31 fellowship, but my lab didn’t have the resources to fully complete the project. So, I had to pivot to a different project where I could acquire additional support. That process included many challenges, including getting independent external funding, building a new support team, and pivoting away from the ideas I had focused on for so long. Resilience helped me through it, but getting help from other people and sorting through that feedback played a role in my path forward. People often say that overcoming those types of obstacles “builds character,” but I think it really teaches you how to ask for and get help from your community. The BRET Office is part of the community and specifically supports trainees.
In what ways did your involvement in additional projects or internships during your time at Vanderbilt contribute to your current success?
Generally, getting involved with external projects helps build a trainee’s soft skills and makes them more wellrounded as they enter the workforce. Outside of the BRET ASPIRE modules, I also took courses at the Owen School of Management and was a member of the leadership teams of the University Graduate Student Council and the Chemical Biology Association of Students. Those experiences allowed me to work with people outside of my lab group and discipline, and even the wider Vanderbilt community. Learning to work with different people and perspectives helps build empathetic leadership skills that you can bring with you to the professional world.
What skills or knowledge gained during your time at Vanderbilt have been most valuable in your current role or industry?
So many to choose from, but one important skill I learned was to take an interdisciplinary approach to science. I work with many smart people every day, but not all of them can communicate outside of their scientific area of expertise. As an interdisciplinary scientist, you can be the scientific liaison between disparate groups in your organization, which opens many different career growth opportunities. Also, you can understand the goals of other groups and maybe even the organization’s broader priorities. Having that knowledge allows you to develop the foresight to position yourself in the best way within your organization to achieve your own goals, whether that’s a promotion or gaining additional skills or organizational influence. Arguably, being interdisciplinary is the best skill you can have!
How has the interdisciplinary nature of biomedical research training played a role in your ability to collaborate with professionals from different fields in your career?
Compared to other university graduate programs, Vanderbilt wants to make you a well-rounded scientist. Whether that is by building interdisciplinary skills, providing community, or just giving me access to outside perspectives, I have always appreciated the wide range of resources provided by Vanderbilt—if you spend time finding and using them. The soft skills I learned at Vanderbilt are my greatest asset. In the professional world, you work with people with different skillsets and life experiences.
Technical skills are often a threshold. Once you can achieve that threshold, your ability to collaborate and be a good team member are what helps you get and maintain career growth. In that way, the training from the BRET Office was one of the most important parts of my education.
What advice would you give to a student studying basic sciences?
Expose yourself to different career paths and trajectories as early in your training as possible. You already know what it is like to be an academic researcher from your PI, so try to find and listen to people who have your background but decided not to become academic researchers (even if you do want to become a PI). Whether those people work in industry, science policy, communications, etc., there is always someone with similar training who went in that direction. And you never know, you might find something you like even more!