Andy Kokaji

As most of us do, I started my career in Science directly working in the lab trying to figure out a problem or discovering something new. As my career progressed, I was fortunate to have opportunities to build a small team of lab technologists. We would work together to improve our efficiency. This allowed us to ask more questions, design better experiments with the goal of finding a missing piece of the puzzle that we did not understand before. Now, I oversee the work of the Senior Scientific staff as they manage their own research teams who are developing products. The products we develop allow other Scientists worldwide to conduct their research. I work with very smart people. This includes biologists and chemists along with all types of engineers including software, hardware and process engineers. Scientists often have their own “language” specific to their field of study. Although we are fortunate that English is the primary scientific language worldwide, learning how to communicate with people with varying experience and background is very important. Scientists, engineers, chemists, intellectual property lawyers and bioinformaticians all speak a slightly different “scientific dialect”.

My day is filled with a mixture of different tasks and objectives. Most of my time is spent in meetings reviewing information, asking questions and making decisions on next steps. Many of the tasks I am involved with are cross departmental. As a result, the activities from the decisions I make are carried out by a broad range of people within the organization. As I manage a team of Senior Scientists I am still involved in discussing experimental approaches and specific technical details of product development and troubleshooting. The rest of my time is spent with external research collaborators or business partners. Through all of these activities, I use STEM skills every day. My scientific background is critical to being able to quickly understand a problem, identifying questions that need to be asked and making decisions based on the information at hand. Rounding out my STEM background with understanding the business and people side of things is also critically important.