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September 13, 2004 Vol. 75, no. 3F
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| SOCIETY STARTER:
IEOR senior Farzin Shadpour stepped up to start the first Berkeley
chapter of the International Society of Professionals in the Biotech
and Pharmaceutical Industry. He believes there is tremendous opportunity
in these currently booming and growing fields. |
IEOR student
brings student chapter of national biotech and pharmaceutical society
to campus
During his junior year,
IEOR senior Farzin Shadpour found out, to his surprise, how easy it
was to become the president of a student society on campus. He started
his own group.
Sixteen months ago, Shadpour introduced the student chapter of the International
Society of Professionals in the Biotech and Pharmaceutical Industry
(ISPE) to Berkeley.
In 2002, Shadpour enrolled in a seminar taught by ISPE. At the end of
the class the society solicited students to start a Berkeley student
chapter of ISPE.
“I filled out the application, but I thi
Despite the initial lack of enthusiasm, Shadpour managed to find three
or four classmates who agreed to be officers. After filling out some
ASUC paperwork and sending out some emails, the society was launched.
Shadpour enjoyed his leadership role in this new group, but one thing
bothered him.
“I liked that I had the chance to start a student society, write
a constitution and create
a culture, but I didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t elected
to my office,” he laughs.
The organization has grown to include 30 active members and an e-mail
list of 200 people. Shadpour is no longer the organization’s self-imposed
dictator. The newly elected president is BioE senior Edward Yang.
Last semester the organization hosted an infosession with the biggest
drug delivery company in the U.S., Alza.
Shadpour is pleased with how the organization turned out and that it
held true to his vision of diversity. Currently, the organization’s
membership represents many different majors.
“I did my best to recruit members from different majors. This isn’t
just a group for BioE or ChemE majors, it is a group for all majors
interested in working for the biotech or pharmaceutical industries,”
he says.
Shadpour’s vision was to recruit English majors interested in writing
documentation, CEE majors who create cleanrooms, or EECS majors who
want to do automation for the growing biotech and pharmaceutical sectors.
He wanted to promote the many opportunities available in these sectors
to students from all disciplines.
Currently Shadpour sits on the organization’s advisory board. As
he prepares to graduate in December he toys with starting his own consulting
firm for the biotech industry, a niche market yet to be exploited.
“There are not many people doing this now because no one has seen
the need, but there are so many inefficiencies in the manufacturing
processes that could be streamlined and thus save these companies money,”
he says.
Shadpour did his senior project for local biotech firm Genentech. He
created a scheduling tool for the clinical packaging department that
is currently being considered for implementation by the company.
Shadpour’s interest in biotech arose purely from an engineer’s
sense of pragmatism.
“No industry is growing as fast and needs as much help as the biotech
industry.
The first ISPE general meeting
is on Thursday, September 16th at 5 p.m. in 3110 Etcheverry.
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