Working in a commercial context as an academically trained scientist offers many interesting opportunities, but it also has important challenges. How is it like to work at a pharmaceutical company as a (bio)medical scientist? A trustworthy reputation is key for commercial companies working in the domain of healthcare. How do such companies safeguard the quality and integrity of their research?
Many scientists working at university collaborate with commercial partners, for example by having their research project or clinical trial co-financed by companies. Or, they work in a project on behalf of a non-profit organisation like the government. On the one hand, such collaboration enables research and research implementation that wouldn’t be possible at all otherwise. On the other hand, the scientists’ hallmark of being independent and impartial may be thwarted in case of conflicts of interest.
Some researchers combine two roles, they are both academic scientist and entrepreneur. Being a researcher with a double hat may be inspiring and motivating but perhaps also tricky?

During the second Radboudumc Research Integrity Round (RIR#2) of this academic year, we explore the challenges of working in a commercial context, and collaboration with profit and non-profit partners. We have three guests that will introduce us into their world and working fields. Questions like the ones above will be discussed and you will have the opportunity to fire your questions at them about the challenges of collaboration with profit and non-profit organisations as well.

Guests
Our first guest is Tanya Sluyter, Head of Ethics, Risk & Compliance for Novartis Pharma B.V. in the Netherlands. Tanya has a MA in Biomedical Science and can tell us everything about how a large international pharmaceutical company aims to combine the ambitions of doing business successfully and safeguarding the quality and integrity of its research and business practices.

Our second guest is prof. dr. Carel Hoyng. He is professor of Ophthalmology at Radboudumc and a passionate researcher who often collaborates with profit organisations like Novartis. At the same time he is also entrepreneur. In his view, the scientist and entrepreneur share the passion for enterprising and the two may be mutually strengthening. How does he combine his two roles? How does he balance between the positive outcomes of such collaborations and entrepreneurship and the possible risks of conflicts of interests?

Our last guest is prof. dr. Lex Bouter, former rector of the VU University of Amsterdam and currently professor of Methodology and Integrity. Trained originally as medical biologist, and having been professor in Epidemiology, he specialised in research and teaching about research integrity. He was one of the co-writers of the Dutch code of research integrity and is currently chair of the  World Conferences on Research Integrity Foundation. What are his views on the challenges of collaboration with profit and non-profit organisations?

Time and location
Wednesday 1 December 2021 16:00 – 17:30 hrs
The meeting will be a webinar. The webinar link will be sent to you after registration.

Registration
Registration is required. Please register via www.radboudumc.nl/researchintegrityrounds.

Target group
We invite all master students, junior and senior researchers and other staff members to attend this event and join the discussion.

Please note that PhD candidates can add the Research Integrity Rounds to their Training and Supervision Plan.