Lu Zhang, PhD | Global Clinical Scholars Research Training
Lu Zhang is a senior scientist at the multinational biotechnology company Biogen. Zhang earned her PhD in chemistry and chemical biology from Cornell University in 2019. In March 2024, Zhang completed Harvard Medical School’s Global Clinical Scholars Research Training program with ambitions to continue her work in pharmaceutical drug discovery and drug development for the treatment of neurological diseases.
Broadening the Professional Horizon
Having completed her undergraduate degree in applied biology and chemical engineering in Hong Kong, followed by her doctorate degree in chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell, Zhang immediately began working for Biogen. Focused on preclinical drug discovery, her team worked to nominate optimized drug candidates that could then be tested within a clinical setting. By this point in Zhang’s career, she had worked on early-stage drug discovery but had no formal medical training or clinical research experience. After two years, Zhang found herself on rotation at Biogen’s Department of Clinical Development, focusing on clinical trials and biostatistics and even collaborating with the legal team.
“That’s where I found myself really interested in continuing to learn about clinical studies, particularly how to design and conduct good clinical trials to test our drug candidates, and I began my journey with Harvard Medical School.”
Biogen encourages its employees to broaden their professional horizons, and Zhang applied to Harvard Medical School’s Global Clinical Scholars Research Training certificate program to broaden her scope of work. Zhang’s previous training focused on early stage, fundamental research on subjects such as mice, rats, and non-human primates. While there was crossover of the same basic scientific principles and statistical analysis techniques between pre-clinical and clinical research, Zheng admits she felt a knowledge gap in her understanding of drug development.
“I found myself with a real need to build a solid foundation of clinical research knowledge. The curriculum of the Global Clinical Scholars Research Training program was great for me, because it covered everything I didn’t know about epidemiology, biostatistics, and clinical trial design.”
Throughout her time in the program, Zhang considered the curriculum in context of her work at Biogen to further her contributions internally. Her capstone research proposal was inspired by Biogen’s pioneering clinical research in neurology and brain diseases. The peer and instructor feedback were invaluable to her throughout the review of the capstone project, offering insights she had not previously considered about interpretations of research, successful trial design, and why some trials succeed while others may fail.
With aspirations to continue learning and contributing to clinical development at Biogen, the Global Clinical Scholars Research Training program provided Zhang with insights for the future as well as a retrospective view.
“In the past, I didn't know what the considerations were behind a successful clinical trial. Now that I have completed the program, when I look at clinical trial design or when I read research papers from clinical studies, it makes a lot more sense to me. I can better understand why certain things are important and what we can do to improve the study. My work experience began to make more sense.”
Developing a Global Network
Although originally from China, all of Zhang’s professional research experience has been completed in the United States. The Global Clinical Scholars Research Training program enrolls fellow researchers from around the world, and this broadened Zhang’s perspective on how clinical research practices differ. It was an enlightening experience to hear how her peers in Asia, Europe, and Africa approached certain situations differently from her own organization.
“The global network is one of the things I really liked about the program. It gave me the opportunity to meet clinical researchers outside of the United States. It has been an eye-opening experience to learn about how people do research in other countries, amongst difference cultures, economies, and policies.”
The connections Zhang has created throughout the program will have a lasting impact. Having a network of colleagues from a variety of fields presents the opportunity to ask new questions, determine similarities and differences in their experiences, and pave new paths. A group of peers from the program have discussed working together after graduation on a new publication.
As imperative as the technical skills developed in the Global Clinical Scholars Research Training program have proven to be, Zhang also found immense value in the personal growth she experienced. The decision to further her education at Harvard Medical School even after post-doctoral training has opened a new world of possibilities and the courage to pursue them.
“On top of all the knowledge the program has given me, it has also given me the confidence to better understand the clinical trial field. That confidence is extremely important to me because it’s a different track of where I came from, and I will need that to continue in this direction.”