• Question: how much to you get paid per day and what sort of experience to do you have with drugs.

    Asked by jsb1357 to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 11 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      haha I’ve noticed how much we get paid seems to be a popular question!

      I’m a postdoctoral scientist and I get paid about £115/day.

      Experiences with drugs… I have lots of different experiences! I have made various drugs, such as aspirin, paracetamol and benzocaine while studying Medicinal Chemistry for my degree. More recently in my research I’ve been looking into how drugs interact with other proteins. And how they can be used to treat diseases, like brain diseases and cancers.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I agree with Yalda – about 4 people have asked me this! Someone doing my job gets paid between £35 & 55K a year, which is about £90-150 per day. Technically I don’t have any experience with drug development – sorry! I work with drug companies to help them communicate what a drug does & how it can be used. So, while I might be able to explain how a drug works (it’s mechanism of action) I wouldn’t have the first clue on how to make one.

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I’m on a junior lecturer grade, which is from about £37 – 50K a year.

      I extracted aspirin from willow bark while doing my degree. My research looks at new proteins we can design antibiotics for and how we can make drugs inside bacteria, so I spend quite a lot of time thinking about drug-action and targets, if not actually making them.

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 12 Mar 2013:

      I’m doing a PhD so I’m not fully qualified yet, and I get paid £14K per year, which is about £50 a day. So compared to these guys I am poor, but when I’m qualified I can expect to get a lot more.

      I am developing carbohydrate drugs to work against Cholera and building protein structures for drug delivery.

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      I’m a PhD student too, and get paid the same as Tom. I’ve worked on two types of drug in my PhD. One is an a drug which helps to fight HIV. Another drug I’ve been working on is one which helps to stop your immune system fighting the new organ when you’ve had to have an organ transplant.

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