℞ for an Elevator Pitch

Melissa Wojcik, M.S., is an associate scientist III with the Translational Sciences Department at Biogen Idec in Cambridge, Mass. Her work supports preclinical and clinical assay development for the company’s neurologically based disease therapeutics.

The other day I found myself in an awkward conversation after stepping onto the elevator. After little exchanges about the weather and this year’s flu rates, my elevator companion asked me a simple question: “So what do you do?” I could have simply answered that I am a bioanalytical scientist at Biogen Idec who does data support preclinical toxicology studies for biotherapeutics, but that’s sterile. I went with a different angle. I gave him my elevator pitch: “You know those ridiculously long and garbled scientific documents packed inside the prescriptions you buy?” He chuckled to himself as he realized that he practically threw out every insert he ever pulled out of his prescriptions over the…