Alumni Spotlight: Huiyan Jin

Can you tell us a bit about your career path and what led you to the role you’re in today?

I graduated from the MS program in Biostatistics in 2017. I currently work as a senior associate at a life science consulting firm. I specialize in commercial strategy and work with different stakeholders from pharmaceutical companies to develop actionable insights that allow their products to become key players in the market. Before my current position, I worked as a policy analyst and provided policy recommendations to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Earlier in my career, I focused on learning the big picture of the healthcare industry. I studied biology as an undergraduate and learned how a breakthrough in the lab could become the foundation of a disease-modifying treatment. At Columbia’s Mailman School, I learned in Seamus Thompson’s course on The Randomized Clinical Trial about how drugs are developed in trials. This helped me to obtain both my internship and my first job as a policy analyst. In addition, by working with Qixuan Chen, who is an authority, I learned a great deal about methods of survey analysis. Since graduating, I have improved my understanding of how government, payers, physicians, and patients interact with each other. Going forward, I want to utilize the different capabilities that I have accumulated in information and research methodologies to resolve complex real-life clinical questions.

What do you enjoy most about the work you do?

I enjoy learning the history of drug development in different therapeutic areas and developing an understanding of how the markets will look in the future. I also like working with people with different backgrounds and, as a team, developing strategies that cover all aspects of the client’s needs.

Is there something that surprised you about the role when you first started?

I realized that before spending a lot of effort to identify the best analysis approach, I should first identify whether the question at hand can actually be solved using the data that will become available under the proposed plan. Sometimes the answer is No! In addition, many business questions need to be addressed through a combination of data analysis and market research. And finally, the data can often tell us what happened in terms of outcomes, but at other times it is only through talking to patients and physicians that we can understand why the outcomes occurred.

What skills, abilities, and personal attributes are essential to success in your field?

For a data scientist, a good understanding of statistical methods, programming languages, and healthcare databases is vitally important. In addition to these technical skills, I have found that people always enjoy working with a teammate who is a quick learner, takes ownership of their work, and proactively communicates with others. Another valuable skill is knowing how to translate analysis results into insights and present them to both technical and non-technical audiences.

What do you wish you’d known when you were starting out in your career?

I wish I had known how to maintain a better work-life balance. When I was a new hire, I worked very hard and stretched myself very thin across multiple projects. I have learned that taking on too many responsibilities can be a risk. Career development is like a marathon: You need to find a good pace that works for you. Always work hard, but don’t exhaust yourself in the early stages.