A few weeks ago at the CalBio Meeting in San Diego, a major threat to the biotechnology industry was discussed at length.  It is the increasing difficulty in finding properly trained employees.  The biotech industry has recently been increasing its use of H1b visas to help alleviate this problem, especially for Ph.D. scientists and engineers, but because of the political restrictions in the number of these visas allowed per year, this is not a long term (or even short term) labor strategy for the industry.  This problem is primarily due to the fact that fewer and fewer recent college graduates are interested in careers in math and science and our homegrown pool of potential candidates cannot keep up with the industry’s growth.

Some of the top biotech companies in conjunction with industry association groups have begun to aggressively address this problem by reaching out to students and teachers to create a systematic approach to channel high performing students into advanced math and science programs, hopefully creating the biotech workforce of the future.

This proactive approach is vital to keeping up with the anticipated growth of the biotech industry.