New Biotech Club Boasts Wealth of Offerings

While still relatively unknown to many undergraduates, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences' (GSAS) Harvard Biotechnology Club has been growing at an exponential rate over its first year in operation.

In that year, the club has gained 1,100 members from around the world, and can boast participants from India, Europe, Israel, Australia and the Philippines. Though most members are graduate students living in the Boston area, the group also has members from the biotechnology industry and from other academic communities.

Kim Seth and Jason LaBonte, both GSAS students and the current managing directors of the club, say that the organization's major goal is "bridging the gap" by opening a dialogue between the academic community, industry, and the public.

Members have access to speaker events and roundtable discussions, the opportunity to work in the club's investment group, and chance to get involved in the club's consulting services for small local biotechnology businesses.

The club's next event, for example, is Oct. 5, when Merck President and CEO Raymond Gilmartin will be appearing for a Company Spotlight talk.

According to its directors, the group also runs a start-up incubator to help entrepreneurs in the biotech arena.

It also publishes an online biotechnology magazine called the Industry Focus, which assembles articles from professors, researchers, and corporate executives as well as profiles of companies.

Other online offerings include research tools, a listing of upcoming events, and articles describing emerging technologies in detail.

Anyone can access a recent article, for example, describing a new drug delivery technology that utilizes polymers to encapsulate and deliver drugs over the course of more than a month.

The site, www.thebiotechclub.org, also links to an affiliate club at the University of Glasgow.

The club's funding, which allows it to maintain an extensive website off of Harvard's servers and bring prominent speakers to campus, is funded mainly by its corporate sponsors, who can choose from various tiers of investment ranging from $500 to $10,000.

"We pool all the sponsorship money to pay for all our events and website administration, so that each sponsor is effectively contributing to the overall operation of the Club," Seth and Labonte write in an e-mail message. "That way, we avoid any conflict of interest, since the money from one sponsor is not tied to any one event."

In return for their sponsorship, about 20 companies, such as Biospace.com, Biogen and Digizyme, receive exposure on the club's website and access to the club's internal resume database, depending on the level of sponsorship.

While the organization has a prominent presence in the GSAS, Seth and Labonte write that it has very few undergraduate members.

"The organization is absolutely open to undergraduate enrollment," they write. "We'd like to encourage undergraduate involvement."

In an effort toward achieving that goal, the organization will try to move more of its events from the medical school campus to the Harvard Square area after this semester.

The main obstacle to undergraduate involvement, Seth and Labonte say, is the Harvard rule that mandates that each organization must have a home faculty. They think the fact that they are overseen by GSAS may discourage participation from members of Harvard's other schools, including the College.

"The name must be qualified by some faculty/school affiliation," Seth and Labonte write. "We think that this might be misleading and could give the wrong impression that people from other schools are not welcome or can't participate."

Kim and Jason explain that while the Biotech Club has grown quickly, they are still trying to gain more active members.

"[We are} extremely interested in recruiting new managers and writers for the club," they write.