Vincent Sun (CDS’27)

Internship

Global Clinical Supply Data Science Intern, Pfizer

Tell us about your internship.

At Pfizer, I work within its Clinical Supply sector but more specifically within innovative solution development. My role requires me to learn and map ways to streamline the delivery of investigational products to Pfizer’s many clinical sites all throughout the world. I use data on a daily basis to create reports, dashboards, and predictive models to forecast profitability of drug shipments based on a variety of parameters such as drug type and a country's import tax.

What are you enjoying most about this experience?

It is a great opportunity to meet new people and get real-world experience of how a company operates on a global scale. Being able to speak to and interact with professionals and data scientists taught me how to look at things from a larger perspective, focusing on what really matters as well as what data can accomplish when used optimally.

What CDS courses prepared you for the internship role? Please explain.

I was surprised when I could navigate many of Pfizer’s data science tools using the knowledge I gained from DS110. One of my tasks required me to clean and extract data from a centralized database, so knowing what type of joins to use and how to use Python to group based on conditions were integral to my role.

How did you find and obtain this internship?

A big reason why I was able to obtain this opportunity was because of prior research. I was aware of Pfizer’s Internship program during my senior year of high school, so structuring my undergraduate classes to fit the skills I would need at the internship, such as web development (CS103) and dataset manipulation using Python (DS110), gave me project experiences to talk about during the interview.

What tips would you offer other CDS majors to help with the internship search? 

Do your research and know your projects well. Look into the job description and familiarize yourself with the software before the interview, envision how the tool might help the department, and don’t be afraid to speak up about your findings during the interview. Also, connect the fundamentals of your projects, such as data cleaning, regressions, and graphing, to the job description but also describe your project as a starting point for your future ambitions.