Nicola Hann
Mathematics with Finance
BSc(Hons)
Final year student
For my placement I worked at Novartis, a pharmaceutical company as a statistical programmer. I was in the respiratory development department, so was involved in the analysis and reporting of trials for asthma drugs.
The majority of my time was spent programming using SAS, creating datasets and producing statistical analysis. The task of creating statistical analysis was set by the health authorities and involved producing descriptive statistics for one of the trials broken down into smoking status and BMI categories.
I was also involved in acceptance checking. This is the process of programming to create analysis datasets and table outputs to check they match with the outputs sent from another company we were working with.
During my time at Novartis I took part in many training activities. The most important training I had was the SAS online training course. I spent most of my fi rst few weeks going through this training which improved the SAS knowledge I gained in my second year.
I also took part in training focused on programming, including an introduction to S Plus, mixedeffect modelling in SAS and was fortunate to be invited on a programming training event in London.
My placement year was very rewarding, especially learning about the role of statisticians and programmers in the pharmaceutical industry which I was previously unaware of, and now feel I would like to progress with a career in this area. I really enjoyed my year working for Novartis, and feel I gained a lot from the experience. I have expanded my knowledge and developed skills which would not have happened if I chose not to do my placement year.
