Van Dyke Discusses the Importance of In-Person Work for Biotech

As the world cautiously moves away from COVID-19 restrictions, more and more employees are returning to the office. Associate Dean of Research for the Department of Biomedical Engineering Mark Van Dyke recently spoke to Inside Tucson Business about the importance of in-person work for the biotech industry, as well as exciting developments on the University of Arizona campus. 

“There’s still something to be said for people working together in the same physical location – particularly in this field,” said Van Dyke. “I mean, even though we’ve all kind of adapted to life after the pandemic and doing things by emails and phone calls and Zoom calls, when you’re working in the development of new medical technologies, so much of this stuff is kind of hands on.”

According to Inside Tucson Business, recent UA startups range from Reglagene, a preclinical stage oncology therapeutics company developing new medicines that fight cancer safely, to Red Sea Farms’ climate-smart technology designed to enable sustainable agriculture in harsh environments. Because of all the different hands involved in developing bioscience innovations and bringing them to market, biotech is one field where it’s particularly hard to work remotely.

“That may work for other forms of technology, like developing cellphone apps or even cutting-edge technologies in the energy domain,” Van Dyke said. “But when you’re bringing new medical technologies into clinical practice and especially down a commercialization pathway, you’re bringing new products into a system is inherently complicated, and no one person really knows how to do all of that. There’s a lot of things that go into bringing something from, say, discovery at a university to something that actually can be used in mainstream medical practice. It takes teams of people to make that happen, and all of that is really facilitated by that proximity.”