Doctor of Philosophy

Dr Carolyn Tucek-Szabo completed her PhD in 1992 with the School of Medicine and is now the Senior Director Regulatory Sciences at Moderna.

How has your Monash degree helped you succeed in your career? How have you been able to apply your skills in your current position?

Having an academic research background in Immunology from the Monash Medical Faculty has directly enabled me to transition to working in Biotech/Pharma on vaccines, cancer, infectious diseases and other related diseases.

What do you most enjoy about your current job?

Making transformative vaccines and medicines available to the Australian people.

What has been your biggest challenge, and how did you overcome it?

I willingly took a 10-year career break to raise our 3 children and I lost some confidence when re-entering the workforce. However, I realised my skills were very transferable, so after studying IP law, I became a consultant to get up to speed with the field of Immunology. Regulatory Sciences uses all of my background experience; PhD in immunology, academic research and law and now I have a fantastic second career which has gone from strength to strength!

What advice would you give current PhD graduates?

You may start out in academic research and remain there, however there are many other career areas where a PhD is highly valuable. A PhD can take you to Industry, Government and Legal (IP Law) careers and be equally rewarding. A PhD gives you great training as a researcher, defines your work ethic and hopefully provides you with great networking opportunities.

Learn more about the Doctor of Philosophy.