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"Although many of the jobs in the RNAi industry will closely resemble positions in other industries--biochemists, molecular biologists, and pharmacologists will be in demand--some specializations will be particularly sought after."

"I had the good sense to have a serious accident when the market was down." --Cynthia Robbins-Roth

"People refer to those things as their mistakes, but I think it's more accurate to say that they help to reduce choices and align the [company's] direction with the right path." --Jon Kayyem

"What makes him special is his ability to judge which problems are the best to work on. Perhaps the most important skill for a researcher is being able to identify which problems you have a good chance of solving and which solutions would be most important." – John Preskill

Why be normal?

"Here you have to make sure you're getting things done and meeting your objectives. It's almost a completely different experience."

"I gravitated toward the principle of minimum effort." --Ben Goertzel, chief scientific officer, BioMind LLC

"Nothing panned out for years, but [the techniques] did come to fruition. You have to make the investment." --Andrea Ghez

"He was there less than 2 minutes, and he ended up with permanent reduction in his vision." --Denis Sapiro, Occupational Health and Safety Office, University of Washington, Seattle

There are molecular biologists, and biochemists, and immunologists. There are toxicologists, and pharmacologists. But there are no pharmacogenomicists.

"Because I was still passionate about this, I stuck through it and managed to keep it running with lots of help from some very good people. Now I have quite a bit of business experience." --Lee Jensen

"As soon as some conference deadline comes up, you see us working like maniacs to finish … papers, just like we did when we were in school." --Henrique Malvar, the director of Microsoft's Redmond research lab

"When we have a question, it doesn't matter what it is, they answer it. It's a complete exchange of information … they've essentially opened up all their technology to us."

--Marc Donohue

"One famous venture capitalist looked at my business plan and said that it was an excellent treatise on solar energy, but it wasn't a business plan." --Richard Swanson

"There isn't a pharmaceutical company that doesn't want these people. [Fellowship participants] are getting calls from headhunters 6 months or a year before they've finished." --Dave Flockhart, professor of medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine

Biotechnology is about opportunity. And risk.

"Working with the close-knit group of scientists is giving her exposure to many aspects of the research, and that validates part of her reasoning for coming to a start-up company like Alnylam."

Systems biology seeks to connect the dots between molecular data. It's a hot career field, but success requires making connections between disciplines.

Aside from radiation, few U.S. organizations have policies regarding pregnant lab workers, which means women are on their own when it comes to worrying about exposure during pregnancy.