A Day in My Life
Digitale Strategen unterstützen Wissenschaftler bei der Online-suche nach Informationen und Produkten. Dazu brauchen sie viele Jahre Berufserfahrung in Forschung und Entwicklung. ELIZABETH ZACH berichtet.
Meet Emily Paulson, a digital strategist from California
My name is Emily Paulson and I work in the biotechnology industry in San Diego, California. The city is a hub for the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and biomedical industries, with more than 1,200 companies in the area.
I became interested in science when I was eight years old and my parents gave me a microscope. I loved collecting pond water samples and looking at slides of blood cells and bacteria. Books like A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’engle, inspired me to become a scientist.
Later, some inspirational teachers made biology even more interesting: I have fond memories of college labs where we did exciting experiments, such as identifying a mystery microbe or isolating DNA. My PHD is in immunology.
I became a web content strategist in digital marketing eight years ago. Previously, I had worked in pharmaceutical and biotechnology research and development. The company I work for, Illumina, focuses on technologies used in fields such as cancer, reproductive health, genetic disease, micro
biology, and agriculture. Illumina also develops coronavirus products, to detect the virus and answer questions on how it mutates.
I work with a team of about 40 other people, including web designers and developers. Globally, the company has around 8,000 employees. I like working there because it’s a very collaborative environment with many intelligent, highly motivated people.
My job is to get into the minds of scientists as they look for products or information. I typically spend my days working on what’s called search engine optimization, or SEO, which basically means figuring out how people search for things online. This involves keywords, which help us search for products, technical specifications, and educational information. I use keyword research to help plan content for the Illumina website, which, in turn, will help customers find what they’re looking for.
My workday involves attending meetings and checking analytics data on our website. This helps me understand what people are searching for online, and how we can make the website more user-friendly.
The fall and winter months are usually busier for me because there are many scientific conferences where new products are presented. However, 2020 was unusual because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Conferences were canceled, postponed, or held online, and many research projects were halted.
Illumina nevertheless successfully launched a Covid-19 test, as well as various research products and software for studying the immune response to the virus. I’m excited to be involved in these valuable efforts to help advance research and testing capabilities for what is definitely one of the biggest scientific challenges of our time.
I typically spend my days figuring out how scientists search for information online.