No two days are quite the same," says Deborah Hartman, director of lead discovery in central nervous system and pain research at AstraZeneca in Wilmington, Del. Hartman, who started out as a bench scientist, is now a manager in charge of about 50 people working together on discovering new drugs for CNS disease targets.
"In this role, there's a mixture of scientific-, business-, and personnel-related activities," Hartman notes. She oversees everything from lab safety to budget management, but she is still a scientist at heart. "I no longer work in the lab myself, but I think my favorite part of the day is the opportunity to discuss results that have come out of the lab or catch up on scientific literature," she says.
Hartman's affinity for science dates back to her childhood. "Since I was a kid, I was very interested in science, everything from medicine to space exploration,"...