Cryoniss says goodbye to summer interns
After 8 weeks we say goodbye to Ana Fernandes and Daniel Jones as they return to their studies. Thank you for your hard work and good luck for the future!
Ana Fernandes
Cryoniss is passionate about enabling exceptional science and we do our part supporting customers to acquire, transport, store and test the quality of their samples. As research scientists ourselves, we understand the challenges that scientists face on a daily basis and constantly improve our services to further support our customers. However, the scientific landscape and its subsequent challenges, are changing on a daily basis, with the advent of new technologies and environmental challenges, for example a global pandemic.
Ana was recruited to assess the impact Covid-19 has had on the drug discovery and clinical trial processes, enabling the management team to reassess our services in light of a new post-Covid-19 era.
“After completing my 8- week internship at Cryoniss, I’m leaving this company as a changed person. Spending this time surrounded with brilliant and hard- working people, helped me to grow and develop in many different areas, and it gave me a better insight on how it really is to work for a company. Furthermore, this internship helped me to improve my work ethic and discipline, to be more confident and independent, and to work within a team.
Working on scientific research and writing case studies for the company’s newsletter helped me to gain more knowledge in specific areas, especially, in the drug discovery development over time. Researching about this topic helped me to understand about major advances done in this field, and how these might improve the discovery process in 5/10 years, especially artificial intelligence. Having learned so much about this specific sub- topic and how this will benefit pharmaceutical companies, allowed me to prepare a presentation about it, in order to share everything that I have learned in the past few weeks. I do believe that all the technical and interpersonal skills that I have acquired during this internship will be crucial tools for my next years as a student and for my future career, as my main goal is to work in the pharmaceutical field.”
“It has been an absolute pleasure to have Ana as part of the team at Cryoniss. Ana has excelled in investigating the latest research and trends in science and took the initiative to communicate these to our team and the wider community via our company LinkedIn and Twitter pages. The information Ana has gathered will help Cryoniss’ management team to reassess our services, ensuring we continue to support our customers in the best way. Ana is hardworking, supportive and a real team player. Whilst we are going to miss her, I have no doubt that Ana will have a bright future in the science, and I look forward to our next virtual coffee catch up!”
Daniel Jones
In true Cryoniss ‘continual improvement’ style, as the company has expanded its operations over the past few years, the management team were aware whilst their existing financial processes were accurate, non-value adding time could be reduced. However, to switch from one accounting programme to another requires time and attention to detail, and this is where Daniel came in.
Working with the management team, Daniel implemented and trained the team in a new process for the payment of expenses, distribution of sales invoices and capturing of Directors' expenses. This was seamlessly rolled out across the company, and Cryoniss’ accountancy firm Prime Accountancy, significantly reducing the amount of time spent by senior management, especially the CEO, handling day-to-day transactions, whilst enabling the team to have full visibility of the cash flow and financial obligations.
Once this had been completed, Daniel worked with the Board of Directors to generate a revised set of financial predictions, following on from a strategy review of the company in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Again, using this as an opportunity to improve our existing processes, Daniel compiled a revised and improved set of financial tools for the management team to use in the future.
“Working for Cryoniss has been an excellent opportunity for my professional development in the area of Finance, and I feel the various projects I undertook have prepared me well for entering the graduate labour market next year. Working with the board of directors I have managed to devise a new system to help capture invoices, in order to provide more scrutiny and oversight. I have also worked on the development of a three-year business plan, which will form an integral part of Cryoniss's Financial Strategy moving forward from the Covid-19 pandemic. The experience has also built up my Financial Accounting skills, by preparing the Q1 Management Accounts and working with software such as Excel. One of the best parts about a placement with a small firm is the fact I am able to see a project from start to finish, and easily see how my contributions have helped to make a real difference to how Cryoniss manages its Finances. Sonia has been an excellent source of support and guidance throughout the whole process, and I am sure with its clear Business Strategy Cryoniss has a very promising outlook going into the future.”
“It has been a pleasure working with Daniel. Whilst being very hard working and professional, Daniel has a great sense of humour and brought an interesting, fresh perspective to the team with his Economics insight. Daniel did a great job with the projects we assigned him, and the full suite of improvements implemented in this exercise has saved me at least 14 hours of work a month. Daniel heads back to his final year, and I have no doubt a promising career awaits him. He is going to be missed by the whole team.”
