Tag: China

From Intern to Innovator: A Systems Engineer’s Journey at Molecular Devices

Gaining industry experience can be a game-changer when you’re completing college and entering the workforce. That’s why internships can be so valuable. Just ask Zhiqiang Zhang, a systems engineer at Molecular Devices (a Danaher business), whose college internship at the company jump-started his award-winning engineering career in the life sciences.

Here are four things Zhiqiang gained by joining Molecular Devices.

Zhiqiang visiting the seaside city of Pingtan Island with his family on vacation last summer.

1. A clear path of professional growth, right out of college

Before graduating from China University of Mining and Technology in 2016, Zhiqiang was thrilled to land a full-time internship with Molecular Devices’ engineering department in Shanghai. For the next 18 months, he supported manufacturing teams in resolving various internal quality issues with microplate readers.

“I didn’t know much about Molecular Devices or Danaher before taking the internship—but I’m very glad I made the leap,” he said. “The internship really set my direction in life sciences and unlocked my path for professional growth.”

The internship also gave Zhiqiang the opportunity to experience the company culture and determine if it was a good fit.

“The overall atmosphere at Molecular Devices is very relaxed,” he said. “We can all share ideas openly, and individual efforts and abilities are valued and rewarded. Molecular Devices really values product quality, and I believe any company that values the quality of its products is a great place to work.”

For Zhiqiang, Molecular Devices was indeed the perfect fit. After graduation, he was offered a permanent role as a manufacturing engineer in the Shanghai plant’s Operations department, making him the first intern to be hired by the company for an engineering role. He welcomed the opportunity and has never looked back.

Four years later, when the company established a new R&D department in Shanghai, Zhiqiang was matched as a great candidate for an open role through Danaher Go, an internal program that helps Danaher companies promote from within. He was offered the role, which was a promotion, and was excited to take on new responsibilities as a mechanical engineer. A few years later, he was promoted again—this time to his current role as a systems engineer.

2. Countless opportunities to excel and succeed

Today, Zhiqiang enjoys many facets of his work, including formulating design schemes, solving problems that arise from system integration, and conducting final system verification. But what he really loves is contributing to product innovation.

“I’ve had many memorable moments in my career to date, but one highlight was launching the first R&D product I worked on—the SpectraMax® Mini Multi-Mode Microplate Reader,” he said. “Beyond the successful launch, it won Danaher China’s New Product Gold Award at the 2023 Danaher Innovation Awards. That was my first time standing on such a big platform to share the successful experience of our project and receive the award on behalf of the team.”

Another standout moment for Zhiqiang came in 2022, when he became his department’s first “Outstanding Associate” award winner—an annual honor bestowed on those who meet exceptional performance and career development goals.

Looking ahead, Zhiqiang is excited about opportunities for future growth. Eventually, he’d love to become a senior systems engineer, a department manager, or even the chief engineer overseeing the entire Shanghai R&D department. Based on his impressive track record to date, these ambitions aren’t a stretch.

3. A culture of innovation

At Molecular Devices, associates are passionate about equipping researchers with next-generation technology that advances scientific discovery. By developing innovative solutions, the company helps customers unravel the complexity of biological systems and develop new therapeutics, to improve the quality of life worldwide.

Zhiqiang loves being part of it all.

“The life sciences industry has always attracted me—I love all the high-tech equipment, but especially the innovation behind it,” he said. “In my first job as a manufacturing engineer, I became keenly aware of how important product quality is to customers. Now as a systems engineer, I can influence device quality at the beginning of the design, and I always push our teams to design for quality and reliability. Our goal is to provide robust, innovative devices to improve scientists’ work efficiency.”

4. A caring, supportive community

Another thing Zhiqiang enjoys is the sense of belonging he’s found within his work community. These strong connections began early on.

“I remember just after graduation my father was seriously injured in a car accident and was in the Intensive Care Unit for several weeks. Our savings quickly ran out,” said Zhiqiang. “My colleagues in various departments took the initiative to collect and donate money to help tide me over during the initial financial difficulties. They are generous in their support—a true community.”

Strong work relationships like these go a long way to creating a happier, healthier and more engaged workplace—and for Zhiqiang, they provide one more confirmation that he’s in the right company, doing the right work with the right people.

Want to learn more about careers like Zhiqiang’s?

Learn more about working at Molecular Devices, a Danaher Life Sciences business, and apply for open roles.

Explore careers at Molecular Devices

May 17, 2025
An Introduction to Danaher University Programs
Norman Jones, Director of Global University Recruitment, sits down with the Internship Show to share insight into Danaher’s University Recruitment programs.

Press play to hear him speak about the opportunities at Danaher for early professionals!

Norman Jones is the Global Director of University Recruitment at Danaher. He has 17 years of experience working in Inclusion, Employment Brand, Strategic Partnerships and Talent Acquisition. His primary role is overseeing all of Danaher’s early career recruitment activities, including interns and full-time hires from universities.

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Click here to read the full transcript

Parker Pell: On this episode of the internship show, we speak with Norman Jones from Danaher. Norman talks about their internship and full-time opportunities within their university programs, shares why he loves working at Danaher and so much more. Stay tuned, the show is coming up next.

Parker Pell: Norman, thanks much for taking the time and joining the show.

Norman Jones: Thanks for having me here, Parker.

Parker Pell: Super excited to dive into all things Danaher and Danaher’s university programs in our conversation today. But just for starters, do you mind just introducing yourself and talking a bit about your role at Danaher to the audience?

Norman Jones: Sure. My name is Norman Jones. I am the Global Director of University Recruitment here at Danaher. I’ll hit my two-year mark at the end of August of this year. And my main job is to make sure that we’re bringing in early career talent, whether it’s interns or full-time hires from universities. And I could be undergrad, masters, PhD and MBA talent to be the future leaders of our company. So happy to be here with you and to engage with you.

Parker Pell: Excited as well. And I mean, let’s introduce Danaher for a second. For an audience that might not have heard of the company before. Can you talk a bit about who is Danaher and talk about what the company does as well?

Norman Jones: Danaher is a leading global life sciences and diagnostics innovator, helping to solve many of the world’s most important health challenges. Ultimately, improving quality of life for billions of people today while setting the foundation for a healthier and more sustainable tomorrow.

Parker Pell: And I’m always curious when we bring guests on the show. To hear your perspective, Norman, what do you love about working at Danaher?

Norman Jones: I love that at the end of the day, our main mission is to ensure we’re improving people’s health. It makes me proud to say I work at Danaher. Also, I have an amazing manager who believes in me and is actively developing me, which is important to me as a working professional. And lastly, I have an amazing team of recruiters that I get to lead as we bring on the future leaders of our organization.

Parker Pell: I love that Danaher is so invested in bringing in early talent, whether it’s intern or full-time individuals to the company to really make an impact. I’m curious, Norman, as your team is going out and recruiting this awesome talent, could you talk a bit about maybe some of the skills that you and the team are looking for in a candidate for whether it’s your internship or your full-time opportunities?

Norman Jones: Of course. For our intern and full-time, entry-level associate roles, we recruit for talent that has, that wants to leverage their degrees in whether it’s in the corporate environment, the R&D space, or the manufacturing supply chain space. So some majors we’re recruiting for include accounting and finance, biology, chemistry, engineering, whether it’s mechanical, biomedical, electrical, computer, industrial.

Parker Pell: I love to hear that, Norman. And I mean, for students that show those skills and get that opportunity to come and join Danaher, I want to focus a bit on the internship program for a second. Can you give us an overview of what the internship program is going to look like for a Danaher intern?

Norman Jones: Yeah. So our internship program here at Danaher is 12 weeks long. Typically, sometimes 10 depending on a school timeframe of some students and where they go to school at. But typically, it is 12 weeks long. And even before you start our internship, our intern program lead is reaching out to you to get to know you, to get you excited about coming on to Danaher. We work with the hiring manager to make sure that there’s meaningful work that the interns are going to be doing, that they’re going to find to be a value add to their future. And then once you come on board, it’s all about how to make sure you’re doing great work that’s going to be beneficial to Danaher but also having fun. So we work hard to make sure that while you’re learning a lot that you can add to your resume, you’re also building camaraderie amongst other interns here. So we work very hard to build engagement, bring people together, celebrate you, do lunch and learns, do executive talks where we bring leaders in to engage with you. And just make sure at the end of the day, you had a great experience overall.

Parker Pell: We know that community and that engagement is really what students are looking for when they’re choosing a company, obviously, to go in intern for. You talked about those lunch and learns, maybe the executive speaker series, any other kind of workshops or events y’all are hosting throughout the program that you could speak to, that interns are going to have the opportunity to attend?

Norman Jones: Yeah, I think one of our biggest things that we do is we bring the interns together for what we call DBS week. We DBS stands for Danaher Business System. It’s our core values. It’s our culture. It’s what we live and breathe here at Danaher.

So we bring our interns together at a location somewhere in the US for a week long immersion into DBS. We bring on one of our DBS experts who come in and facilitate what DBS is, whether it’s educating them on what kaizen’s are and putting them through a mini kaizen, whether it’s putting them through PSP, which stands for Problem Solving Processes, whether it’s talking about the five Y’s to get to the root of the problem. So we try to have that immersion where you get to learn what we live and breathe here at Danaher because our hope is that you’ll be able to take that back to your school environment and apply DBS as you’re working through problems in class or preparing for exams or team presentations. So DBS is a huge thing for us and bringing those interns together is a great way for them to learn truly what makes Danaher, Danaher, but also allows them to engage with each other in person because we have interns flying in from all over the country.

Parker Pell: I think that’s so cool and such a unique component to Danaher’s internship program, right? Because they’re getting that experience, obviously, of interning, working at Danaher, getting to network, but the practicality behind what they’re learning throughout their internship and being able to apply that back to when they’re in school, right? I think it’s just invaluable. And I’m sure that Danaher interns are loving their experience. Do you have any feedback from former Danaher interns that you could share about kind of what generally they’ve said their experience has been like?

Norman Jones: Yeah, of course. And I’m one who likes to focus on both positives and areas for development. You know, sometimes I’m not going to just tell you all the great things that interns have said because I don’t think that’s realistic. No internship is 100% perfect. But with regards to the positives, we’ve heard interns say that they love the experience because they felt like they really got to do meaningful work. We’ve had interns talk about how they love the culture of the operating company that they’re a part of. We’ve had interns talk about how they love coming together. We really got the network and bond with other interns, how they really enjoyed that DBS week. We’ve had also some other interns who gave us feedback on how we could be better. You know, I mean, like I said, at Danaher, we’re all always about continuous improvement. How can we continue continuously get better because that’s what we strive for.

We feel that perfection is never really something you can obtain or something you’re always reaching for. You know, so we asked our interns for feedback that let us know what we could do better so they could have a better experience. You know, so we do want the instructive feedback as well as the positive feedback.

Parker Pell: I love that though, because it’s a two-way street, right? And I think that the receptiveness for a company like Danaher to feedback from interns even goes farther to elevate y’all’s program overall. And you’re putting a ton into bringing in this early career talent into Danaher to really make an impact. Norman, as your team thinks about the goals for the internship program, what would some of those be?

Norman Jones: Yep. And I can tell you now, Parker, we have four goals that we always set for ourselves. And we stand by the first goal, is for interns to have a meaningful internship experience, where they can put where they can apply what they’ve learned in their classes in a work environment. Our second goal, is for our interns to experience our culture of learning, teamwork, knowledge sharing and continuous improvement. Our third goal, is to make the internship a fun experience for all of our interns. And our last goal is conversion. We want to ensure that all our interns that are successful are converted, whether it’s to come back as a full time associate the following year, or to come back as a returning intern the following summer.

Parker Pell: Norman, this has been so fun to not only learn about Danaher, the company, but also Danaher’s university programs, both intern and full time and all the investment that y’all are putting into delivering this awesome experience for early talent that gets an opportunity to join Danaher. I’d love for us to close out the show, and it’s going to be a tough question. But if you wanted a listener to leave the show, knowing kind of one thing about Danaher or about other of the programs that we’ve discussed today, what would you want to leave listeners with?

Norman Jones: I would like a listener to know that Danaher is a great place to start, grow and end your career. You know, I’ve been here for almost two years, and I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. I thoroughly enjoy the work I do. But more importantly, I really enjoy the people I work with. And again, like I said, at the end of the day, our mission here is to improve the lives of every human on this planet. And for me, that’s made me so proud to say how we’re going to Danaher.

Parker Pell: Couldn’t agree with you more, Norman. Thanks so much again for the time today. We really appreciate the conversation.

Norman Jones: Thank you, Parker. It was great talking to you.

Parker Pell: So fun chatting with Norman to learn about Danaher, Danaher’s university programs, and so much more about everything early career going on at their company. Stay tuned for the next episode of The Internship Show and have a great day.

Explore more stories from Danaher associates
April 17, 2025
Meaningful, Incremental Change in a Growing Market

When Dong Li, the Director of Clinical Affairs (CA) for Beckman Coulter China, left the United States and moved to Shanghai with his family, he was on a mission to build a top-notch clinical function to help Beckman Coulter China gain a competitive edge in the country’s In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) industry. With an increasing focus on collecting clinical evidence for both product registration and market access, Clinical Affairs has become the “gatekeeper” before vital diagnostic products go to market. The approval processes can be lengthy and complex, but Dong knows that the most effective change is incremental, and Danaher Business System (DBS) tools have been serving him well. Below, read about Dong’s leadership—which has now expanded to CA for several Danaher operating companies in China—how his team at Beckman improved the complex clinical study process with DBS tools, and his take on the future of CA in China, a market with massive global potential.

Tell us a bit about your role at Beckman and the larger impact the company is making.

I’m on a mission to build the clinical muscles for our business in China, so to speak. In the past five years, China has ramped up its regulations around IVD clinical research. The National Medical Products Administration (NMPA)—which is the equivalent of the FDA in the United States—wants to ensure the quality of all the medical products that come through China, which means very stringent inspections for companies running clinical studies here. My role is to build a strong, reliable, Clinical Affairs function that not only improves the clinical study execution—meaning delivering high-quality clinical projects on time and within budget—but also creates a competitive edge for our business through innovation.

Beckman has been working on a variety of products to make diagnostic testing more effective for critical issues like sepsis, tumors, and cardiac diseases. In 2020, we had several products successfully licensed in China, including assays for cardiac and infectious diseases. And we’ve engaged some of the top hospitals in China to run more innovative clinical research on diagnostic products to help doctors deal with healthcare challenges more efficiently and effectively.

Why did you join Beckman?

In China, we talk about three elements of success: the geographical advantage, the favorable climate, and the people. Essentially, that’s being in the right place at the right time with the right people. When I joined Beckman Coulter China in 2019, the timing and place were just right to start pushing high-quality clinical research in China. That left the right people, and once I met my future colleagues, I knew Danaher offered that, too.

I actually learned about Danaher back in business school. I’d always been intrigued by how DBS empowered a wide variety of businesses, and I wondered about its secrets. So I think that was the last piece of the puzzle that brought me back to China after 20 years living and working in the U.S. and Europe.

Tell us about some changes you’ve already implemented across Clinical Affairs.

One of the main metrics we use is on-time delivery (OTD) for our clinical trial cycle time; that’s a good surrogate for our products’ time-to-market. When I started, the number was in the single digits. Part of my mission was to improve the execution—to speed up the OTD while maintaining quality and keeping an eye on the budget. We used DBS and kaizens—weeklong sessions where we work though specific problems—to make a series of incremental changes to improve this metric. We also worked closely with our vendors and our clinical research laboratories, and now our OTD is at 100%.

We also used a kaizen to create a formalized process for integrating the China requirements into the early stages of product design. The requirements in China are different from the U.S. or Europe, so this kind of review will have a huge impact in terms of getting our products to the Chinese market. Instead of having to backtrack later, we’re building in the China requirements from the beginning, which makes developing the clinical study protocol more effective.

Tell us about some opportunities for innovation at Beckman.

When it comes to innovation, people often refer to technologies and products, but innovation can also happen elsewhere. In the clinical research field, this is especially true for process innovation. We’re currently trying to reduce our clinical evaluation timeline by 50% without impacting the project budget and quality.

Of course, advancing technology is also critical to helping us achieve our innovation goals. For example, digitization in IVD clinical research in China is relatively behind, but we’re catching up. This year, we’ve started several digitization efforts across our team, including an electronic data-capturing system in our clinical trials and a new clinical trial management system to help us digitize our paper-based documents. Our statisticians and data scientists are also investigating opportunities in Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms with our clinical data.

What kind of team are you excited to build?

The word that comes to my mind is bamboo because it has attributes that a great team carries—it’s flexible, resilient, and grows quickly. The regulatory environment for IVD clinical research in China is extremely dynamic; in terms of requirements, cost, and timelines, it’s very different than even five years ago. And because this trend will probably continue in the next decade, a flexible and adaptive mindset is the key to staying competitive in this market.

In terms of resilience, IVD clinical research in China can be very complex and nerve-wracking. Our team needs a strong support system—with DBS as our foundation—so we can deliver under pressure.

And we also need to grow quickly, just like bamboo does—and just like our industry. We have a narrow window of opportunity to develop and grow a leading-edge clinical research function to catch up to the drastic growth of China’s IVD industry, so it’s especially exciting that in 2020 our Clinical Affairs team doubled in size.

What does the future hold for your team?

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m certain of the demand for clinical-based research in China’s IVD industry. So we’re looking at all kinds of ways to innovate to meet that demand, from global multi-center trials and real-world evidence studies to overseas clinical data and the digitization efforts I mentioned.

How do we prepare and get ready for what comes next? One thing we’ve been advocating for in the Clinical Affairs team is the concept of a “learning institute.” Essentially, we’d like to create a learning environment similar to an MBA program within our team, where team members with diverse industry and educational backgrounds can share knowledge and ideas, with a good mix of hands-on work and classroom training.

I’m also sure that a varied diverse talent pool will empower our learning institute; the more diverse our team, the greater it to becomes as a source of innovation, where creative thoughts can clash and spark. I really believe that diversity and inclusion should be our core competency—the solution to current and future challenges. I hope that a diverse A more inclusive Clinical Affairs function will not only bring a competitive advantage to the Beckman China business but also create value for each of our associates in the future.”

Interested in joining Dong and the rest of the Beckman Coulter team? Check out open roles across Danaher or join our talent community today.

October 5, 2023