About 80% of high-functioning, college-educated autistic adults face unemployment.
A new program, NeuroPIPES (Neurodiversity Pipelines In bioPharmaceutical Employment through Supports), is combating this statistic by training neurodiverse talent and offering them a space to showcase their capabilities. The 6-month program is a workforce/career pipeline for neurodivergent students to learn the hard and soft skills required to be successful in a biomanufacturing technician role.
“The participants in the first cohort of the NeuroPIPES are nothing short of amazing,” said Dr. Baley Reeves, director of the National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing (NCTM). “They are thriving in the program, and I see incredible potential in each.”
The NeuroPIPES program is the newest addition to the NCTM’s catalog. The center also offers internationally recognized training programs that cover many bioprocessing areas, including recombinant proteins, gene therapies and nucleic acid products.
“As biomanufacturing talent pipelines struggle to keep up with the demand for skilled workers, it seems like a no-brainer to solve the workforce shortage problems in this field while simultaneously helping the unemployment problems high-functioning autistic adults face,” said Reeves.
NeuroPIPES leverages inherent characteristics of neurodiverse populations, such as hyperfocus, attention to detail, thriving on routines, a sense of responsibility and preference for structure. These traits are extremely valuable, especially in highly regulated environments like biomanufacturing.
“Biomanufacturing is perfect for autistic people in my opinion because we really like procedure, we really like regulation, measurements, the exactness of it all,” said Tye-Rhine Garcia, a participant in the program. “There are tons of fields like this.”
Students in the program are taught soft skills, focused on professional work environments, through the University of California, Los Angeles-based PEERS® for Careers program. The students then transition to learning hard skills through NCTM’s Advanced Certificate in Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing.
“I got to learn social skills in a solid way, where they actually explained why we have to do all these,” said Tigerlily Eckleund. “I can finally be hands-on. It’s not just piles of paperwork and tests. It was like we succeeded at real science. They treat me like a real human being here, and I never realized how much of an impact that has.”
At the end of the program, participants are guaranteed interviews with industry partners, such as Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, who have committed to implementing neuroinclusive best practices at their companies. In addition to these partnerships, a disability staffing agency called Rangam, and Link, an occupational therapy company, have come alongside to create and deploy neurodiversity training programs running at the participating industry partner sites.
Several of the students from the first group have already received job offers.
“Most neurodivergent people want to fit in and do ‘what’s expected,’ but sometimes they just need to be explicitly taught what that looks like,” said Reeves. “We wanted to be proactive about teaching soft skills so they can be successful in the interview process and ultimately in a professional work environment.”
NeuroPIPES also has the potential to expand into other industries, creating pathways to meaningful employment for neurodiverse individuals regardless of their career interests. This program aims to redefine what ability and neurodiversity look like in the workplace.
“If we adequately equip people for the roles you’re trying to place them in, you would be amazed at what this population can do,” said Reeves.
This work was supported by the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Funding for this research is administered by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), the official research agency for Texas A&M Engineering.