Brice Baars ’12 Quality Operations Technical Associate Pfizer Inc.

When people swallow prescription pills or over-the-counter medications, they want to know what they’re taking is safe.

That’s why chemist Brice Baars ’12 spends his workdays inside Pfizer Inc.’s manufacturing plant in Kalamazoo, Mich., testing the active ingredients used to make drugs.

Baars is a Quality Operations Technical Associate for Pfizer, and he uses a method called gas chromatography to test ingredients to ensure they meet rigorous specifications. This ensures that the final product meets the highest quality and safety standards.

The work takes place inside a 1,500-acre facility, the largest Pfizer manufacturing plant for drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients in the world.

“It’s really fast paced,” said Baars, whose laboratory handles all the testing at the plant. “I’ll get something I need to test in two hours, or four hours or eight hours, depending on when we need to get results. So I have a limited amount of time to do it, and I like that aspect.”

Baars started out as a pharmacy major, obtaining a Bachelors of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Toledo in 2008. But after working for three years as a pharmacy technician at Crary Drug Pharmacy in Temperance, Mich., all while attending school, Baars decided the field wasn’t for him.

“I dealt a lot with insurance companies and spent a lot of time on the phone dealing with third parties,” Baars said. “I really wasn’t interested in that.”

One aspect of the job did appeal to him though. Baars loved making special pharmaceutical formulas, usually in the form of creams or injectable medicine, for infants and people with sensitivities who can’t take regular pills. In fact, he even helped set up a specialty lab for compounding medicines at the Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy in his home-town of Grand Rapids during the summer of 2009.

Baars realized what he enjoyed most was the chemistry side of pharmaceutical work.

So Baars applied to Bowling Green State University to obtain a Master of Science in Chemistry, with a specialization in photochemical sciences. His research included finding ways to detect explosives such as landmines and TNT using photochemistry. Baars acknowledged BGSU chemistry professor, Dr. Thomas Kinstle, as a key mentor.

Shortly after graduating from BGSU, Baars landed a job as a contract worker at Pfizer through specialty staffing agency Aerotek Scientific. He worked as a contractor for five months, testing pharmaceutical ingredients for impurities and heavy metals, before getting a permanent position at Pfizer.

Baars said having a master’s degree definitely helped him find a job quickly.

“Employers appreciate education,” Baars noted. “Nowadays you have to have at least a bachelor’s to get a job, so this made me stick out a little more.”

The chemist recommended the science and pharmaceutical fields to other students debating what career to pursue.

“The pharmaceutical industry is always going to be there,” Baars indicated. “You think of the baby boomers - all our parents that had kids at the same time - they’ll all be retiring, and the older you get the more likely you take prescriptions. This is a pretty safe industry to get into.”