This week’s blog was written by our Administrative Officer, William May.
October marked Will’s one year work anniversary at Beacon.
In this blog, Will shares how he has found his first year!


When I think about my first year at Beacon the main thing that comes to mind is how quickly it has flown by.
Just over a year ago I had relatively no knowledge of the rare disease world and drug repurposing. It has been incredibly interesting and rewarding to learn about and meet some of the incredible patient groups at events and how they support their individual communities.
I have found it eye opening to learn about the rare disease community and the struggles that they are presented with on a daily basis. It is truly inspiring to see the energy and the passion that they have to overcome these challenges and support others.


It has been a pleasure to work at Beacon and this has mainly been due to the team.
Everyone has a friendly and supportive demeanour which really adds up to create a great working environment. This has made it more like working with a group of friends rather than just colleagues and means that you want to make the effort to work in the office and see everyone rather than just staying at home.
Being able to attend conferences and events has been amazing and produced some of my favourite moments over the past year.
Whether it has been an external event or one that was run by us they have all been extremely informative and a great way to meet the community. No matter if it is patient groups, academics or industry giving talks, they have always been interesting and insightful.
The best event that I have been to this year has to be the Curriculum Setting Meeting that we ran as part of the REMEDi4ALL consortium. This was the first time I got to meet many of the people on the project in person.
This was also a critical event in our year for one of our sections of the project for creating a drug repurposing curriculum. This event was where I have learned the most about the drug repurposing pathway, the current obstacles to drug repurposing and how to overcome them.

Thank you, Will for sharing your blog on your first year at Beacon with us!
We hope you enjoyed reading about what Will has been getting up to during his first year.