Vertex Summer Intern 2026, Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology

Vertex Inc.•Boston, MA

21d•$33 - $50•Hybrid

About The Position

Kickstart Your Career at Vertex! Are you ready to make a real impact? At Vertex, our mission is to tackle serious diseases and to change lives, for the better, for the future. Our aim is to give you the skills, insights, and career guidance to be an important part of that future; to turn your potential into progression. As a Vertex intern or co-op, you’ll work on meaningful projects, collaborate with talented teams, and learn from industry leaders. We’re passionate about innovation, inclusion, and supporting your growth—inside and outside the lab. The Vertex Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology internship program is a multi-week experiential training program for students currently working towards a Doctoral degree in pharmacology or PharmD, or a related field of study. If you are passionate, collaborative, and growth-minded, an internship at Vertex will help you gain meaningful experience in our research functional areas and serve as a launchpad for your career. The Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology (CQP) department at Vertex leads clinical pharmacology and clinical modeling & simulation efforts across all disease areas and clinical phases of drug development. There will be two CQP summer internship positions available with the opportunity to work with experienced mentors within CQP. A Vertex CQP summer internship will provide a 12-week hands-on opportunity to experience some of the elements of CQP within drug development. During the 12-week appointment, the summer intern will also be exposed to various aspects of the drug development process and thereby gain a view into how the CQP functions fit within broader cross-functional drug development teams that often include preclinical disciplines, clinical development, clinical operations, bioanalysis, biostatistics, and more. Not only will interns learn about their day-to-day responsibilities, but they will interact with scientists from various levels, and with organizational leaders and their teams through a series of Professional Development Workshops that are provided during the summer.

Requirements

Enrolled in a PhD or PharmD program in pharmacology, or a related field of study by Fall 2025.
Communicate clearly through verbal and written communication
Understanding of drug metabolism, PK, and PK/PD principles
Legal authorization to work in the United States, now and in the future.
You must be available to work full-time, 40 hours per week from May – August 2026

Nice To Haves

Knowledge of protein therapeutics preferred
Quantitative and hands-on skills preferred: PK and/or PK/PD analyses
Experience with data analysis tools such as R, Phoenix WinNonlin, NONMEM or other programming/software applications
Prior industry experience preferred but not required

Responsibilities

Based on the project, an intern may participate in numerous activities, such as design and conduct of clinical pharmacology studies (e.g., first-in-human, drug interaction, food effect, special populations, ADME), or exploration of drug pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) relationships and related analyses (e.g. population PK or other advanced modeling).
Activities the successful candidate may be involved in include literature research, drafting and reviewing clinical study protocols, reviewing clinical study report sections, creating analysis plans, learning to manipulate and create clinical analysis-ready datasets, build and evaluate models, execute analyses, and prepare informative outputs, graphics, and results representations.
Research literature, published studies, and regulatory guidance
Learn to work with and manipulate clinical data and data constructs
Analyses of data collected from literature or clinical trial PK and/or PK/PD data in NONMEM, R and/or related software
Summarize the main findings
Prepare presentation(s) for various internal forums