As the world held its breath, Oregon State alumnus Steve Bjornson (microbiology, '96) waited for results. It had been an unprecedented effort — eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, all cylinders firing for months. With New York City’s highways deserted and cadaver trucks lining hospital lots, the need for a COVID-19 vaccine was more desperate than ever. Bjornson especially felt that pressure as the vice president and chief operating officer of Pfizer’s vaccine research and development organization.
Then, in November 2020, the company’s Phase 3 trial results came in. When the vaccine not only succeeded but provided a level of protection he never imagined, Bjornson was overwhelmed with relief.
“When we got the results that the vaccine actually worked … I just cried,” he said. The moment has become one of the most cherished of his career. “So much effort had gone into it and so much was counting on us. The world was counting on us.”
Since graduating as a microbiology major in 1996, Bjornson has touched the lives of millions around the globe. Viruses are constantly evolving to be stronger and smarter, but thanks to scientists like him, so are we.
The path to the pandemic
Bjornson’s path to his career began in a much smaller, quieter environment: growing up in Alaska. Life above the Arctic Circle was one of adaptability. He and his family moved from village to village, unafraid of packing their things, settling and then doing it all over again.
“You go where the opportunities lead you,” he said, a motto that has guided his career ever since.
It was that mindset that brought him to Corvallis. Although he started his undergraduate studies in his home state, the strength of Oregon State’s science departments drew him to don orange and black in his junior year. His aspirations of going to medical school and becoming a physician led him to major in microbiology so he could focus on human health. While his career plans may have changed after graduation, what he gained as a student was crucial to his later success.
“Oregon State and the microbiology degree ended up being the perfect platform for me to build a career that I've grown to love,” he said.
“You have the ability to develop medicines and vaccines that have an impact on millions and billions of people globally.”
His major was immediately put to use in his first job out of college, working in biopharmaceutical manufacturing in Los Angeles. Biopharmaceuticals, as he explains, are a broad category of medicines derived from cells or organisms. Bjornson gravitated toward the scale of the work and how many people it could help.
“You have the ability to develop medicines and vaccines that have an impact on millions and billions of people globally, while still keeping hands on the science,” he said.
Certain this was the field for him, he went to business school at Cornell University before joining Wyeth, a pharmaceutical company. His new degree meant he could take a leadership-focused role in the organization and make business decisions such as research investments and global collaboration involvement. For the next six years, he grew his career working within the discovery research organization to advance therapeutics in oncology as well as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Wyeth was later acquired by Pfizer, and that was when he first joined the vaccine R&D team. However, Bjornson wasn’t done following opportunities.
He moved to a company called MedImmune, part of AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, and ran the organization’s business operations for another five years. He would have stayed had it not been for a fateful call from Pfizer’s head of vaccine R&D, who encouraged him to return to the organization as VP and COO and lead a team of hundreds of scientists.
It was a chance he couldn’t pass up. So, once again, he packed his things and moved forward, unaware of the global crisis creeping up the horizon nor the role he’d soon play.
With the whole world watching
In its height, the pandemic touched nearly every part of Bjornson’s life. He still remembers the eerie stillness it brought to his daily commute to Pfizer’s Pearl River campus. The campus sits outside New York City, a place gripped intensely by COVID-19. For the first time, he was one of a few cars rolling down the city’s highways, a grim reminder of what was at stake.
Making sure the R&D team could advance the vaccine while working in a safe environment was Bjornson’s top priority.
“My job was to keep our hundreds and hundreds of staff motivated to come into work, keep their heads down and stay focused,” he recalled. Under his leadership, they carefully worked beyond their usual schedules to save lives. “It was all hands on deck and it was the highlight of my career to be a participant in Pfizer’s response to the pandemic.”
After months of long, hard work entrenched in global fear, the news they’d strived for finally came. Hope concentrated into a few droplets. A vaccine that worked.
“It was truly remarkable. To see what the organization can do when everybody puts their mind to it was just amazing,” Bjornson said.
“Institutions like Oregon State that have really strong, robust scientific cores are so critical. We need to continue to be able to tell the stories about all the things that science opens the door for.”
Now, four years since the start of the pandemic, he still finds many lessons to take from it. Although vaccines were crucial in the fight against COVID-19, the rise in voices doubting their importance and that of science as a whole has made him increasingly concerned.
“There have been more and more questions around the credibility of science and the role that science plays, and I think that's not in the interest of the world,” he said. “That's why institutions like Oregon State that have really strong, robust scientific cores are so critical. We need to continue to be able to tell the stories about all the things that science opens the door for. And where there's skepticism, we need to be able to have open-minded, fact-based conversations.”
The challenges of Bjornson’s work haven’t deterred him from pushing ahead. Finding optimism comes easier knowing that what you do saves lives, he says. When the world is on his team’s shoulders, it’s reminders like this that help them stand tall.
“My kids ask me, ‘What do you do, Dad?’ And I can explain it to them. The pride I see in their eyes, that's amazing,” he said. “I do it for them. I do it for me. And that's why we go through all this — It is hard work, but definitely fulfilling.”
