2025 R&D Process Engineering Intern - AbbVie

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines and solutions that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas – immunology, oncology, neuroscience, and eye care – and products and services in our Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. 

2025 R&D Process Engineering Internship Overview

Envision spending your summer working with energetic colleagues and inspirational leaders, all while gaining world-class experience in one of the most dynamic organizations in the pharmaceutical industry. This is a reality for AbbVie Interns.

In this role, the intern will work in the R&D Process Engineering group within Development Sciences, specifically on the assessment and development of a variety of process technologies for long acting injectables of small molecules. The core deliverable of R&D Process Engineering is to develop robust processes to manufacture small molecule Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API), ADCs, toxins, CAIs, and drug products utilizing strong engineering fundamentals. The ideal candidate will have background in one or more areas including long-acting injectable process development, crystalline nanosuspensions, crystallization fundamentals, and crystallization process development. The intern will work closely with process engineers, process chemists, solid state chemists, program managers, and analytical chemists to most effectively explore process development of long-acting injectables. The intern will help explore and develop novel technologies and processing methods to achieve suitable nanosuspensions or related LAI technologies.

Key responsibilities include:

• Perform laboratory experiments and process modeling as needed to support process understanding and optimization.
• Address challenging problems with crystalline nanosuspension process development using expertise in thermodynamics, crystallization fundamentals, transport phenomena, and mathematical modeling.
• Author and/or review technical documents summarizing process development efforts.
• Exhibit a collaborative nature in identifying process challenges and communicate findings and recommendations effectively by multi-disciplinary interactions with organic chemists, analytical chemists, process development engineers, pilot plant engineers, drug product development scientists, program managers, and regulatory affairs specialists. 

This internship will be based in North Chicago, IL.

Minimum Qualifications 

• Currently enrolled in university, pursuing a PhD in chemical engineering or other related field.
• Must be enrolled in university for at least one semester following the internship.

Preferred Qualifications

• Expected graduation date between December 2025 – July 2026.
• Prior experience in long-acting injectable formulations and process development.
• Experience in small molecule crystallization.
• Familiarity with operation of chemical/biochemical process equipment and systems. 
• Working knowledge of analytical techniques such as HPLC, PXRD, TGA/DSC, and microscopy as well as process analytical technologies such as FBRM, EasyViewer, Blaze, ReactIR, and ReactRaman.  

Benefits and Amenities

• Competitive pay.
• Relocation support for eligible students.
• Select wellness benefits and paid holiday / sick time.

Equal Employment Opportunity
At AbbVie, we value bringing together individuals from diverse backgrounds to develop new and innovative solutions for patients. As an equal opportunity employer we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, protected veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.

Applicable only to applicants applying to a position in any location with pay disclosure requirements under state or local law: ​

• The compensation range described below is the range of possible base pay compensation that the Company believes in good faith it will pay for this role at the time of this posting based on the job grade for this position. Individual compensation paid within this range will depend on many factors including geographic location, and we may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future.​

Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, incentive, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains in the Company's sole and absolute discretion unless and until paid and may be modified at the Company’s sole and absolute discretion, consistent with applicable law. ​

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AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to operating with integrity, driving innovation, transforming lives, serving our community and embracing diversity and inclusion.  It is AbbVie’s policy to employ qualified persons of the greatest ability without discrimination against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, status as a protected veteran, or any other legally protected group status.

US & Puerto Rico only - to learn more, visit https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/equal-employment-opportunity-employer.html 

US & Puerto Rico applicants seeking a reasonable accommodation, click here to learn more:

https://www.abbvie.com/join-us/reasonable-accommodations.html