HHP Alumni Profile: Attila Kiraly

East Carolina University and BS Public Health alumnus, Attila Kiraly, now calls Zug, Switzerland, home. As a European native, Kiraly attended ECU on a full athletic scholarship in swimming and diving. During his time at ECU, Attila studied public health and received his BS in December of 2014. 

Prior to graduation, Kiraly was a hospital intern at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville. He continued to work and serve at Vidant until August of 2015. In September, Kiraly returned to Europe and began working as a Drug Safety Associate in Budapest, Hungary, for an AstraZeneca Project.  

In 2017, Kiraly began a new role as a Senior Pharmacovigilance for the company, Prime Vigilance, and worked on a Biogen Project in Guildford, United Kingdom. In this role, Kiraly managed the individual case study reports, performed quality control activities, completed reconciliations with vendors, performed database reconciliations, developed safety management plans and standard operating procedures, and triaged incoming cases. By October of 2017, Kiraly was working as a Regulatory Affairs Assistant for Johnson and Johnson in Budapest, Hungary. In this role, he oversaw the marketing authorization processes and supported the European-wide application process for the assigned accounts. Ensuring global database systems and monitoring the regulatory environment, while monitoring changes and gaps in data, were crucial in his role. 

In December of 2018, Kiraly began a new role as a Clinical Trial Assistant for the Icon Clinical Research Organization in Budapest. He provided administrative support to the clinical operations department and assisted in completing all required tasks in order to support the project and department goals. He also assisted teams with study-specific documentation and guidelines while also ensuring compliance for both internal and external audits and quality control.  

Kiraly’s experience as a clinical trial assistant paved the way for his next role as clinical research associate, a role in which he began in May of 2020 for company known as IQVIA in Budapest, Hungary. IQVIA is a world leader in using data, technology, advanced analytics and human expertise to help customers drive healthcare — and human health — forward. Kiraly’s day-to-day operations included managing the site initiation and site close-out visits, ensuring accuracy of study procedures and protocol compliance, assisting with supply logistics, completing site reports, optimizing research sites, developing relationships with the investigators at the research sites and reporting to the central and local Independent Ethics Committees.  

In July of 2021, Kiraly became a site manager for Janssen Pharma through ICON-DOCS in Hungary. Throughout this role, he served as the primary local company contact for the assigned sites for specific trials related to oncology and infectiology. Similar to his previous role, Kiraly oversaw many of the administrative sides to the research trials and ensured proper data collection procedures and site quality assurance.  

Today, Kiraly serves as a clinical research association for the Arena Pharmaceutical Development group in Zug, Switzerland. He is responsible for ensuring all clinical operations for the assigned studies in the Arena are conducted under proper protocol, country and GCP regulations, and in accordance with internal processes. He assists in the writing of clinical documents and study execution plans, while ensuring activities comply with the applicable company requirements and that studies are in line with completion benchmarks and trial goals. Attila also is responsible for maintaining relationships with vendors and ensuring team trainings are completed to ensure excellent quality control.

Attila Kiraly shared, “I would say my ECU experience was one of the most influential experiences in my life, as I came from a small European country to be a student-athlete with a 100 percent athletic scholarship. ECU basically opened the word to me. It taught me to be brave and outgoing, be comfortable outside my comfort zone and how to deal with multicultural environments and how to adapt to different situations in life. Since ECU, my life is continuously developing to a higher level and giving me more and more challenges that I can complete and evolve professionally and personally.” 

His advice for current students? “Really appreciate and seize the opportunity that you can be part of this amazing family. This way, you will prepare yourselves for future success, which of course is not going to fall into your hands. You have to work for it. But, being prepared by ECU will help you reach your goals.”