<p>I'm just wondering do grad schools regard R and D on actual products the same as having publication, especially in the bio-related field. Does this kind of research count less than those purely academic ones?</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about having no publications. Few people coming into PhD programs do. If you have one it’s like the cherry on top, but not having any is not going to keep you out.</p>
<p>Whether R&D is regarded as highly depends much on your field and the program you are going into, as well as the field. In public health, applied/industry research is seen as pretty much equivalent and would be highly valued in an applicant - but that’s because a lot of our graduates go on to do applied-type work and our program is a very applied program anyway. In my secondary field (I’m a joint public health/psych PhD person), psychology, it wouldn’t be valued as highly because my psych department is a very traditional department with traditional research and most of their graduates go to academic careers. Even the “softest” social psych people here do mostly basic experimental work.</p>
<p>I’m going to guess that no place is going to view R&D work as “the same as having [a] publication,” since having a peer-reviewed publication in a science journal is quite different from developing a product. That’s not to say that some programs won’t value the R&D work, though - many of them will.</p>