I’ve already written about how PhDs can prepare for and decide whether or not they should pursue a postdoc. Here, I will discuss what more universities and funding agencies should be doing as stakeholders in training and employing researchers. Read more
You are coming towards the end of your PhD – so what next? There are many options open to you; one obvious one is to apply for a postdoc position. You should think carefully about what you want to do and not just pursue this through inertia. I have supervised many engineering PhDs and some postdocs in my 32 years as an academic. As Head of University College London’s Doctoral School, I oversee the environment and policy for 6000 doctoral candidates and 3200 postdocs. Read more
Let’s face it. Job prospects for PhD candidates and postdoctoral scientists are dismal. In 2012, a study on the biomedical research workforce, conducted by the National Institutes of Health and pictorialized by the American Society for Cell Biology, showed that there is a significant number of biology PhDs in the US who have resorted to doing non-science jobs. Those who stay in science face financial penalties: one 2017 Nature Biotechnology study demonstrated postdocs, on average, forfeit 20% of their earning potential within the first 15 years of completing their PhD program. Read more
“Science is a multifaceted and large enterprise, and there are lots and lots of very interesting ways to contribute to science” said Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, lab leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and joint winner of the 2009 Chemistry Nobel, at the 11th annual Naturejobs London Career Expo on Oct 4th 2017. Read more
If you’re like me, you entered university with a plan: to follow a career path that many had followed before. This is common, because school trains us to follow directions. Earning a degree involves predefined steps: … Read more
I recently had the pleasure of joining the 67th Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting at Lake Constance in the south of Germany. The weeklong meeting alternates its main focus between chemistry, physics, and medicine & physiology each year — the three categories of natural sciences the Nobel Prizes are awarded for. This year the focus was back on chemistry, and I was lucky enough to be invited by the organisers to cover the event on their blog. Read more
Good management can make an enormous difference in the success and productivity of any team. Unfortunately, new managers are rarely chosen because they have demonstrated skill at managing people. After 10-15 years of training, many scientists will be expected to run an academic lab or manage a team outside of academia with little experience and almost certainly no formal training. The kind of smarts and the types of skills that it takes to be a good scientist are not the same ones it takes to be a competent manager (much less a really good one). While getting your PhD or doing a postdoc, few science trainees have opportunities to work on their emotional intelligence or to hone their delegation skills. Read more
A recent cancer research symposium displayed a familiar asymmetry. 90% of the attendees were PhD students or postdocs sitting obsequiously in the rear and asking 10% of the questions. 10% of the attendees were front-sitting faculty providing 90% of the inquiries. Read more
In this podcast we hear from Burcu Anil Kirmizitas, who describes the struggle to find affordable housing for her and her family in three of the world’s most expensive cities. We also hear from Ibukun Akinrinade, a neuroscience PhD student at the Gulbenkian Institute of Science in Oerias, Portugal. Ibukun needed to access training that was not available in her home country of Nigeria and had to leave her husband and young son behind. This month’s career expert is James Gould, Director for the Office for Postdoctoral Fellows at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine. James answers a question about transferable skills from Simon Peyda, a research assistant at the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Submit your question to the Naturejobs editor here. Read more