Dan Cressey, a reporter at Nature, speaks about getting a job as a science journalist at the Naturejobs Career Expo, London, 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iilmmDHxgPY
Category Archives: #ScientistOnTheMove
It’s time to reduce the number of PhD students, or rethink how doctoral programs work
Gwilym Croucher, University of Melbourne
There are not enough academic jobs vacant in Australia each year to employ all our PhD graduates.
This imbalance risks training an increasing numbers of doctoral students on a promise that cannot be fulfilled: that is future academic employment.
We need to accept a hard truth that Australia needs to rethink the design of the PhD and the expectations around it, or radically reduce intake to doctoral programs. Continue reading
Away from Home: Marrying bioinformatics & benchwork
We’re bringing you the best stories in lab mobility from Nature India.
Today we feature Animesh Shukla, a biotechnologist from Meerut Institute of Engineering and Technology in Uttar Pradesh, India who went to Carnegie Mellon University and Indiana University of Bloomington in the USA for PhD. Animesh, who works as a scientist designing ELISA assay kits for Meso Scale Diagnostics now, says planning ahead of time for a postdoctoral career could open up several doors in the land of opportunities.
The biology dream
My school teacher Jessy Kuruvilla sparked my interest in biology. She used to explain the subject in such an interesting way that I still remember many things she taught us. I don’t remember much of any other subject. In high school I was interested in both biology and physics (specifically fluid dynamics). I never used to score really high marks in these subjects but had very good understanding of the basics.
I used to catch and collect live and dead insects or small animals and used to look at them. Some of my friends used to make fun of me (they still do) but that is what friends are for! Continue reading
The importance of broadening science communication
Though well-equipped with scientific training and expertise, scientists need to be aware of the resources available to help them share their work with a public audience, learns Aliyah Weinstein.
Recently, more and more emphasis has been put on scientists to communicate their research to public audiences. National scientific organizations such as the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the American Society for Cell Biology encourage their members to reach beyond the bench, and many blogs help scientists describe their research to wider audiences. At the University of Pittsburgh, where I’m working on my PhD, graduate student and postdoc organizations on campus share their excitement about science with the public through partnerships with local museums and school districts.
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Away from home: ‘Research not Nobel-driven’
We’re bringing you the best stories in lab mobility from Nature India.
Today’s blog comes from Arghya Basu, who wears many hats — that of a membrane protein researcher, an amateur photographer and a weekend hiking enthusiast. A doctorate from Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata, India, Arghya now lives his many passions working at the University of Alberta, Canada and says research might not always fetch you a Nobel but should be able to make life better for some.
Dad, my first science teacher
My father was my first science teacher. A banker by profession, he had an extraordinary skill to explain the world and all conceivable worldly acts in terms of science. I remember, as a kid I used to look forward to those hours when my father would come back from office and open my science books, be it the physical sciences or life sciences. The next few hours used to be magical. I always wanted to touch that magic. So, it was a no-brainer for me to choose science and scientific research as my future career quite early in my life. Continue reading
Thinking of a PhD? This is the Australian story
Advice for prospective PhD candidates focuses on career prospects in R&D, but more thought should be given to personal aspirations in life and work.
Research is fuelled by the energy of post-graduate students. PhD students contribute 57% of total university research output, according to a 2013 discussion paper from The Group of Eight Universities in Australia. In 2011 Nature published “The PhD factory,” which described the ongoing crisis caused by the oversupply of trained researchers and the inability of academia and industry to soak up the overflow.
Five of the Australia Telescope Compact Array antennas at Narrabri, New South Wales
Fast forward to 2016, and the PhD factories are just as productive, if not even more so. In the 2011 article, Dr Anne Carpenter at Harvard/MIT’s Broad Institute fought the system by hiring permanent staff scientists instead of the usual mix of postdocs and graduate students. She struggled to justify her high staff cost to grant-review panels. Continue reading
Loved minds think alike?
Dating for Scientists, New Scientist Connect and gk2gk are online dating sites that propose perfect matches for partners with scientific mind-sets. Is there a link between the background of one’s partner and success in scientific careers, asks Christina Morgenstern.
It’s been seven years, two months, 19 days, five hours and 37 minutes since I left the bench. I keep counting the hours and desperately try to hang on to my memories. Some days it feels like yesterday that I left PCR reactions, agarose gels, and my beloved mouse embryos behind.
Christina Morgenstern
But a lot of things have happened since then. After my PhD at University College, London, and four years at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute, I boarded a plane back home to Austria. All these years my husband worked in our home country, and commuted back and forth between Austria and London every other weekend. I decided that now it was time for me to return to Austria to be with him permanently. I knew my region of Austria — Carinthia — doesn’t have research infrastructure and so I was already planning on shifting from research to science communication. Continue reading
Lab quizzes, cake clubs and lunch dates
A Nature special issue last week examined the plight of young scientists. David Payne runs over the details.
Interviewees described the pressure to publish, secure funding and earn permanent positions, leaving little time for actual research.
The cluster of articles, along with a podcast and infographic, do propose some ways forward to improve the situation. For example, four researchers suggest ways of enabling scientists to pursue promising ideas, and three “agents of change” who have left the bench explain how they’re trying to improve junior researchers’ experiences.
Away from home: Getting the right exposure
We’re bringing you the latest stories in lab mobility from Nature India.
Today we hear from Anil Shukla, a PhD from the Department of Biotechnology, IIT Guwahati, who chose to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the National cancer Institute in USA to be able to get a world view of cancer research. Though he loves his work environment and research standards, he misses the warmth of Indian friendships and human relationships.
The “black box” effect in science communication
To counter sensationalist journalism and to bring the public closer to the realities of research, science communication must focus on the how and why of science, says Naturejobs journalism competition winner Lev Tankelevitch.
In July 2016 scientists found out how to map the brain into dozens of new areas using neuroimaging. We also discovered that thousands of such brain scanning studies may be flawed. To someone lacking insight into neuroscience, these two equally important studies can seem conflicting. Although “science communication” happens everywhere, science can still feel like a black box to the public, mysteriously churning out breakthroughs which are packaged and relayed by a barrage of tweets and headlines.
