The start and the middle: beginning your PhD

Posted on 20 Feb 2017 by Jack Leeming

The initial stages of a PhD can be daunting. Fortunately, there are a few ways you can make the transition into productive doctoral study as smooth as possible.

Whether you’re starting a PhD fresh out of undergrad or after many years of employment, the decision to begin a doctorate is a significant career move. When I started, 18 months ago, I figured I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into: I’d previously worked in industry, completed a Master’s degree, and worked as a research assistant in another lab.

But I soon realized that my PhD was different — in a number of ways — from what I’d done before. Here are some things I’ve learnt so far, and some ways I‘ve made efficient use of my brief time as a PhD student.

Continue reading →

Finding job satisfaction in academic administration

Posted on 08 Jun 2016 by Jack Leeming

Being upfront about goals and creative about gaining experience can launch a career.

Elise Covic, now Deputy Dean of the College at the University of Chicago, entered academic administration even before she completed her PhD in computational neuroscience when she became director of an undergraduate research training program. She describes how she navigated her way from research and into a satisfying career in academic administration.

{credit}avi schwab{/credit}

What was your experience like in graduate school?

Graduate school was just a practical step for me; I was working as a research technician because I thought that was what I thought I should do fresh out of college with a biology degree. As grad students rotated through the labs, I learned their stipend was about the same amount as my salary. Why not get a PhD for work you enjoy doing? It’s the one point in your life when you can focus on something that you love and can be completely creative and know a microcosm that no one else knows as in depth as you do. Continue reading →

The faculty series: Top 10 tips on managing your time as a PI

Posted on 25 Jan 2016 by Jack Leeming

Good lab organisation is the best way to keep your research output up, and your stress levels down.

Becoming a new faculty member is, as we’ve discussed in this series, hard. You have to demonstrate a cornucopia of scientific, interpersonal, organisational and management skills, and plan out high-level research regularly. Good science is the ultimate goal of this, and for your lab to produce good science, you have to make sure that all of the cogs in your research machine are turning smoothly.

With that in mind, here are ten tips that will help your lab stay organised, so you can focus on the research. That’s why you’re in academia, after all.

1. Keep a detailed calendar and stick to it
A good calendar will be the single most important thing to you when it comes to time management – keep it updated regularly, and share it with your colleagues so they know your availability. If you want some time for ‘open’ work – reading or writing or data analysis – make sure to schedule this on your calendar as well.

2. Standardise every group member’s output
Make templates for documents like progress or experiment reports, and encourage the entire lab to use them. It may take you a while initially, but it will save everyone in your lab a lot of time once they’re all working off of the same documents.

3. Use a shared, organised filing system
Instead of everyone shooting emails back and forth asking for this or that piece of information, encourage your lab to use a shared filing system that everyone knows how to use. Keeping it organised is just as important as actually having the system in place, so spend some time working out the best way to structure everything with your lab members. Continue reading →

Sign up to our new Twitter feeds to get the latest jobs and news

Posted on 18 Mar 2011 by Rachel Bowden

As part of our efforts to make naturejobs.com more useful to jobseekers and employers, we’ve expanded our range of Twitter feeds. Our main feed, naturejobs</a>, will now feature the latest science careers news and features from across Nature's publications and further afield instead of new jobs. We'll also tweet occasionally about upcoming special features for employers. To get the latest jobs, follow one of our new automatic jobs feeds - either <a href="https://twitter.com/naturejobs_feed">naturejobs_feed for all of our science vacancies (you’ll get a lot of tweets from this feed) or one of the more targeted feeds from the list below.

We’ve chosen the feeds based on what jobs you search for on our site, plus Nature‘s main content areas – if you think we’ve missed something, either leave a comment below or tweet @naturejobs and we’ll look into it. We did the best we could with the feed names – I’ve included an explanation below if they’re not immediately clear. One or two of the feeds might not have any tweets yet, but we should get new vacancies in those areas soon.

We hope you find them useful – and good luck with your job search.

Content feed

@naturejobs – latest science careers news and features from across Nature and further afield

Automatic jobs feeds

@naturejobs_feed – all science jobs

Job type

graduates_jobs</a>

<a href="https://twitter.com/phd_jobs">phd_jobs

postdoc_jobs</a>

<a href="https://twitter.com/techniciansjobs">techniciansjobs

lab_tech_jobs</a> - laboratory technician jobs

<a href="https://twitter.com/researcher_jobs">researcher_jobs