Tag Archives: career paths

What did your job search teach you?

Posted on by

Don’t feel frustrated. You have many fabulous career options.

Most PhD students and postdocs working today will not go on to head their own labs. With little infrastructure to guide them to the next stage, young scientists are inventing it themselves.

A year ago, we launched an interview series that looks at how PhDs and postdocs found ways out of the lab and into satisfying careers. We’ve spoken to people who work in regulatory affairs, technology transfer, business development, management consulting, science outreach and philanthropy, just to name a few. And we are eager for more stories to share. See below if you’d like to volunteer.

{credit}Image credit: Venimo{/credit}

Continue reading →

Five career tips from Ripley Ballou

Posted on by

We sat down with Rip at the Naturejobs career expo, Boston, to talk about his career and the advice he would give to other scientists starting theirs.

Rip’s had an interesting life; he started his career as a researcher at the US army’s Walter Reed Institute of Research, where he once exposed himself to malarial mosquitoes in a bid to see if his malarial vaccine worked. It didn’t, and that experience has motivated him in his career ever since. He’s now the head of US vaccines at GSK.

Here’s a word art graphic of five points from Rip’s talk, by Jacopo Sacquegno.

Sketch_5Tips_tweet_NJCE-smaller

{credit}jacopo sacquegno{/credit}

Continue reading →

So you want to be a data scientist (again)?

Posted on by

Put your natural science skills to work in a data science career

Guest contributor Daniel Harris of SoftwareAdvice.com

The explosive economic impact of big data has blurred the line between the business world and the scientific world like never before. A new type of business leader, the data scientist, has evolved as an amphibian, capable of thriving in both worlds, swimming in data lakes to bring useful insights back to the solid ground of business concerns.

Of course, companies have been using business intelligence (BI) tools to analyse their operational and financial performance metrics for decades.

But datasets generated by the web are so large that they must be stored on clusters of servers with thousands of nodes. Traditional methods for analysing these datasets have faltered, necessitating a more scientific approach.

Continue reading →

Failing to fail gracefully

Posted on by

Failure is hard, but keep trying, says John Tregoning (who should follow his own advice occasionally).

Guest contributor John Tregoning

Advice: easier to give than to follow

This time last year, I wrote ten strategies to improve mental health in academic life. I think they’re worth reading, if you haven’t already. You’d think that having given all this advice, I would have followed it, and maintained a Zen-like calm. Not so.

John Tregoning

John Tregoning

In the last year I have allowed failure (and the prospect of failure) to define my mood, compared my progress with researchers several leagues above me and found myself wanting, got too obsessed with work to appreciate anything else, taken on more than I can manage, unsuccessfully disguised my jealousy about colleagues’ success, taken criticism as a personal attack, and not spoken to anyone about what was going on in my head.

Whilst reflecting on my inability to follow my own advice, this year I wanted to come up with something that I could follow to improve my own mental health. Then I had (another) grant bounce and realised that, for me, the major contributor to mental health issues in academia is failure. Yes, failure is relative and, yes, there are clearly bigger problems in the world. But in that bitter moment of rejection it’s hard to step back and see that. Continue reading →

Research in industry: A great career choice

Posted on by

Albert Isidro-Llobet always wanted to be an academic. Now he works for GSK. Here he shares his story.

Guest contributor Albert Isidro-Llobet

I joined the R&D division of GSK as an organic and medicinal chemist in 2012. Before that, I completed my PhD at the University of Barcelona and a 3-year postdoc at the University of Cambridge. After my undergraduate degree, I decided to work in organic and medicinal chemistry to contribute to the synthesis of new medicines. Eventually, I wanted to become a Principal Investigator (PI) in academia and it seemed to me that the best course would be pursuing a second academic postdoc.

Albert in his lab

Albert in his lab

Continue reading →

Naturejobs monthly roundup – April 2016

Posted on by

With one quarter of the year all over, and summer on its way, we run through your favourite posts last month.

First up this month is our ever-popular post on the value of Liebeth Aerts’ PhD, where she takes a look back one year after graduating.

Continue reading →

Women in physics: personal perspectives

Posted on by

Sarah-Jane Lonsdale speaks to two senior female scientists in industry about their career paths

Guest contributor Sarah-Jane Lonsdale

The Institute of Physics ran an event in November 2015 targeted at PhD students and early career researchers on “Taking Control of your Career as a Female Physicist”. After the event, I spoke with Dr Valerie Berryman-Bousquet, R&D Manager at SHARP Laboratories, and Dr Jenny Wooldridge, Associate Programme Manager at the National Physical Laboratory, about their career paths in industry. After our first discussion, we continued our conversation.

Sarah-Jane Lonsdale

Continue reading →

Most read on Naturejobs: March 2016

Posted on by

With one quarter of the year done already, we look back at your favourite posts from last month. We’ll get right to it.

Answering the most-feared interview question is high on everyone’s mind. Our guide to expressing your greatest weakness in a positive way is on the leader board as the most read piece on Naturejobs this month. Glad you liked it!

Chris Woolston talked us through the best make-up for a lab in group dynamics: a lab of their own in March. Your research group is important, and finding the right balance between different members of staff may just tip you into academic success. Continue reading →

Women in physics: personal perspectives

Posted on by

Following the IOP’s “Taking Control of your Career as a Female Physicist” event, Dame Professor Athene Donald and Professor Val Gibson spoke with Helen Cammack about their careers within academia.

Guest contributor Helen Cammack

In my last blog post, I discussed career progression, publishing and gender equality with Professors Donald and Gibson. Here, we continue our conversation.

 

Did you relocate often as a postdoc?

AD: I moved around – I had a postdoc in the States, then returned to Cambridge. But at that stage I wasn’t really thinking about a career, so I wasn’t that bothered about what happened next. I didn’t intend to be an academic, so the pressure wasn’t on me. Nowadays everyone has to be calculating and publish in the right journals, and the pressure can detract from that freedom.

VG: When I was in my early career, I was just enjoying the moment, and I wasn’t thinking about my future career. The postdocs of today seem to more aware about career opportunities; they know that the majority of them won’t stay in academia; they’re looking around for what they would like to do and they’re picking up the skills they need for the future. It’s not just the academic side, it’s also the personal aspects – they’re concerned about getting on the housing ladder and potentially having families. At that stage those concerns never crossed my mind.

Continue reading →

Women in science: Clogging the leaky pipeline

Posted on by

Karin Bodewits and Philipp Gramlich think we should stop actively persuading women to study life sciences – a field in which they face unique challenges.

Guest contributors Philipp Gramlich and Karen Bodewits

Philipp Gramlich and Karin Bodewits

 

Continue reading →