Tag Archives: mobility

Finding job satisfaction in research development

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After finishing a PhD and postdoc in cardiovascular biology, Christina Papke found job satisfaction as a research development officer.

Now, she works at Texas A&M University in College Station, where she helps professors put together grant applications, form collaborations, and identify funding opportunities.

Tell me about your job.

It’s hard to say what a typical day is like, which I kind of like. On any given day, I might consult with an investigator about a research grant or edit a proposal.

Our goal is also to help promote collaboration among faculty. For example, we help to facilitate the formation of research interest groups, on, say, imaging or healthy ageing. We might organize a meeting where faculty get two minutes to present an overview of what they are doing, and we make program books and plan meetings to help make ideas happen.Papke_2016-02_CM_sml-r Continue reading →

Women in physics: personal perspectives

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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

Since I entered the third year of my PhD, my future career has been increasingly on my mind. I’ve been to a few careers events with stands full of free USB pens and glossy brochures, but always came away disappointed, unable to see myself in the roles they had advertised. The IOP’s careers event was different; there, people shared my aspirations and were sympathetic to my concerns. The opening talk by Prof Athene Donald was inspirational, and there was a variety of guest speakers who had used their physics training to build successful careers. I came away from the day with a new buzz, excited about my career possibilities.

 DSCF8031-small Continue reading →

How to beat the hidden discrimination at the heart of the job hunt

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Ronald McQuaid, University of Stirling

 

When you send off a CV to a prospective employer, you will hope to get a fair hearing. You will hope that your skills, experience and qualifications decide the response, rather than the school you went to, your post code, or even your name. Instinctively, though, we know that this isn’t always the case. Prime Minister David Cameron already has zeroed in on the issue of how applications from people with non-Anglo-Saxon or Celtic names are treated:

Do you know that in our country today: even if they have exactly the same qualifications, people with white-sounding names are nearly twice as likely to get call backs for jobs than people with ethnic-sounding names?

The UK civil service, and many major employers, have agreed to introduce application forms without the applicant’s name, in order to reduce the potential for discrimination. But how much does theory and evidence back this up? Continue reading →

#GYSS: Engaging in PhD research you truly care about

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Nobel laureates spoke at the Global Young Scientist Summit 2016. Andy Tay was there for Naturejobs.

Guest contributor Andy Tay

Congratulations! After investing so much effort to write your personal statement and research proposal, you’ve been accepted into a PhD programme. It’s now time to decide which lab to commit to.

Like most other PhD students, you may be eager to perform and steer your PhD in your direction. However, as your salary, tuition and research expenses are likely to come from the grants of your professor, this financial need might trap you in a research project that you’re not interested in. While PhD students in countries like Singapore and Australia are paid generous scholarships, their counterparts in the U.S. and European institutions typically rely on their professors for income. In all cases, PhD students still require their research expenditure to be covered by grants.Nobel laureates

 

Is there no way out?

After hearing – along with many other topics – about the role of micro-organisms in cancer, and the use of light for quantum computing, students present in the Global Young Scientist Summit 2016 voiced their concerns on PhD education during group sessions and panel discussions with 13 Nobel laureates.

A common worry was the lack of autonomy on research projects and the impact that has on scientific curiosity. The Nobel laureates, fortunately, had experienced advice to give. Continue reading →

The emotional side of leaving academia

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It took a lot for Virginia Schutte to set aside the feeling that she was wasting her PhD.

Guest contributor Virginia Schutte

I’m transitioning from a traditional academic career to one in science communication. There are many challenges that come with this shift, but I didn’t expect the process to be so emotionally difficult.

I left my academic career path in the best possible situation. I have a great relationship with my PhD advisor and everyone I talk to is encouraging when it comes to my new direction. But in my academic experience, changing position meant moving up, or at least adding something to my CV. Graduating and then immediately starting at the bottom of the ladder in a new career felt like I was moving backwards; I was convinced that I had disappointed the people who invested in me because I was “wasting” my PhD.DSC_0889-small

 

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6 networking questions to find the best employers

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Meeting someone at a conference isn’t enough – you have to be prepared to ask the right questions to find the right people.

Networking as a jobhunter – in a conference, careers fair, or anywhere else – can be really challenging. You’re under pressure to be pleasant and interesting company, and to sell yourself without seeming like that’s your only motive to talk to someone. If you manage that, how do you even know if you’re talking to the right person?

Of course, asking the questions is only half of the job – you have to listen carefully to the answers, encourage a two-way conversation (you’re not interviewing anyone) and give your own perspective. But the questions are a good start. So, here’s 6 questions that will help you network as a jobhunter, without sacrificing a good conversation.

 

“What do you do?”
It’s timeless – a classic – the Citizen Kane of networking questions. This is fairly self-explanatory, but generally finding out what someone does, who they work for, and how that can apply to you will the basis of the rest of your conversation. You have to start somewhere, and this is your best bet.

 

Continue reading →

Finding job satisfaction as a scientific project manager

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After completing a PhD and postdoc studying disease mechanisms behind epilepsy and autism, Dorothy Jones-Davis found job satisfaction as a scientific project manager working at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, where she coordinates projects on neuroimaging and Alzheimer’s Disease.

 

How does your scientific training help in your job?

My area of research was epilepsy and autism, so my specific research is not as applicable, but having a broad neuroscience background has served me. Even though I’m not at the bench, I still read neuroscience papers; I still understand science.

{credit}Dorothy Jones-Davis{/credit}

As for the intangible skills, some are leadership and some are organizational skills that you learn as you work your way through scientific training. I don’t think graduate students actually give themselves enough credit, but you are actually managing a project. My PhD was a portfolio of projects that I had strung together on a larger theme, and thinking about it that way, I am well equipped to be a project manager.

I think the fact that I did so much outside of my PhD and postdoc, such as mentoring, working with high school students and serving on university committees, helped me get a policy fellowship and the job I do now
Continue reading →

A Masterful decision

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Many universities now offer master’s programmes in science-related subjects. These can be a great springboard to a new career.

Guest contributor Simon Hazelwood-Smith

 

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Sequence Bundles: A new method of visually displaying sequence data developed by Science Practice, where Simon works

There have never been more ways to be employed in science. Today, science is communicated, critiqued, shaped, applied and incorporated into political decisions by a multitude of people who rarely – if ever – set foot in a laboratory. For the organisations that work in these areas, there are tangible benefits to have employees with scientific experience. However, knowing how, when, and if to make the move into these areas is often a challenge for many young scientists. Continue reading →

Taking control of your career as a female physicist

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The Institute of Physics recently held an event on ‘Taking control of your career as a female physicist’. Naturejobs sent Jack Leeming to find out more.

Late, I sneak into the back of a room on the 4th floor of a conference centre in central London, where 70 young female physicists are listening to Professor Dame Athene Donald speak. I try not129692-compressor (2) to break their concentration as I find a chair. Professor Donald is relaxed and passionate, and manages to condense her advice – put into context through deeply personal, humorous anecdotes – into ten simple points to live by. Donald has had a hugely successful career (though, she admits, she is still embarrassed when people say it), making her way through the physics of metals and polymers, then the physics of food, then colloids, then starch, then proteins and
cellular biophysics, and finally ending up in her current area of the physics of biological and soft systems. She’s now the Master of Churchill College at Cambridge. It’s a quite the CV, and made all the more impressive by her achievements outside the world of academia.

Donald casually weaves her personal life into her career as she speaks. She has to leave early – her husband has been to the hospital recently for a bad leg, and still needs looking after. Her daughter did a placement when she was 17 and learnt a lot about office politics; apparently it was useful. Her message is one of pro-activity, self-confidence and overcoming failure. She’s been the gender equality champion for Cambridge University, has written for The Guardian, The Observer and The Conversation, and her blog ­– started in 2010 – has become enormously popular online. Somebody asks her what’s next. She says retirement. I don’t think anyone quite believes her. Continue reading →

Naturejobs Career Guide: Asia-Pacific

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Scientists looking for new experiences in research should explore options in the Asia-Pacific region as funding floods in.

Naturejobs-career-guide-asia-pacificFor anyone considering a career in science, the Asia-Pacific region might offer some interesting careers. Opportunities for scientific jobseekers in Asia-Pacific abound, especially as research and development (R&D) spending as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) has risen in all six countries since 2000. But moving overseas is a big decision. This first Naturejobs Career Guide provides practical advice, first-hand accounts and useful facts and figures for those considering a change.

China‘s rise as a global powerhouse in science and technology is reason enough to think about a move to Asia. For example, the government has committed large sums to high-profile projects such as thorium-based nuclear power plants, as well as basic research spending, which has historically received less funding than in other developed countries. It has also launched a series of major R&D-based projects such as a space station and the China brain project, dedicated to research into artificial intelligence and neurological diseases.

A little to the east, South Korea is second only to Israel in the proportion of its GDP it spends on R&D, and Japan is not far behind. The country is focussed on recruiting overseas researchers and encouraging basic science, and is using research to drive development.

Singapore has built up its research and innovation capacities rapidly since the turn of the century by luring foreign talent with offers of large salaries. Between 2011 and 2015, 16.1 billion Singapore dollars (US $12billion) was invested in science and research by the island city-state, a 20% increase on the previous five-year period. A majority of this funding is ear-marked for collaborative projects between academic institutions and industry, hoping to drive innovation and translational science.

Australia and New Zealand are playing to their strengths by focusing limited resources on the fields in which they excel. New Zealand is renowned for its Earth science and agricultural research. It has a multi-cultural environment and is proud of its collaborativeness. The Australian government, on the other hand, is focussing it’s spending efforts on large physics and astronomy projects, as well as medical research.

For each of the six countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Naturejobs has collected first hand accounts of what it’s like to move, live and work there are a researcher.