The potential downside? It could mean fewer postdoc positions – but even that may be a positive. The academic pipeline worldwide, especially in the biomedical sciences, has a postdoc glut.
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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.
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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.
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
Guest contributor Thaís Moraes
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” first reads like an outworn self-help cliché. But I tried it. And I have to tell you that this outworn self-help cliché worked for me. I’m a Brazilian researcher who came to Germany in April 2014 for a two-year postdoc, alone, without speaking a word of German, without knowing anyone, and without even knowing the city. What could have been a complete disaster turned out more than great. I’m very pleased I left my comfort zone.
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.
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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.
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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
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Tell me about your academic training.
I started in phenomenological psychology, looking first at chimpanzees in a zoo and then how dogs were making decisions based on social influences from their species. I did that throughout my graduate school career at the University of Texas at Arlington, but there aren’t a lot of jobs in the consciousness of animals. So I started research in neuroscience at UT Southwestern Medical Center, doing stereotactic surgery on rats and mice, to understand what was happening in the brain during cocaine addiction.
After a complicated pregnancy, I decided to stay home with my daughter for a year. I went back to UT Southwestern in a different lab—my surgical skills were in high demand —this time looking at the effect of estrogen on metabolic syndrome.
Watch more from the Naturejobs career expo here.
Thank you to everyone for reading our posts this month. We’ve been working closely with a lot of new writers, and we’re pleased that you’ve enjoyed what they have to say! Here’s a list of your top ten favourite reads from October.
This year Nature have been running their Graduate Student Survey, trying to understand what careers graduates are looking to do when they finish their training, and how they are preparing for them. In Graduate survey: Uncertain futures, Chris Woolston gives a great summary of the results, and shares some stories from graduate students around the world.
Industrial postdocs: A bridge between two worlds is a report from the Naturejobs Career Expo in London earlier this year, where Roche presented a workshop on the postdoctoral opportunities they offer.
The traditional route in academia – PhD, a postdoc or two (or three) and then professor – is one everyone is familiar with. But there are other options, as Careers in academia: Different options explores. This is another report from the 2015 Naturejobs Career Expo in London, where different types of academics gave an insight into their different roles.
The Naturejobs Career Expo reports are popular this month! Nature Masterclasses: Writing for highly-selective journals, is another report from the event, this time about one of the workshops run by the Nature Masterclasses team. Continue reading