Steffen Schulz was completing his PhD in medical neuroscience when he realised he needed more job security than academia could offer. Now, he works as a drug safety manager in his native Berlin.
Originally I was interested in the origin and the development and evolution of life. Then I shifted to questions like ‘why do animals and humans behave the way they do?’
Steffen Schulz
After completing a PhD and postdoc in experimental neuroscience labs, Sabine Blankenship had no desire to run her own lab. Here she describes how her passion to study abroad led her from experiments that had become frustrating to outreach she finds invigorating. She now works in the German Consulate General in San Francisco, where she helps set up international research collaborations and keep the German government abreast of US advances, particularly in renewable energy and regenerative medicine.
It’s part of the German foreign service. My job title is scientific liaison; we are installed in scientifically important cities like Washington DC and Boston. We’re the first point of call for setting agendas for visiting VIPs, maintaining networks, and fostering collaborations across industry and academia in the two countries.
After completing his PhD and postdoc at The University of California, Berkeley in the biophysics of cancer cell growth, Gautham Venugopalan completed a science policy fellowship sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He describes how that experience led him to a job as an analyst at Gryphon Scientific, a consultancy focused on public health and national security.
Tell me how you planned your career path.
I could tell you a story that I thought I should do this, and then I thought I should do that, and it all prepared me for this grand thing. But let’s be real. That’s not how that works.
{credit}Richard Novak{/credit}
Why did you get a PhD?
I have a history of just jumping off and doing things that I’ve never done before. I went into the biology program in my senior year. And I decided to try grad school. At the time I was thinking, all these programs that I’m applying to are really solid, I’ll have an interesting skill set that I can use to do something, and I’ll work that out.
Did you do much outside the lab during your training?
I ended up starting a nonprofit in grad school with a few of my friends. I spent time at the career center at UCSF; I did a fellowship at the U.S. State Department.
PhD Melanie Sinche{credit}Image credit: Stephan Lieske{/credit}
Melanie Sinche is a nationally certified career counselor focused on STEM careers, currently serving as a Senior Research Associate at the Labor and Worklife Program in Harvard Law School, studying employment patterns of science PhDs. She formerly served as Director of the FAS Office of Postdoctoral Affairs at Harvard University. She is an accomplished career counselor, trainer, and speaker. In addition to building three career centres for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, she has delivered career development presentations and training sessions for universities, government agencies, professional associations and non-profit organizations across the country on career-related topics for graduate students and postdocs. Her current focus is to improve data collection on PhDs and postdoctoral scholars across the U.S. She is also working on a book-length project on careers for PhDs in science with Harvard University Press, scheduled to be on the market in the fall of 2016. In this interview, Julie Gould asks Sinche about how she got involved and interested in this field, her new book and how PhD graduates can help with her research.
How did you get involved in the STEM careers space?
I don’t actually have a STEM background – other than my dad having a PhD in physics and being involved in scientific organizations over the years, such as the Society for Native Americans, Chicanos in Science and the Biomedical Sciences Careers Program in Boston. I was actually in graduate school decades ago for Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Michigan (UoM). But while I was there, I volunteered at the career centre to be a peer counsellor and work with other grad students, reviewing CVs and advising. I absolutely loved it.
When I was close to finishing my studies and was thinking about my career – whether or not to do a PhD – a job opened up in the career centre at Michigan and I took it. I’ve been in this field ever since. Continue reading
In 1995, Sheila Tobias and Daryl Chubin co-authored the book Rethinking Science as a Career. The book was written at a time when the PhD job market was looking bleak, and many were turning to the world of industry. Without knowing it, Tobias and Chubin started a whole new way of teaching scientists about the world of business. Their book started the Professional Science Masters (PSM), a post graduate degree that prepares science students for the world of industry. But it’s been almost 20 years since they wrote this book, which gives advice on the skills needed to work as an industry scientist, there has been a lot of change in the job market. Where there hasn’t been much change is in the skills needed to make the move. The PSM’s that were born from these ideas were targeted to post-graduate students, but the post-docs of the world don’t seem to have the opportunity to go back and take these courses. In this interview with Tobias and Chubin, Naturejobs finds out what the PhD’s and post-docs of today can do to help their transtition.
