Monthly Archives: March 2013

New report: medical students are missing out on a fulfilling career in psychiatry research

Posted on by
Reply

Stigma against mental illness is putting medical students off academic psychiatry, but a new report seeks to address the issues.

It’s one of the most exciting times to work in psychiatric research, yet the field is losing out when it comes to recruiting medical students, and is suffering in the current economic climate where the needs of clinical services take priority over academic research. So says a new report by the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences, published today. The report proposes measures to change the way psychiatrists are trained in order to make sure that mental health research meets its potential.

Naturejobs asked Professor Nick Craddock, Treasurer of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who was involved in putting together the report, to talk us through the findings.

Thinking about psychiatric research?

{credit}Hemera/Thinkstock{/credit}

Why did the Academy commission this report now?

It’s a time of very exciting scientific development in the field, but it’s also a time when there has been some difficulty in recruiting sufficient people into psychiatry. So there’s a capacity issues. If we don’t produce sufficient high calibre academic psychiatrics, ultimately patients will suffer, because we won’t be driving the research forward. I am confident people are recognising the issues, but it’s up to the different stakeholders to come together and make that work.

Why is it such a good time to get into the field?

For anybody who is interested in the workings of the brain and interested in driving science forward then doing research training in psychiatry is really a very exciting opportunity, because things are going to change more during their career in psychiatry than in any other field. It’s a very special time in psychiatry because of the scientific tools available now, such as neuroimaging,  strong neuroscience developments, molecular genetics. It’s where a lot of the action will be in medicine over the next 20 or 30 years.

In that case, why is there a problem recruiting people? Continue reading →

Windback Wednesdays: Communicating your science

Posted on by
1
windbackweds

{credit}Naturejobs{/credit}

 

You know what it is you do, but how many other people understand your job? How good are you at getting the message across, and could you be communicating better?

Join us over the next four weeks as we delve into the Naturejobs archive every Wednesday and share with you some invaluable advice on how to get your message heard, whether that be using stories to make your science accessible, harnessing the power of social media, or tips on how to make sure you don’t wish the ground would swallow you up next time you have to do a presentation.

To start with this week, we thought we’d dig out our social media tips for scientists.

If you already use social media to communicate and engage, please do share your stories with the SpotOn team, who are collecting tales of social media success for the forthcoming SpotOn anniversary – more details here. Continue reading →

Final chance to enter our careers columnist competition

Posted on by
Reply
shutterstock_64421566

Tsha/Shutterstock

With only a few days left to enter our careers columnist competition, and for the chance to be published in Nature, you should be almost ready to submit your entry, if you haven’t already. Here’s our handy check-list of last-minute advice:

  • Don’t be afraid to inject some personality into it. But avoid a long-winded personal rant at all costs!
  • Take a look at what’s already been covered here and here, to make sure your entry is original.
  •  Consider why this is relevant now – is there a topical hook?
  • Ask others for advice. Editing your own work is hard – even professional editors get other editors to look at their work – so do the same;  give your entry to friends and colleagues who you can trust for honest advice. If there are parts they all find boring, cut them out (those sections, not your friends!).

Good luck! Sign up to our fortnightly newsletter to be informed of the winners when they are announced.

 

 

So you want to be a data scientist?

Posted on by
44

Data scientist has been billed as the ‘sexiest job of the 21st Century’ – but who are data scientists, and how can you get in on the action?

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Guest post by Michael Koploy of SoftwareAdvice.com

By now, pretty much everyone has heard that “Big Data” will be the next “big thing” to revolutionise how we work, live and communicate.

But who will manage the Walmart database that contains over 2.5 petabytes of data from the retailer’s 1 million customer transactions per hour? Who at YouTube is analyzing the 48 hours of video uploaded to its website every minute?

For every Big Data problem, the solution often rests on the shoulders of a data scientist. The role of the data scientist is similar in responsibility to the Wall Street “quants” of the 80s and 90s – now, these data experienced are tasked with the management of databases previously thought too hard to handle, and too unstructured to derive any value.

The sexiest job of the 21st Century?

Thomas Davenport and D.J. Patil brought the data scientist into the national spotlight in their October 2012 Harvard Business Review article: Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century. Job trends data from Indeed.com confirms the rise in popularity Continue reading →

Windback Wednesday round-up: Salary negotiations

Posted on by
Reply

{credit}Naturejobs{/credit}

Over the last month, as part of our regular Windback Wednesdays series, we’ve been taking a look through the Naturejobs archive for advice on how to negotiate a pay rise and make more money.

If you’re trying to tackle the tricky issue of asking for more cash, take a look at our advice in the links below. Let us know whether it’s been useful. Have you asked for a rise or negotiated a better starting salary recently? How did you approach it and how did it go down? Keep us posted in the comments section below, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook for all our #WindbackWeds updates.

If you found this useful, our past Windback Wednesday series have looked at funding, and best practice for CVs and interviews. Click through the links below this blog post for more.