Most read on Naturejobs: February 2015

Posted on 27 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

PhDs, Brazil and social media are just a few of the favourite topics on Naturejobs this month.

Thank you to everyone who read our Naturejobs content this month, and a special thanks to all those that joined in on the conversations and commented on the posts! We really enjoy getting your feedback on our stories, so please keep the comments coming.

As voted by you (by sheer number of readers to the blog) here are your top ten reads from Naturejobs this month. Feast your eyes on this:

Social media: A network boost is an article writer by Monya Baker. it highlights how Twitter can be used as a tool for long term gain by building connections with the right people in your field of research.

Robert Aboukhalil’s article, The elephant in the lab, shows how a little research into likely career outcomes in academia can go a long way.

Career councelling: Pick a path by Neil Savage is a good resource for tips on where to go for careers advice.

Undergraduate researchers can do a lot to liven up a laboratory, according to Fresh perspectives, an article by Paul Smaglik. But they do require some guidance.

Hundreds of online responses to reports of a study that showed experimental evidence of gender bias in science faculty members have been examined by researchers, according to Gender bias: Seeing is not believing.

The US Council of Graduate Schools wants to find out what happens to PhD students once they graduate, according to PhD trajectories: Data wanted.

After working as a professional for 20 years, Cathy Winterton decided to take on a PhD. In Career change: A mid-life PhD she shares the challenges she faced, but also the positive outcomes.

Last month our readers voted for the question that Alaina Levine, our Naturejobs Expert, should answer. And here it is: Ask the expert: How do I figure out what value I have to offer to non-academic employers?

How to work with a scientific recruiter is a Q&A with Tina Persson, an experienced recruiter. She explains that the relationship between a recruiter and a scientist should be a business one, not based on mentoring and advice.

From Scotland to Brazil: Making the decision (twice) is the first part of a frank, open and honest series by Gina Maffey, where she will be sharing her adventures as she moves from Scotland to Brazil for research.

Thank you to all our guest bloggers this month: Gina Maffey, Alaina Levine, Cathy Winterton, Robert Aboukhalil.

Without you, this blog wouldn’t be possible.

If you’re interested in contributing to the Naturejobs blog, please do get in touch by sending an email to naturejobseditor at nature dot com.

Happy Friday everyone!

Career transitions: Increased support

Posted on 26 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

Research institutions, funding bodies and non-profits create resources to support researchers with their careers in academia and outside.

This month’s podcast I explore some of the February 2014 Nature Careers and Naturejobs articles with Monya Baker, and I speak to three people about three projects that are looking to increase support available for early career researchers and their career transitions.

MIND (Motivating INformed Decisions) at the University of California in San Franciso,is an experimental career programme supported by the BEST grant from the National Institute of Health. BEST stands for Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training, and is designed to increase trainee and mentor awareness of career pathways available in the biomedical workforce. MIND takes a two pronged approach by working with the students as well as working with the staff at the university to find out what support they need. Jennie Dorman, one of the lead researchers on the MIND project, shares what they are doing with students and faculty. Continue reading →

Nature Nanotechnology: In the classroom

Posted on 24 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

Nature Nanotechnology makes career and educational series open access.

Since June 2014, Nature Nanotechnology published In the classroom, a series of articles on education in nanoscience. Lecturers and students discuss their ideas and experiences. Is learning nanoscience different from learning any other discipline? How important is the interdisciplinary character of nanoscience during learning? Does it make sense to study for a nanoscience degree? These are but a few of the questions that we ask our contributors to answer.

So far we’ve seen:

Doug Natelson has provided a few pointers for lecturers in nanoscience
C.N.R. Rao has discussed the situation of education in India
James Dahlman and Huan Li have told us about their learning experience during their Ph.D. projects
Nature Nanotechnology editor Ai Lin Chun explored the role of museums in teaching nanoscience
Aravind Vijayaraghavan discussed the challenges and excitements of nanoscience outreach
Ennio Tasciotti described an interactive video game app that helps children learn the concepts of nanomedicine
Yi-Hsin Lin discussed how PhD students can enrich their curriculum by activities organized by professional societies

And in the latest issue, Emmanuel Dumont provides his views on technology transfer.

These articles are now open access, and free for anyone to read. One article will be released every month, and we’ll make sure that you get regular updates on the Naturejobs blog!

The Naturejobs Career Expo journalism competition is back!

Posted on 23 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

Enter for a chance to have your writing published on the Naturejobs blog and work with Nature Publishing Group editors.

Following the success of the Boston and London Naturejobs Career Expos journalism competitions (you can read all the articles from the competition in the #NJCEBoston and #NJCE14 categories on the blog), we are repeating the competition for both the 2015 Expos, starting with the Boston Expo, which takes place on 20 May 2015.

We are looking for five budding science writers to help us with our coverage of the Naturejobs Career Expo conference sessions, workshops and general ambience of the event. The conference will explore career paths in industry, academia and science communication, entrepreneurship, structuring a CV and transferable skills, amongst other things.

The five winners will have the opportunity to attend the Expo and write up at least two of the sessions or workshops for our readers, sharing the advice and expertise of the speakers with those who cannot attend in person. Winners will also have the opportunity to work closely with Nature Publishing Group editors, and their articles will be published on the Naturejobs blog. Continue reading →

From Scotland to Brazil: Playing Tetris

Posted on 20 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

How do you pack your life in one bag? Gina Maffey continues to look at the challenges and opportunities faced by an academic couple moving abroad.

Contributor Gina Maffey

Snowdrop {credit}Image credit: Gina Maffey{/credit}

I sat staring at the two cases on the floor. This was like a complicated game of Tetris. Weeks of lists had culminated in scattered piles around the cases – there was a pile of ‘definites’, a pile of ‘maybes’ and a pile of ‘just-in-cases’. I willed the strewn items to slot into place. Packing becomes more difficult when you try to put a sense of normality into your case.

Clutching a cup of tea, my gaze shifted from the chaos on the floor to a flurry of movement outside the window. A long-tailed tit family was fighting off intruders to their bird feeder, scattering seeds over the snowdrops below. The first snowdrops of the year – a promise of spring, a promise of warmer, longer days, a promise of change.

Is change necessarily a good thing though?

It was a question that had been bouncing round my head for the past few weeks. The culmination of a series of ‘what ifs’ that sat in the pit of my stomach, or woke me like an alarm call at three in the morning. At times I couldn’t tell if I was being rational or ridiculous.

It had always been this way. Right through university. That nagging voice at the back of the mind, second-guessing whether you’ve done the right thing for your career – planting a small seed of doubt that was sometimes difficult to ignore. Continue reading →

Ask the expert: How do I figure out what value I have to offer non-academic employers?

Posted on 19 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

Being open-minded and entrepreneurial in a personal analysis can help scientists understand their value propositions.

Contributor Alaina G. Levine

Allow me to get right to the point: as a STEM-educated professional, you have seemingly infinite career opportunities. Organisations beyond academia recognise your value and they covet you for it. They see you as a strategic and necessary element of advancing the mission of their company, and as such they heavily recruit you and pay you well for your talent.

Most STEM professionals erroneously believe that the entire composition of their value is only related to their discipline. But your scientific prowess is only one piece of the intricate tapestry that is your value. The rest of what you have to offer comes from a number of different sources, but they all share one thing in common: you gained these abilities in the process of becoming a scientist or engineer.

So let’s discuss what your value is. First of all, you are a problem solver. This is not something to be taken lightly, because the purpose of every job in every organisation is to solve problems. So whether you work in big data, entertainment, or biotech, you will always be solving problems. And since scientists and engineers are the ultimate problem solvers, you have a competitive advantage in this arena. You have been trained to find solutions where others see only a brick wall. You know how to ask why and you don’t stop until you find an answer. Continue reading →

The elephant in the lab

Posted on 17 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

Young researchers should take the time to educate themselves on STEM career-related statistics.

Contributor Robert Aboukhalil

Like many PhD students in their fourth year, there are two things constantly on my mind: one is my research, and the other is my post-graduation plan. I am currently a graduate student in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) PhD programme, which is designed to be 4-5 years long. The course puts a strong emphasis on developing post-graduation plans early on, so I started researching career options in my 2^nd year.

I came across some statistics from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that painted a dire picture of career prospects in academia. Coincidentally, I joined CSHL’s Bioscience Enterprise Club around the same time to learn about alternative careers, and was taken aback by the abundance of career options available for PhDs: research in industry, publishing, science writing, teaching, public policy, finance, consulting, patent law, biotech startups, and more.

An elephant in a room. {credit}Bit Boy/ Flikr — CC-BY-SA-2.0 — https://bit.ly/2gKKEfF{/credit}

Researching career options early on has given me ample time to identify rewarding career paths, and to get involved in extra-curricular activities. Having done the research, I plan on applying the data science skills that I have developed over the course of my PhD to a career in industry.

As I get closer to graduation, I find myself much more prepared for what’s to come and strongly believe that considering career options early on is crucial for any PhD student. Therefore, I would urge all graduate schools to insist that their students do the same, especially in the current academic climate. For those who haven’t been introduced to the stats, I’ve put together a short summary for you.

Continue reading →

#ScientistOnTheMove in January 2015

Posted on 13 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

From academia to medical writing, editing, policy, further research and a swap from communications to a PhD in later life.

In 2015, Naturejobs is celebrating mobility in science, where researchers are changing labs, moving countries or transitioning into something completely different. In January 2014, all of these things hapenned. Below, we’ve selected just a handful of job changes to give you a flavour of the variety of things you can do with a science degree.

Viviane Callier

Viviane Callier was a postdoctoral fellow from 2011-2013. In late 2013, she transitioned to a technical writing position for a consulting company in the Washington DC area. In her new role as a Scientific Communications Editor at the National Cancer Institute, which she started in January 2015, her main challenges are the more frequent and stricter deadlines. But during the transition, it was the leap into the unknown, leaving friends behind and feeling like “I had to start all over from scratch,” that were the three biggest challenges.

Lucy Craggs

Lucy Craggs held a postdoctoral research at the University of Newcastle, where she was working in the field of neuroscience. The decision to leave academia was difficult, but difficult supervisory relationships, feeling undervalued and realising that if she wanted to stay in academia she would need to relocate, meant that it was the right thing to do. In January 2015 she started working as a medical writer for MediTech Media, part of the Nucleus Group of companies, focussing on the communication of the drug discovery process.
Continue reading →

Ask the expert: Meet Barry O’Brien

Posted on 12 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

This month’s Naturejobs Expert is Barry O’Brien from PhD Career Link in Sweden. Say hello!

What is your scientific background?

I’m a marketing man. My flirtation with scientific lab work ended with GCSE Biology as a 16 year old, but I admire the dedication of the people I work with and find it frustrating that these super intelligent people are not getting enough opportunities to use their talents.

Why did you decide to leave academia?

I was presented with the opportunity of taking a job at a large UK Insurance firm, so I left before completing my undergrad studies.

Why did you decide to start PhD Career Link?

I saw that scientists in Sweden were really struggling to understand how to market themselves to recruiters, so decided to share my expertise using a range of services.

How do you want to help scientists in their careers?

We live in a digital world and that’s where the recruiters are hanging out. Many scientists are still living in an analogue world. My aim is to show them why tools such as LinkedIn and Meetup are essential for networking and marketing their uniqueness or ‘personal brand’.

Tell us something interesting about yourself.

I am a collector of vintage Nike sportswear – 1980s mainly!

Vote for the question you’d like Barry to answer:

Ask the Expert: What question should Barry O’Brien answer?

Career change: A mid-life PhD

Posted on 10 Feb 2015 by Julie Gould

Starting a scientific career later in life can benefit from the added stability in people’s lives.

Contributor Cathy Winterton

The build up to career change is possibly the hardest bit. Like the build up to any big decision. The self-questioning, the self-doubt, the wondering how and if you can pull it off, can fill the wakeful hours of the night for some time.

My most recent change (from Communications officer to PhD student) is not my first. In fact it’s not even my second, yet in spite of plenty of practice, I have repeatedly made the same mistake: I don’t talk to folk; I don’t ask people what they know or what they think and I get too rooted in trying to work things out on my own, fearful perhaps that another person might rubbish my ideas or hopes, or try to dissuade me.

There is a lot of information, help and even funding/financial support available if you look hard enough, or find the right person to show you. I do now have a couple of professional mentors, people I trust to talk things over with, but I still find myself worrying about bothering them. Continue reading →

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Monthly Archives: February 2015