Guest contributors Philipp Gramlich and Karen Bodewits
Philipp Gramlich and Karin Bodewits
Guest contributor Sarah-Jane Lonsdale
The Institute of Physics ran an event in November 2015 targeted at PhD students and early career researchers on “Taking Control of your Career as a Female Physicist”. It was a rallying cry which attracted women in physics from all walks of life, working in both academia and industry.
As a first year PhD student, I attended the event hoping to explore possible career options in a supportive environment. My interest in engaging more women in science comes from several supportive female mentors that helped me through my formative years, both at school and as I honed my skills as an undergraduate. They facilitated my first steps into STEM and research, but not everyone has the same good fortune. I hoped to be able to share my experiences and support others, while hearing the inspirational stories of women who have “made it” in physics. After the event, I spoke with Dr Valerie Berryman-Bousquet, R&D manager at SHARP Laboratories, and Dr Jenny Wooldridge, associate programme manager at the National Physical Laboratory, about their career paths in industry.
Sarah-Jane Lonsdale
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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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.
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
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1. Work–life balance: Lab life with kids
Time management and organisation is essential to keep your lab life ticking over and your home life running smoothly. But it can be done. As Jens Schuster, a molecular biologist at Uppsala University, Sweden, says, “cells don’t care if you come in at midnight or noon to take care of them.”
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.
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
Guest contributor David Rubenson
The slide presentation has become the most ubiquitous form of scientific communication and it is causing havoc. Scientists spend enormous amounts of time preparing presentations, travelling to conferences to deliver them, and listening to them almost every day. But most scientists simply aren’t very good at them – we should change that.
David Rubenson
I previously argued that this problem underlies a significant communication crisis in research. As I’ve learnt as a scientific presentation coach at Stanford, there’s a broad understanding of this problem, but insufficient incentive for the time-intensive training many scientists need. Still, following simple lists of “dos” and “don’ts” is a great way to improve presentation skills.
In that spirit, and to supplement an earlier list of eight positive suggestions, here’s a David Letterman-like countdown of the 10 biggest pitfalls in creating and delivering a scientific presentation:
Since our podcast introducing the faculty series in May, we’ve published 13 more pieces designed to help new and aspiring faculty members flourish in their positions. From applying to the job all the way to mentoring new members of staff, we’ve seen it all, and we hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. Here’s a brief summary of all of the posts we’ve published so far. Make sure to catch the ones you’ve missed, and let us know what you think! Continue reading
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
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