For the past four years I’ve been working in science communication (SciComm), and academia. I’m now mid-way through my PhD — I’m studying on Alzheimer’s disease and I know I would be finding research a lot tougher if I were not involved with science communication.
Rachel Harris doing some SciComm at Bristol Neuroscience Festival this year
In many research projects, there tends to be three major interested parties. The first is the researcher who actually performs the experiment and collects the data. The second is the scientist overseeing the research project, who may be collating related data from several researchers. Finally, there is the institution, which supports the research financially and provides a space in which to do it.
{credit}Roche DG, Lanfear R, Binning SA, Haff TM, Schwanz LE, et al. (2014) Troubleshooting Public Data Archiving: Suggestions to Increase Participation. PLoS Biol 12(1): e1001779. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001779, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30978545{/credit}
A long time ago in a land galaxy far far away, there was a great gathering where those weary of the well-trodden trail of tenureships and grants repaired themselves. The gathering in question was the Naturejobs career expo, a free one-day event organized for students and scientists alike. Featuring some truly inspiring speakers, it gave a much-needed boost to my hope for a career in science that can be both emotionally and financially (yes, $$$) satisfying.
Sometimes I ask people, “if you weren’t studying biology, what would you do?”
At first, they’re taken aback, and I don’t blame them. PhD students are self-selected for a certain kind of persistent, focused thinking; that’s what it takes to become the world’s leading expert on your thesis project. We are as deeply immersed in our work as a fish in water. That makes asking a graduate student to consider a different field of study a lot like asking a fish to imagine life on dry land.
“We are as deeply immersed in our work as a fish in water. That makes asking a graduate student to consider a different field of study a lot like asking a fish to imagine life on dry land.”
On my first day as a new PhD student, freshly awarded molecular genetics degree in hand, I was sat down at a laptop with an unfamiliar operating system and was encouraged to explore some data using arr. What sounded like pirate speak turned out to be R, a statistical programming language. Yep – for my PhD I swapped pipettes for programming, dilutions for data and spectrophotometers for statistics. Others experienced the opposite, entering the world of biology from a computer science background.
Réka Nagy
Guest contributor Virginia Schutte
The international conference Comm4Science: communicating science beyond the lab took place in Heidelberg in early May. Around 100 participants attended, where they met a great roster of speakers, took part in a communication workshop, and asked questions of a panel of experts.
Virginia Schutte
Naturejobs journalism competition winner Elisa Lazzari
{credit}Jean Branan{/credit}
In today’s competitive world, it’s become increasingly common for scientists to question where their skills and knowledge will fit outside the lab. Academic research is a harsh place, littered with the victims of funding decisions and research projects that didn’t quite go to plan. The idea, even amongst scientists, that we are highly specialised professionals with no role outside the lab has become a persistent limitation in this search. So, what is the need for a scientist in any other capacity?
{credit}Topp_Yimgrimm/ThinkStock{/credit}
Guest contributor Aliyah Weinstein
This question plays a role in the career decisions for almost everyone, yet is absent from most conversations when it comes to early-career scientists. Questions all PhDs hear are: What kind of research are you interested in doing? Do you want to work in academia, or in industry? But these questions make a fundamental assumption: every scientist wants to pursue a career in research. I, for example, have had a lifelong interest in writing and languages.
Naturejobs journalism competition winner Mary Gearing
Any career, scientific or otherwise, is the product of choices. In my own path in science, the first set of choices was clear: major in biology, conduct undergraduate research, enroll in a PhD program. This was a comforting, well-trodden path, but it left me unprepared to make the next big decision: my post-PhD direction. Now, as I near the end of my graduate studies, I’ve realized that this decision is much simpler than I thought. The most important tool for a career change is self-awareness – the willingness to analyze yourself as thoroughly as you would any key experiment.
