If you’re not loving what you do, try something new. That’s the message both from Ricardo Wilches and Eyal Schwartz. The two researchers swapped academia for careers that combine their love of science with their love of bread (in Eyal’s case) and wine (for Ricardo).
Schwartz was undertaking a neuroscience PhD in Israel when he moved his family to London and started work at an artisan bakery in east London.
And Wilches was a postdoc at the Max Planck Society in Tübingen, Germany when he decided to return to his native Colombia to co-found a vinticulture company that imports and promotes wine.
Moving south from Colombia to Chile, Naturejobs editor Jack Leeming talks to Aleszu Bajak about his recent article on the South American country. Chile is the jewel in the crown for astronomers around the world. Why are other scientists working in Chile envious of their success?
London Naturejobs Career Expo speakers, exhibitors and attendees share how flexibility in a scientific career is beneficial.
“Science is a multifaceted and large enterprise, and there are lots and lots of very interesting ways to contribute to science” said Venki Ramakrishnan, president of the Royal Society, lab leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and joint winner of the 2009 Chemistry Nobel, at the 11th annual Naturejobs London Career Expo on Oct 4th 2017.
Ramakrishnan encourages scientists to think about the wide variety of options available to them; that having a PhD in science doesn’t mean you need to follow the tenure track career path. Continue reading →
Effective communication will improve the value of scientific discoveries, says Eleni Wood
As scientists, our work is often driven by data collection and results. But a key step in the scientific process, and one that increases the value of our findings, is the effective communication of our investigative processes and results. Science communication is not only important within our fields for the advancement of our disciplines – communication to other audiences also influences the public perception and credibility of scientists and the work we do.
Ask a careers expert your job-related questions on the Naturejobs podcast.
The Naturejobs podcast is making a long-awaited comeback in July 2017 and we’re setting up an expert panel of careers advisers to answer your job-related questions.
Each month we plan to feature a hot topic for relevant members of our panel to answer. Do you have a workplace dilemma that you’d like to discuss? Are you struggling to decide what your next career step should be? Do you need help answering tricky interview questions, or tips on how to structure your CV? If you need help answering these questions and others, email your question to naturejobseditor@nature.com.
If we decide to feature your question we’ll be in touch to discuss ways of including it in the podcast, including an opportunity for you, the questioner to feature on the podcast!
In our opening episode of this new #NJPodcast series, Lauren Celano, co-founder and CEO of Propel Careers, will be our expert. Lauren has been working closely with Naturejobs for many years, regularly featuring on the blog and at our Boston Expo.
Her work with Propel Careers has allowed her to help many early career researchers find their feet when pursuing a career in the life sciences.
The history and development of science is littered with failures, so early-career researchers should embrace, rather than be afraid of them.
“Success is advancing from failure to failure without loosing enthusiasm.” – Not said by either Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln.
“The things I remember best from college were the questions I got wrong on the exams.” – Kathryn Yatrakis, dean of academic affairs, Columbia College.
These are two of my favourite quotes from Stuart Firestein’s (professor of neuroscience at Columbia University, NY) new book, Failure: Why science is so successful.
Science’s history is littered with failures. Without them, science woudn’t have advanced to the point it’s at today. And yet a negative connotation goes hand-in-hand with it.
In this final Naturejobs podcast of 2015, I speak to Firestein about what failure in science means, what the negative connotations are, why they exist, why they impact young scientists and what they can do to overcome them.
Women have a 2:1 advantage over men when applying for tenure-track roles in mathematically intensive subjects in academia.
Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams from Cornell University recently published a paper suggesting that when applying for tenure-track positions in mathematically intensive subjects, women have the advantage. Why? That’s what they wanted to know.
They had both gone through actual hiring data which showed that fewer women applied for these jobs, but when they did, they were the preferred candidate. A common argument for this is that when women have reached that stage, they are the stronger candidate because they have survived discrimination in various forms throughout their career leading up to this point. The paper, published in PNAS, says this isn’t the case.
Instead, their research suggests that women have the advantage, just because they are women and that competence wasn’t what was setting them apart. They sent identical applications to more than 800 tenure-track faculty in the US to consider, the only difference in these applications was the gender, and women were still the preferred candidate.
This is a very different story to what many people see and feel every day in academia, and thus this paper has had a lot of criticism. In this podcast I give Williams and Ceci an opportunity to share their results, their motivations for their research, and give them an opportunity to speak out about some of the criticism they’ve received.
Considering how much interest this paper has received, we’re keen to know what you think! If you have any comments about the research or any first-hand experience you want to share, please leave a comment on the blog.
Postdocs are urged by peers and senior scientists to help change the postdoc research culture.
At the end of 2014, two papers were released reviewing the postdoctoral research space and suggesting ways to improve it. The first, Shaping the future of research, is a paper written by postdocs themselves and gives their point of view based the Future of Research symposium that they held in Boston in October 2014. The symposium brought together early career researchers to discuss (and maybe complain a little about) the postdoc part of the academic career track. We’ve mentioned it in part 3 of the postdoc series: The plight of the postdoc.
The second report, The postdoctoral experience revisited, was commissioned by the National Academies in the USA, and was chaired by Gregory Petsko, professor of neuroscience at Weill Cornell College of Medicine in New York City. This report revisits a similar report that was written in 2000, to see whether or not any of the suggested action points had been followed through and whether or not they had made any difference.
In this podcast I speak to Petsko, as well as Gary McDowell, a biology postdoc at Tufts University and to Kristin Krukenberg, a systems biology postdoc at Harvard Medical School, both of whom were authors of the Future of Research paper. The aim of the podcast is to get an overview of each of the reports, to see how similar they are, and whether or not the suggested action points made bby each paper are in any way feasible. This section starts at 6minutes into the podcast.
The main take away message from both reports, and the podcast, is that this grass-roots movement of postdocs starting conversations and looking for ways to change the current system is a good thing. Educating yourself about your ptoential future careers in a good thing. these messages reflect those from other podcasts that I’ve done this year: Take control of your own careers.
But before we get into that, the podcast also features Monya Baker, one of the Nature Careers editors, who shares some of her favourite Nature Careers and Naturejobs stories this month. She mentiones the postdoc series on the blog (yay!) but also a story about indecent advances in science.
If you haven’t come across the postdoc series before, you can catch up here:
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 →
January is almost over and spring is almost upon us (or at least for some of us it might be…).
Whilst you’re waiting, why not catch up on the most popular reads of January 2015, as judged by you, our readers??
How to procrastinate effectively (if you cannot stop) is a great piece by Daisy Hessenberger. She has been spending a lot of time writing up her PhD thesis… but this also means she’s spent a lot of time procrastinating. In this article she explains how she used that time effectively, and how you might too!
Going from academia to industry is a big transition, and to make sure that you get off to a good start, having an industry-ready CV will help. Carol Spenceley, a careers advisor at Surrey University, shares her top tips for academics on preparing an industry CV in Don’t panic! How to make your CV look its best.
We wanted to know what you, our readers, thought of the proposals that Theresa May put forward to the UK parliament towards the end of last year. Here’s some more info: Train ’em up and kick ’em out
We’re celebrating all transitional things this year: whether you’ve got a new postdoc position or a new job. If you’ve moved jobs down the corridor or are crossing an ocean for a new opportunity, we want to hear about it! We’re celebrating Scientists on the move!
