To continue (somewhat) a thought I touched upon on my previous blog post on the juggling act that is grad school, I wanted to highlight something that most grad students find annoying at best and terrifying at worst: the thesis committee, and the annual thesis committee meeting.
In my experience, one of the more common responses after asking current graduate students what they plan on doing after graduation, is “find a job in industry.” While the transition from academia to industry can be challenging, a recent article by Angela Hopp and Rajendrani Mukhopadyay aims to outline some pointers for those that might be interested in a career in industry. The article is based on an interview with Kenneth I. Maynard, a member of the National Institutes of Health Common Fund’s External Scientific Panel for the Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training program.
This piece was written after attending an iJOBS workshop entitled: An Introduction to Good Laboratory Practices presented by Melissa Elliott from Envigo on May 8th, 2017 in Piscataway, NJ. Good laboratory practices (GLPs) are a series of regulations which standardize the quality of research used in clinical trials, or food development. Before human consumption, or treatment, there are several stages of research: exploratory, preclinical development, clinical trial, and manufacturing. The latter three stages are all federally regulated.
by Jennifer Casiano 
In 2007, Larry Page, co-founder of Google stated, “Science has a serious marketing problem.” Ten years later, we are still struggling. We just haven’t learned how to effectively communicate science. We publish our results and present at symposiums, sure, but what about the non-scientific community? What are we doing to communicate the importance of our results to them?
This past February, nearly fifty graduate students and post-docs braved the winter weather and attended a four day long workshop called SciPhD to learn how to frame skills gained in academia to be marketable towards careers in industry.
Your success as a graduate student depends on the quality of your mentorship. Often times, we choose a mentor based on our interests, or just to get into a lab that has money. Choosing a lab should be meticulously planned, the same way a great dance involves a planned order of steps. Here is a quick guide to help you plan the steps you should take before you dance:
My name is Aminat Musah, I am a fifth-year graduate student in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Rutgers University. I work in the lab of Dr. Teresa Wood, where my research focuses on defining the effect of mTOR signaling in oligodendrocyte development. Specifically, my interest lies in the mechanisms underlying mTOR regulation of oligodendrocyte cytoskeleton during differentiation and myelination. Before embarking on my graduate school journey, I attended Delaware State University (DSU) where I attained a bachelor’s degree in Biology.
How’s it going? My name Tomas Kasza, I’m a 3rd year PhD student in the Neuroscience program at Rutgers University. Although I am studying here in New Jersey , I am originally from California. In 2012, I received my degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from UC Santa Cruz. My passion for research was sparked by participating in an undergraduate research course called Phage Hunters (http://seaphages.org/). In this class, we were tasked with purifying and naming our own bacteriophage, a virus that infects bacteria.
Over the course of attending numerous iJOBS career panels and workshops on different job opportunities for PhD graduates, the one question invariably asked is: “Is a postdoc required for this position?”. Surprisingly, while there are several employers that have no problems answering this question, there are a few who seem to have a hard time committing to a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Which begs the question, what is a postdoc?
Almost a year ago, I had one of my annual thesis committee meetings, and my adviser and committee gave their blessings and said the much-coveted magic words: “I think you’re ready to graduate”. After briefly enjoying the moment, my adviser and I got down to business:
(1) working out a timeline to finish the remaining experiments