iJOBS Blog

Science editors have a wide open view at the forefront of scientific research. Their job combines the rigor of scientific analysis and critical thinking with the freedom and flexibility to read about different scientific disciplines. This is the second part of my blog series on science publishing; last week, I wrote about the experiences and advice shared by two professional editors from Wiley.

Career Opportunities in Science Publishing (Part I) Last February 17, iJOBS hosted another very informative career panel series, this time focusing on job opportunities in science publishing. As a career that I was seriously considering after grad school, I was personally excited about this particular iJOBS event. The panelists were Ph.D. level editors and publishers from different publishing companies, namely, Elsevier, Nature Publishing Group, and Wiley.

On January 26 of this year, the iJOBS program took a trip to East Hanover, NJ to visit the Novartis campus.  I say ‘campus’ because this place felt like a community, not a business.  Overall, the atmosphere was inviting and everyone we met seemed genuinely happy to be working there.  Several employees emphasized how Novartis encourages a place of diversity and comradery, and what a great overall place it is to work.

Last week, iJOBS hosted a career panel featuring professionals from WuXiAppTec. This panel operated slightly differently than previous ones in that the panel featured a single company rather than showcasing a single career with individuals from different companies. There were two PhD scientists, an HR representative, and a recruitment officer at the panel-this allowed for a well-rounded view of the company.

Last month, iJOBS held a career panel titled ‘How to find and apply for an internship’. Here is a quick summary of the event. The panel consisted of students with a broad spectrum of experiences gained from participating in different kinds of internships.

Hi everyone! My name is Katelyn Marshall, and I’m currently a 3^rd year PhD candidate in the Biochemistry department at Rutgers University. From a young age, I have been fascinated with learning how things work, what makes them go. This curiosity fit in perfectly with science, and led me to pursue chemistry and biochemistry for my undergraduate studies. My love for research was ignited during my first undergraduate research experience working with Xenopus laevis tadpoles as a protein expression system.

We’ve all heard that Ph.D. graduates who work in industry make more money than those in academia. So one would assume that this is based on studies that track Ph.D. graduates when they select a career, right? Not necessarily. Surprisingly, there is not much data on where graduates go, and therefore even less on the types of places they go and the salaries they earn.

As PhDs we are capable of achieving anything we put our minds to; we have years of training and a multitude of transferable skills, and yet somehow we don’t always feel particularly qualified within academia or even beyond it. When it comes down to seeing how valuable we are as PhDs, our fears, insecurities, and not fully knowing the world of opportunities waiting for us, make it hard to realize our potential. It is shocking to hear that 80% of life sciences PhDs are unemployed at the time of graduation, especially when we put a lot of time and hard work in getting a PhD.

    This November, Rutgers’ iJOBS program hosted three representatives hailing from Celgene, Merck and Enzo Life Sciences, to speak at a career panel on research positions in pharma and industry. Since R&D is one of the largest sectors outside of academia that will take PhD-trained scientists, this panel was both informative and encouraging to all of us who will be starting a job hunt soon.

For many graduate and post-graduate students in scientific fields, a career at the bench seems to be the only option.  From our earliest exposures to science, we have been taught the scientific method of identifying a problem, developing a hypothesis, designing an experiment to test that hypothesis, and finally examining and interpreting our results.  To many, science is synonymous with experimentation.  This can range from exploratory science in academia to the development of pharmaceuticals in industry and clinical settings.  What we often overlook, however, is that behind the hours and h