By: Jennifer Casiano-Matos A couple of weeks ago, I participated in a career development talk conducted by Lori Conlan, Ph.D.; Director of the Office of Postdoctoral Studies at NIH. In this panel, we discussed how graduate students should focus on the next steps after graduate school or the completion of a postdoc position. In fact, career exploration and the job search is not an easy task—it can almost take the time of a full-time job! First, you have to figure out what you want.

By: Shekerah Primus In life and career-planning, there is no shortage of advice.

Written by Vinam Puri Vishal Soni, Ph.D., is the Principal and CEO of Viridbio Solutions, a service-providing company focused on medical writing, med­ical communications and information technology.

by Helena Mello If you could sum up the time you spend per day doing the following: commuting, eating, working on tissue culture, pipetting… how many minutes would that be? How about using that seemingly wasted time to further your scientific knowledge? This article will (hopefully) convince you to listen to podcasts while performing all those activities. From quick tasks such as cell splitting to hour-long microscope analyses, you will find episodes that fit your interest and your available time!

Written by Vinam Puri Dr. Navneet Puri is the Founder and CEO of Nevakar, Inc. in Bridgewater, NJ. He started this company in 2015, with a vision of creating a fully integrated specialty pharmaceutical company focusing on hospital injectables and ophthalmic products. As Chief Executive Officer, he sets the strategic and operational direction of the organization. Prior to this, he was the Founder and CEO of Innopharma, LLC (now a Pfizer company). A Rutgers Alumnus, he received his Ph.D.

Written by Vinam Puri Are you studying for (or already are) a Ph.D. in Life Science/Pharma/Biotech? Are you of a creative mind interested in the communication space but not sure if there is a career for you in it? Are you interested in going on an adventure and exploring an area you may not have known? Read right ahead and be just as amazed as I was when I learned about this. The help of a workshop introduced me to a world of opportunities that immediately felt like my niche. Let me introduce this world to you.

By Jennifer Casiano-Matos On September 18^th, 2018, I had an opportunity to participate in a talk about assertiveness at the Office of Intramural Training and Education in NIH. It was conducted by Anne Kirchgessner, one of our career counselors. At the meeting, she talked about how being assertive can help you attain what you need and want.

On October 17^th, I attended a seminar where 5 Rutgers students shared their internship experience with the audience. The student panelists were:

By Vicky Kanta On October 4^th, I attended an iJOBS workshop on the topic of emotional intelligence. The presenter was Juliet Hart, the founder of Hart & Chin Associates, LLC., a start-up offering workshops for science professionals. Juliet started out as a bench scientist working for biotech and pharma companies such as Johnson & Johnson. However, she soon realized that she particularly enjoyed the human collaborative aspect of science.

By Paulina Krzyszczyk Chris Lowe recently defended his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering in July 2018. He was a founding member of the iJOBS blog and participated in many iJOBS events, including SciPhD and several industry site visits. He currently works at Shire as a Senior Upstream Development Engineer in Massachusetts.