Without fail, every four years, the Summer Olympics craze gets me hooked. I am pulled in by the backstories of these impressive athletes--hearing about their struggles, their tenacity, and their climb to success. I am invigorated by those adrenaline-inducing track-and-field finishes, and those breath-taking, record-breaking swim races.

Last week we briefly overviewed the Interdisciplinary Job Opportunities for Biomedical Scientists (iJOBS) program in its first two years of training biomedical graduate students and postdocs to be successful in a variety of non-academic careers. The NIH BEST grant funds five years of the development for the iJOBS program and expects the program to be self-sustainable after the grant period.

  My name is Eileen Oni, and I’m a sixth year PhD candidate in the Cell and Developmental Biology program at Rutgers University. I am a Central Jersey native (Yes, it does exist!), residing in South Brunswick Township. I began my academic journey under the simple notion of better understanding the development of living organisms, which drove me to pursue a higher degree in the sciences; more specifically within cell biology research.

In September 2014, the NIH Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST) Initiative awarded Rutgers University with a grant to initialize and establish the Rutgers Interdisciplinary Job Opportunities for Biomedical Scientists (iJOBS) program, which aims to better prepare biomedical students and postdocs for nonacademic careers. As we reach the two year mark, let’s take a brief review of the successes and challenges so far, and then follow up with a sneak preview of what is coming ahead.

It is hard to break from academia, and yet it is not impossible. To realize and decide that an academic career was no longer for me was difficult and daunting at the same time. Breaking from academia means leaving behind an entire life, the only one I have known for the last 18 years.

One of my favorite things about the Rutgers University Biomedical Engineering (BME) building is the fact that it has an "open lab environment". In fact, this is one of the main reasons that I chose to attend Rutgers. In case you have never set foot in the BME labs, what I mean by "open lab,” is that all of the lab benches of different professors are in one large room.

Hi there! My name is Paulina Krzyszczyk and I am a 5th year PhD student in Biomedical Engineering. My project is based on a collaboration between my advisors at Rutgers, Dr. François Berthiaume and Dr. Martin Yarmush, as well as Dr. Andre Palmer from Ohio State University. Dr.

There have been many discussions within the research community on how to best ‘rescue’ the research enterprise from itself; from dissatisfied students, to limited academic positions, to endless post-doc appointments, to abysmal financial prospects for academics (both grants and pay). The problem is that PhD training hasn’t changed all that much.  At its essence, a PhD is like a medieval apprenticeship where you are the trainee of your mentor.

By: Urmimala Basu

This post is first seen on the Atlanta BEST Magazine Summer 2016

The common notion of “Industry or Academia” echoed by millions of graduate students and post-docs when quizzed on their career aspirations might very soon turn into the apparent paradoxical concept of “Industry and Academia”. A recent article in SCIENCE magazine talks about this morphing concept!

By: Ina Nikolaeva

One career that science PhD’s have only recently been made aware of is the Medical Writer. I myself only found out about this entire career path about a year before I graduated, even though I quickly realized it was word-for-word my dream job description. If you want a more in-depth summary of how I ended up deciding that MW was for me, please read the short paragraph at the end of this post, titled, “My Personal Decision-Making Process”

Who should you be to be happy as an MW?