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:

Last Earth Day, scientists from all over the world came out and took part in the March for Science. The march was primarily in protest to the current US administration’s seemingly anti-science stance; however, during the months leading up to the march, people in the March for Science Facebook page posted their own additional, personal reasons for wanting to attend.

It is the dream of every researcher to publish in a journal with a high to decent impact score, for your research to be deemed of high quality, and for the number of citations of your paper to skyrocket. For most PhD students, not only do we begin this journey with the delusion…I mean…aspiration of finishing in as little as three years, we ALSO aim for the highest-impact journal. While there is nothing wrong in dreaming big, and in fact it does work out sometimes in a very fast-paced lab, our dream withers as the years go by.

Hey All!

By: Tomas Kasza

Hi everyone! My name is Monal Mehta. I am a second-year graduate student in the Neuroscience department, working under Dr. James Millonig. Outside of the one year I spent in Pennsylvania, I’ve been living in New Jersey for the past 24 years! My initial interest in the brain started when I was young. I was fascinated that humans all had the same organ – a brain – but everyone was so different, from their thoughts, experiences and memories, to their likes and dislikes.

[caption id="attachment_1693" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Asm. Zwicker speaking to the assembly session about NJ STEM Week.[/caption]

I got my job in industry through networking, and I’m not ashamed to admit that (or at least, I’m trying not to be).

As I think back to when I was applying to colleges (nearly 10 years ago...wow!) and began to think seriously about my career plans, I remember scrolling through web pages that described all of the different majors a student could enroll in.

We have all been told at one point or another that the skills we develop in graduate school can be translated into industry value if we communicate them properly. However, I have always wondered about the credibility of this statement. How can technical lab skills be helpful in non-academic career tracks?