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.

I am going to go bold here and state for the record that writing a grant is the single most important undertaking you should devote yourself to during graduate study. Sure, developing and evaluating a testable hypothesis is what consumes most of your waking (and sometimes sleeping- gosh darn it!) hours.

How’s it going? My name Tomas Kasza, I’m a 3^rd 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?

Lots of things have changed since the last time I posted. I am currently in Washington DC at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) for the Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy fellowship. I will have a follow-up post on this, but for now, this post will focus on my journey into science policy by going over a few tidbits on my past year doing science policy informational interviews.

By: Zakiya Qualls

By: Jennifer Casiano

Withering academic prospects and burgeoning alternative career paths are challenging the age-old notion of academia being the only tenable career path for biomedical scientists. However, students and post-docs find it increasingly uncomfortable to broach the topic of alternative career options with their advisors.

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

By: Fatu Badiane Markey