Hey All!
By: Tomas Kasza You have probably read this next bit of information before. Graduate student scientists are trained for an academic career while the number of academic positions are shrinking. An increasing number of PhD graduates are choosing to pursue careers that require a PhD but, paradoxically, lack the skill set to complete those jobs.
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.
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Asm. Zwicker speaking to the assembly session about NJ STEM Week.[/caption] A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to shadow Assemblyman (Asm.) Andrew Zwicker of the 16th legislative district of New Jersey. Asm. Zwicker isn’t your average politician. He received his M.A. and Ph.D.
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?
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 3rd 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.