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.
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
[caption id="attachment_1573" align="alignleft" width="183"]
At my thesis defense.[/caption]