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?

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.