iJOBS Event Summary

By: Chris Lowe

Friday, January 15, 2016 was landmark day for a group of 35 young scientists at Rutgers University. While the typical pathway to FDA review of a new drug, including discovery, development, preclinical studies, and clinical trials, requires more than a decade of work and hundreds of dedicated chemists, scientists, and clinicians, the students of the 3^rd Annual Interdisciplinary Boot Camp in Quantitative Biology were able to take a drug through this process in just two weeks.

By: Maria Qadri

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="310"] How to Program as a Biomedical Scientist 101[/caption]

Last semester, Rutgers Career Services invited Dan Beaudry, author of Power Ties, to speak to both undergraduate and graduate international students on effective job searching in the US. He began his talk by stating his goals: learn 1) how to invest your (limited) time and avoid common mistakes during your job search, and 2) how to be different (this is important because in 2014, there were an estimated 870,000 international students in the US, majority of which will presumably be looking for a job).

We’ve all heard that Ph.D. graduates who work in industry make more money than those in academia. So one would assume that this is based on studies that track Ph.D. graduates when they select a career, right? Not necessarily. Surprisingly, there is not much data on where graduates go, and therefore even less on the types of places they go and the salaries they earn.

As PhDs we are capable of achieving anything we put our minds to; we have years of training and a multitude of transferable skills, and yet somehow we don’t always feel particularly qualified within academia or even beyond it. When it comes down to seeing how valuable we are as PhDs, our fears, insecurities, and not fully knowing the world of opportunities waiting for us, make it hard to realize our potential. It is shocking to hear that 80% of life sciences PhDs are unemployed at the time of graduation, especially when we put a lot of time and hard work in getting a PhD.

    This November, Rutgers’ iJOBS program hosted three representatives hailing from Celgene, Merck and Enzo Life Sciences, to speak at a career panel on research positions in pharma and industry. Since R&D is one of the largest sectors outside of academia that will take PhD-trained scientists, this panel was both informative and encouraging to all of us who will be starting a job hunt soon.

By: Maria Qadri

[caption id="attachment_626" align="alignright" width="300"] Can there be effective communication between Science and Politics?[/caption]

The importance of networking has been emphasized at almost every iJOBS event thus far. While some people find themselves at ease in a room full of strangers, others feel so far out of their comfort zone that they need a map to find their way back. Luckily, it turns out networking is more learned skill than natural talent, and with enough practice most of us can become competent at it. Here is an overview of what a BioHUB networking event looks like and some of the things I learned from attending.

On October 24^th I attended a Career Satisfaction workshop at the “What Can You Be With a PhD?” symposium, presented by Matthias Birk. The room was fully packed, I had to squeeze together with several people and sit on the floor.

Mattias Birk was a passionate and inspiring speaker. I got good laughs from his humor, but I was also enlightened by his view of career satisfaction. The experience allowed me to realize it is critical to find the balancing point among strength, joy, and value for career satisfaction.