iJOBS Event Summary

On January 26 of this year, the iJOBS program took a trip to East Hanover, NJ to visit the Novartis campus.  I say ‘campus’ because this place felt like a community, not a business.  Overall, the atmosphere was inviting and everyone we met seemed genuinely happy to be working there.  Several employees emphasized how Novartis encourages a place of diversity and comradery, and what a great overall place it is to work.

Last week, iJOBS hosted a career panel featuring professionals from WuXiAppTec. This panel operated slightly differently than previous ones in that the panel featured a single company rather than showcasing a single career with individuals from different companies. There were two PhD scientists, an HR representative, and a recruitment officer at the panel-this allowed for a well-rounded view of the company.

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.