Career Paths
Sarah
Pick
Interviewing Skills for a Scientist
The key to a successful job interview is to apply the same analytic skills process as you do for your research. A potential employer is interested in your broader expertise – excellent writing and communication skills, leadership skills (ability to create a vision and set goals), and project...
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Jason
Sherwin
When can we consider “significance” significant?
Statistical significance is one of those things that comes up quite often in medical research. Many people are fond of p-values, i.e. probabilities that the results could have been obtained by chance, being less than 5%. There are many types of tests for validating experimental findings that use thi...
Matthew
Hight
Finding the Right Career Path
I can’t think of a witty one-liner to start off my first blog entry, so I’ll just skip that part and jump right into things. I received my BS degree in chemistry and, like most undergraduates, was unsure of what to do after college. I was unsure of the job market and of what career path I wa...
Wenny
Lin
Scientists and social media – are we behind the curve?
In the October 2010 issue of The Scientist, Associate Editor Richard Grants noted in his editorial that “only a fraction of researchers in the UK make frequent use of social media tools.” I suspect that is also the case here in the US.
Mike
Chang
THE MASTER PLAN
In my past blogs, I had lamented on the lack of career planning as I was going through my education. At this stage in life, I recognized the deficiency and immediately proceeded to over-compensate on the solution. I made a significant decision during my apprenticeship at UC Irvine. I had d...
Clement
Weinberger
Do scientists really need social networks?
The short answer is “yes.” Of course they do. But the best networks would probably not be Facebook clones. Why not? Well, because Facebook helps people find people. Scientists need networks that help people find information. The label “Scientists” is a very big one and includes a lot of ...
Jennifer
Reineke Pohlhaus
How I did it: Changing Careers, Part II
Last time, I gave the basics about how I prepared for the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship so that my application was competitive, which began my career transition into science policy. In this post, I’d like to give you three more tips that might not have been so obvious from ...
Wenny
Lin
Spinning a good story with all the facts
My PhD advisor was a creative and engaging storyteller. Negative results in our vaccine experiments were interpreted as “damaging to the immune system” or “dangerous in the clinic.” Positive observations meant that an experimental vaccine “worked like a charm” or “could save countl...
Jennifer
Reineke Pohlhaus
Moving from the Bench to Science Policy
In my last post, I talked a little bit about what science policy is, as a field. Here, I’m going to talk about how to transition from the bench to science policy as a career.
Wenny
Lin
Five pros for doing a post-doc in the government
I have often been asked, “Why would you want to do a postdoc in the government?” Now that I have been a postdoc for about a year at the National Institutes of Health, I have come up with a list of reasons for doing a postdoc in the government.