Science Sunday #18

For today’s Science Sunday, I decided to shift focus just a little bit.  Instead of highlighting research, I am going to talk about pursuing a career in research.  NatureJobs posted a couple of very interesting infographics last week, and one in particular stood out to me:  what skills PhD graduates found the most interesting, and where they acquired those skills.  (Article:  What skills do the University of Toronto department of immunology alumni take away from postgraduate courses?)

Important skills and where they came from. Image c/o NatureJobs Blog/Yi-Min Chun

As a first-year grad student, I find this infographic to be particularly interesting, as I am still in a position where I can tailor what I am going to learn and how I am going to learn it.  While the section about where skills important for different research areas were learned did not surprise me a lot, I was interested in reading what skills became important after receiving a PhD:  in particular, that knowledge of your field of study is one of the least important skills moving forward!  The emphasis seemed instead to be on “transferrable skills”:  those that bridge multiple fields, such as writing, organization, and leadership.  Transferrable skills is quickly becoming a buzzword, and buzzwords can quickly lose meaning once they are thrown at you over and over again.  Data like this shows that those transferrable skills are actually important in professional settings, making them more tempting to learn and cultivate.

Readers:  Are you interested in Science Sunday articles focused on careers as well, or would you rather just see science news in this feature?  I want your opinion! 🙂

NJCE Boston Live!

Today’s finally the day- I am in Boston at the Nature Jobs Career Expo!  It’s been a crazy morning so far, but despite all the running around, and the steep leqrning curve of figuring out how to best take notes to turn into an informational article later, I am having a ton of fun and I’m so thrilled to be having this opportunity.

If you’re not in Boston for the event, you can follow along with key points from all of the sessions on Twitter at #NJCEBoston.  Additionally, myself and the 4 other journalism competition winners will each have articles posted in the coming weeks covering in more detail specific sessions from the day.  So far I have covered a workshop on research opportunities in Singapore, and a session on Transferable Skills.  Later in the afternoon I will be attending a panel called Surviving and Thriving in Academia.

Those are the three sessions that I will be writing pieces about for the NatureJobs blog, but (quite unexpectedly) I have also found this event to be a great place to network, even as a first-year grad student.  I was particularly excited to learn about opportunities in both France and Switzerland for PhD candidates to spend 3-9 months learning a new technique or doing collaborative research at a university in one of those countries.  That is now something that I will be seriously pursuing as I move further into getting my degree!  It also was great to meet in person the other winners.  I enjoyed hearing about their backgrounds, goals, and reasons for entering the competition.  I’m the youngest of the winners so it also was nice to hear from colleagues at a similar career stage but maybe a bit more advanced in thinking about a job; for me right now everything outside of research just is a hobby.  But I am learning so much from so many different sources today that I will have to keep in mind in the years to come.  So far my big takeaway simply from being at the event is that you never should make assumptions about what you’ll learn from anywhere.  This conference has already been even more than I could have expected- and there are still 4 hours to go!

Check back in the coming days for a wrap-up post about the NatureJobs Career Expo, and also in a few weeks when my articles are live on the blog!