Science Careers Blog

While reviewing this week's article "Smarter Than the Average Desk" I had to ask what the term "digital natives" meant. The answer, once you hear it, is obvious: 'digital natives' are the youngish people who grew up surrounded by digital technology. In the article, we note that scientists, engineers, and educators are designing classroom technology that must meet the needs of these digital natives, who have been exposed to electronic gadgets and fast-paced multimedia since birth.

On his blog Zero Percent Idle, Tim Windsor elaborates on digital natives by excerpting from Don Tapscott's book Grown Up Digital. This new generation (or 'Net Generation,' as Tapscott says) wants freedom in everything they do, loves to customize and personalize their technology, and seeks entertainment in all aspects of life: work, education, and social life. These are the factors that those in education technology have to keep in mind when creating devices and learning technologies meant to captivate their audiences.

These characteristics will be on display as this generation enters the workforce; for example, this cohort is used to constant socializing and collaborating through social networking sites and online projects. Understanding these generational characteristics will be important for employers who want to recruit and maintain their workforce. We discussed these issues in last year's article, "The Truth About Gen Y."

By Kate Travis on January 5, 2009 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In an article titled "How to Fix Your Life in 2009," Wednesday's Wall Street Journal offers a list of helpful hints for 2009 covering personal finance, retirement planning, health care costs, and a few career issues. The piece has contributions from several of the Journal's writers and focuses on particularly troublesome issues related to the recession.

The career-related hints, however, seem to apply to any economic conditions. If your job hunt has hit a dead-end, Sarah Needleman recommends investing time in networking, attending business meetings and events, and fixing your Facebook or MySpace profile so it does not display inappropriate content. She also suggests creating profiles on more business-oriented networks (e.g. LinkedIn) and hiring a career coach to critique your resume and improve your interviewing skills.

(On the last point, we think you could save a little money and read Science Careers to get much of the same information. Admittedly, we're a little biased.)

Elsewhere in the article, Joseph De Avila tells how to get your name off embarrassing photos that others might post on Facebook and MySpace, and how to avoid it in the future.

Sarah Needleman returns later to advise readers how to update the resume they haven't touched for 5 years.  Start with an objective that summarizes the kind of job you are seeking, says Needleman. Then outline your work history, describing your contributions to each employer. Then have someone review and proofread the text. If you want to use an outside resume service, Needleman tells how to go about choosing one.

Other timeless advice in the column includes how to keep your produce from rotting too quickly (store fruits and vegetables separately) and what to do about those four-inch stiletto heels that are killing your feet.

By Alan Kotok on January 2, 2009 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) announced last week a £250 million investment in 44 doctoral training centers across Britain. The move will generate more than 2000 new Ph.D. students in areas such as climate change, sustainable energy, and global security.

Britain needs "scientists and engineers with the right skills to find answers to these [21^st century] challenges, build a strong economy, and keep us globally competitive," U.K. Minister of Science Paul Drayson said at a press conference announcing the program. "EPSRC’s doctoral training centers will provide a new wave of engineers and scientists to do the job."

The centers, which will be located at 22 universities across Britain, will include formal taught coursework designed to develop a broad set of skills combined with research in a multidisciplinary environment. Seventeen of the new clusters will be industrial training centers where students will also acquire business and entrepreneurial skills. 

The project is funded with £250 million from the EPSRC training and education budget. The centers will receive funding for 5 years, with a review after the first 3 years. Each center will take in around 10 students a year starting in 2009.

-Sara Coelho

By Kate Travis on December 8, 2008 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In early December, three German research organizations are offering information sessions in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles about research and research training in Germany. The sessions, called "Research Careers Made in Germany: Explore Opportunities in German Academia," will include representatives of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH).

The meetings are aimed at current and prospective Ph.D. students, postdocs, and faculty. The presenters will discuss Germany's Excellence Initiative to promote university research and support young scientists. The meetings will also cover the academic job market in Germany and opportunities for international collaboration.

Here's the schedule for the sessions ...

Washington DC:
  Monday, 1 December 2008
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
  German Historical Institute
  1607 New Hampshire Avenue NW
  Washington, DC 20009

San Francisco:
    Tuesday, 2 December 2008
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
    Goethe-Institut
    530 Bush Street
    San Francisco, CA 94108

Los Angeles:
    Thursday, 4 December 2008
6:30 PM to 8:30 PM
    Goethe-Institut
    5750 Wilshire Boulevard
    Los Angeles, CA 90036

To enroll in one of the meetings, send an e-mail to daadsf@daad.org by Monday, 24 November 2008. DAAD asks enrollees to put "Info Session SF," "Info Session LA," or "Info Session DC" in the subject line. More details are available on the DAAD-New York Web site.

By Alan Kotok on October 27, 2008 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Editor,

My name is Debora Keller, I am a 1st year PhD student in Molecular mechanisms of Cancer at the Federal Polytechnical School of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, and also member of the Young European Biotech Network (YEBN).

While reading your article on the "political scientist", I could not help but agree.  Yes, young scientists tend to focus on the scholarly output first (if not only), and yes, the advisors (aka "boss") also tend to see any other activity apart from being in the lab and doing experiments as a waste of time. And trying to communicate with the media or with policy makers is the worst of betrayals and will keep you from becoming an excellent scientist...or so it seems!

Scientists in general, be they younger or older, also tend to lament themselves when politicians reduce the funding, or pass laws that just make no sense, scientifically speaking! But how can these politicians take "informed" decisions when only 5% of them have a scientific background (at least in the European Commission, according to Zoran Stancic, deputy director general of the European Commission's Directorate General Research)? Can we expect the same politicians to take the right decisions to promote research and development, and life sciences in general?

During the EuroBio2008 conference (the european counterpart to BIO) that took place in Paris from October 7th-9th, 30 young scientists and students in Life Sciences from the Young European Biotech Network and coming from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Switzerland decided to get involved in the political process and engage with policy makers and stakeholders of Europe.
This event, bringing together researchers, industry and decision makers, was meant to discuss the future shape of the Life Sciences and Biotech sectors and issue a "Call for Change" report to Make Change Happen in a Europe that wants to become THE leader of a knowledge-based economy (according to the Lisbon Agenda).

The "rising generation" was key in bringing forth their vision of the future and debated passionately with international stakeholders on several hot topics such as "axe the CAP and spend money on R&D instead" or "nationalism is the greatest enemy of Biotechnology in Europe" during the House of Commons. They contributed actively with critical comments and concrete questions and proposals to the BioDialogues on Red, White and Green Biotechnology. After all, they would be working in these areas in the coming years and, as Professor Federico Mayor (former director general of the UNESCO) pointed out at the reporting plenary,  the future is indeed in the hands of the young generation!
The enthusiasm and dedication of these young scientists that dared to set aside for a few days their important scientific experiments and take vacation to attend EuroBio2008 and become "politically active" led to the comment by Eric Poincelet - Commissioner General of EuroBio2008" : "next time, you will not be thirty only, you will be one hundred"!

This comment is already a success in itself. It was definitely NOT a waste of time for these young scientists to participate to these debates, and the appreciation for this will be measured by the outcome of the conference, the "Call for Change" report, as our YEBN chairman Francesco Lescai pointed out: “The YEBN contribution to EuroBio2008 was an example of the fresh inputs these kind of discussions need most: our students and young researchers were capable to break the schemes of the discussions and highlight some critical points to be addressed with high priority. Everyone seemed to appreciate: we will be able to measure this appreciation with the number of suggestions that will actually appear in the Green Paper to be delivered to the European Commission".

So, as stated in Peter Fiske's article, when "many members of the scientific community retreat to the comfort of their laboratories or lecture halls" we believe that it is the "Science's next wave" that has to take a step forward and make their voice heard. We encourage our young scientists that pursue excellence in their research to become "political YOUNG scientists" and Make Change Happen!

Yours sincerely,

Debora Keller
Young European Biotech Network (YEBN)
Communication Task Group Leader

By James Austin on October 14, 2008 6:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you're in England, tune in to BBC4 at 9 p.m. on Monday for the first of a four-part series called "The Story of Maths." The show is the creation of Oxford University mathematics professor Marcus du Sautoy, who is something of a national celebrity when it comes to, well, math celebrities. My colleague Elisabeth Pain wrote about a talk du Sautoy gave at the Euroscience Open Forum in July, where he discussed his career path and devotion to communicating science. Here is du Sautoy's summary of the four episodes in the series.

By Kate Travis on October 5, 2008 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

By Elisabeth Pain on September 25, 2008 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The 'researcher' profile applies to many jobs that don't actually involve research, said Andrew Dearing, secretary general of the European Industrial Research Management Association, at Tuesday's plenary session at the Vitae Researcher Development Conference in London. Of course, this statement is one of the very reasons Science Careers exists -- to highlight the breadth of job opportunities open to someone with research experience.

I talked to Dearing afterward and asked what jobs he'd include on that list. He gave his personal history as an example: He had jobs in academic research and industrial research, but then moved out of research into science policy and the non-profit sector. "When I was doing my Ph.D., I didn't know any of these options existed," he said. "I think most people don't."

Other jobs he'd add to that list include product support, product development, and jobs that involve figuring out how to provide a service with a particular technology. "It's about extending from what you know into a broad range of careers," he said.

He went on to note that there are two characteristics that will NOT help you land a job in a non-research company: a lack of confidence, and overconfidence. He said many young researchers don't appreciate that they have the skills to do something completely different. On the other hand, other researchers are overconfident that the specialized skills they have are the only ones that matter.

The main point: If you've decided a research career is not for you, there are plenty of jobs that will make use of your skills and, in fact, that need your skills. We've highlighted many such jobs on Science Careers, but for one example, check the Career Magazine next Friday for a special package on working as a program officer.

 

By Kate Travis on September 9, 2008 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The research world has become one of hyperevaluation, said Professor Sir Richard Brook, director of the Leverhulme Trust, who spoke today at the Vitae Researcher Development Conference in London. Researchers can be obsessed with measures such as their university's Shanghai Jiao Tong ranking, their personal h-index, and journal impact factors.

These measures are useful, but what truly matters is a researcher's passion for his or her research, Brook said. "We're putting too much faith in quantified measures of professionalism," he said. When researchers approach the Leverhulme Trust for a grant, he said, the most important thing is the researcher's passion for the subject -- not how prominent the university or the researcher's citation rate calculated out to three decimal places. These evaluations are not genuine measures of quality, he said: "Please emphasize the research rather than the metrics."

The comments were well received by the nearly 500 people in the audience, most actively engaged in postgraduate and postdoc training and advising. During the discussion Brook and fellow panel members pointed out that some metrics will always be important. For example, the government will always want to know that their research investment has been well spent, and quantitative measures are probably the best way to do that.

By Kate Travis on September 8, 2008 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On Thursday, the European Research Council issued its second call for starting grants. As we've mentioned before, these are hefty (up to 2 million Euros for up to 5 years) grants for young scientists of any nationality with 3-8 years of post-Ph.D. experience who are working, or who will move to work, in Europe. This call will have the same budget as the first round -- about 290 million Euros -- so competition will likely remain stiff; only about 3% of 9167 applicants got funded last time.

Given the flood of applications the ERC received for the first call, the organization has decided to set deadlines by subject area for the second call: October 29 for the physical sciences and engineering, November 19 for social sciences and humanities, and December 10 for the life sciences. The newly updated ERC Grant Schemes Guide for Applicants notes that there are other changes to the application process as well; be sure to read the guide closely.

At the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) last weekend, I heard a couple of grantees from the first round of starting grants talk about their experience. "The application is part of the scientific process," said Jan Eeckhout, an economist who's moving from the University of Pennsylvania to Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona for his starting grant. "One-sixth of my proposal was trashed immediately." The feedback you get on your proposal can guide your research, he added.

For some advice on what makes for a good starting grant proposal, check out Elisabeth Pain's article, Getting to the Top of a Big Pile.

Also, deadlines for Marie Curie actions are rapidly approaching. The deadline is August 19 for Intra-European Fellowships for Career Development (call for applicants), International Incoming Fellowships (call for applicants), and the International Outgoing Fellowships for Career Development (call for applicants).

The deadline is October 8 for the International Reintegration Grants (call for proposals) and the European Reintegration Grants (call for proposals).

At this link, you can find an overview of the Marie Curie program under Framework Program 7, and check out the network for current and former fellows with the Marie Curie Fellows Association.

By Kate Travis on July 26, 2008 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)