In the US graduate school system, students do “research rotations” in two or more labs to get a feel for the research and lab environment before committing to one lab for their thesis research.  For big schools, it can be hard to know where to start when choosing rotation labs.  Here are a few tips [...]

After picking a graduate program, the next big decision for a first-year graduate student is picking an advisor. One of the factors to consider in this decision is the academic age of the Professor and his or her lab. Do you want to work for the energetic Assistant Professor that joined the department last year, [...]

Being in graduate school can be tough – deadlines, professors, and experiments, can get you down.  But there are a lot of silver linings, too.   Here are a few of my favorite things about being a grad student this summer: Since it stays light so much later, I don’t mind working a few more hours; [...]

Graduate school (PhD training) is full of roadblocks and obstacles that threaten to hinder progress, but your major professor (PI) should not be one of them. If you are frustrated with your progress and your lab environment has become unbearable, don’t throw in the towel just yet! You may need to change labs. Finding the [...]

For beginning PhD students, few things evoke a sense of mild dread more than the Qualifying Exam (QE). QEs differ among the many schools and programs throughout the USA but generally, they act a turning point to advance a graduate student into PhD candidacy. In most other countries, there is no QE as such, but [...]

A major hurdle to getting an industry job in a new country is that many companies will only interview local candidates. Many job seekers think that if they are willing to pay to move themselves, this ceases to be a hurdle but, unfortunately, this is not true. Even if you are willing to pay their [...]

This may be a familiar story for some of you. I started my PhD program in Neuroscience full of hope and excited about where my future would take me. Like many of you, I assumed I would follow the traditional path – grad student postdoc, then tenure track faculty at a research university. Well, I [...]

Searching for a grad school? This 7 minute video with advice from from students, staff and faculty at Duke University might help.

In evaluating my own job prospects in a difficult job market and limited by personal circumstances that confine me to a very small region, I have been forced to widen my job search to related disciplines. There just isn’t a bounty of jobs in cell and molecular biology out there for young researchers. As a [...]

Last week, Sandra at Discovering Biology in a Digital World had some interesting thoughts on Life science PhD’s as industrial strength technicians. What I thought interesting was this bit: This wasn’t for a technician job, but a few years ago, I was in the position of hiring someone to help me on an education project. [...]