Career Paths

Mandy
Kendrick

What makes you tick?

At the end of your work day, what motivates you to set up that extra experiment, type one more paragraph, or stay alert and active in that late-afternoon meeting?  If you are wired similarly to my husband, then it is probably the paycheck.  Salary, bonuses, and pay increases are means for ...


Wenny
Lin

Traveling on the government’s dime

As a Cancer Prevention Fellow at the NCI, I have a generous $3000 “travel and training budget” for attending conferences to present research results, taking training and academic courses, as well as purchasing textbooks that are pertinent to my research. Many labs or research groups at the NIH p...


Thomas Patrick
Chuna

Objectionable Objective Statements Can Cause Objections To Your Candidacy!

This time around, we are going to discuss objective statements on your CV. Depending on who you listen to, you either need them, or you don’t need them, and everyone has a differing opinion with facts and figures to validate their opinions. I happen to like objective statements, and I se...


Stephanie
Yeung

How To Evaluate A Job Offer

The current economic downturn and high unemployment rate have, no doubt, created the common mind-set of “If you have a job offer, don’t be picky. Just take it.” These are the words of a friend of mine when she got an offer at a well-known biotech company recently. She felt that she was not in ...


Maida
Taylor

Keeping Ken and Barbie Out of Jail

I have worked in medical affairs in the pharmaceutical industry for over 10 years now and I often get asked at a dinner or cocktail party, “Just what is it you do?”  That question was a lot easier to answer when I was a practicing obstetrician.  Everyone understands delivering babies a...


Jason
Sherwin

The search for missing information

This posting is about ‘the search for missing information.’ In particular, we compare a TED Talk by Eli Pariser on the ‘filter bubble’ to the neuro-engineering work I do on what is called cortically-coupled computer vision (C3Vision). In Mr. Pariser’s talk, he warns of the potential danger...


Kate
Sleeth

National Postdoctoral Appreciation Week

The most important event for Postdoctoral fellows is fast approaching.  I am talking about National Postdoc Appreciation of course.  This is where postdocs and other researchers celebrate the contribution postdocs make to science, both here in the US and worldwide.  The National Postd...


Stephanie
Yeung

Can You Hear Me Now?

The Jerk GapRecently, I heard on KQED’s Forum about the finding that aggressive men (and women) earn almost $10,000 more a year than nice guys (listen to the story). It brought back so many memories that I have to share my journey from being a nice-yet-often-ignored girl in my first-year graduate ...


Mandy
Kendrick

Resume or CV?

Postdoc positions within the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, like many other jobs, have taken a hit with the latest budget news.  The option to extend USDA postdocs past their two-year appointments is no longer available—at least for now.  So, as I draw near the end of my second year, I have ...


Fatos
Kopliku

My first blog entry for Bio Careers

Hello everyone. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Fatos I am from Albania, a small country about the size of Maryland. I graduated from the Molecular Biology and Genetics Department of Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. Later I worked in the Natural History Museum in London.