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Career streams in academia: Who foots the bill?
After Jonathan’s last post on introducing career streams into academia, I was reminded of a question that a colleague of mine once asked: “If so many non-academic fields need highly trained PhDs, why...
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Engaging early – changing direction before graduation
In my last post, I urged non-traditional sectors to engage motivated PhD students early in their careers as direction into non-academic careers is sorely lacking. Until coming to the U.K., I had never...
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Quarterly summary: Transition success
Quick hit: Beth forwarded something interesting to me in a follow up to my slightly controversial critique of the Three Minute Thesis article – Jorge Cham of PhD Comics fame has just launched a two...
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Novel ideas for the biomedical research workforce, anyone in Canada listening?
Earlier this summer, two major reports were released from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences. Beryl Lieff Benderly offers an excellent, though slightly...
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Come on NSERC, really – you’ve completely missed the point…
I always knew that bad news was released on Fridays in the summer… but last Friday was pretty ridiculous. NSERC has just announced that in order to improve its success rate (just clocked at 7.8% in...
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A new way to help you choose your science-related career
A few weeks back, the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars circulated a newly released online tool from the AAAS called my Individual Development Plan (or myIDP). I’ve finally had a chance to...
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The state of science in Canada: Not bad, but the devil’s in the details
Last week, the Council of Canadian Academies released their The State of Science and Technology in Canada 2012 report and trumpeted the success of Canadian science and technology over the last six...
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Quarterly summary: A bit of a delay, still dreaming big though!
This quarter has been a very busy one for both Jonathan and me. Unfortunately from my end, this meant that the scienceadvocacy.org resource site is not yet live. Things are starting to take shape and...
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CIHR announces its third set of Science Policy Fellowships
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research have announced their October 2012 call for applicants to the Science Policy Fellowship Program. As in years prior to this one, it seems that the fellowships...
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Inaugural meeting of Canadian Postdoctoral Administrators: will fanfare =...
This past weekend, I attended the inaugural meeting of the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Administrators in Ottawa. As with most inaugural meetings, there was a combination of excitement and...
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The importance of leaving academic science on good terms
Over the years, our site has had many articles on two major themes: the education and training of scientists, and the effective transfer of knowledge between academic science and other sectors (e.g.,...
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Creating scientists, not science, is the key to productive universities
My last post generated a fair amount of commentary both here on this site and on Reddit. It seems that many people have experienced exactly what NIH Director Francis Collins described: they’ve been...
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Planning Ahead: How many of you are there and who will pay you?
I just finished a bit of a marathon read which gives advice to early career researchers on how to best situate themselves for success in research. The guide, Charting a course for a successful...
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Fewer postdocs with higher salaries? Hold your horses!
There has been a lot of rumbling over the last few years about how poorly compensated postdoctoral fellows are and how the system churns out too many doctoral students. Many have suggested that the...
View ArticleTri-Councils should learn from EMBO fellowships
People often ask me what I would do if I were in charge of fellowships for Canadian trainees. In response, I will often slip into my usual refrain of making investment in people the basic tenet of any...
View ArticleTo close the gender gap, make other jobs sexy
When I was in the early stages of my undergraduate degree, I thought long and hard about doing an MBA in combination with science. It seemed to me that the sector was underdeveloped in Canada and good...
View ArticleQuarterly summary: Crowdfunding science and postdoctoral advice
Our readers might be interested to know that the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars initiated and completed its 2013 survey of Canadian postdocs and had an incredible 1,800 responses. The...
View ArticleIncredible promotion tool: student and postdoc outcomes
Last month, I found the best “come to my lab” sales pitch. After my jaw was set back into place at the numbers, I soon realized the broader implications of such a web page and its power as a general...
View ArticleImpact factor ‘eligibility window’ skews the system
For the past year, I have been sitting on the publications committee for a society-run journal and in the journal’s quest to improve its impact factor (IF), it became clear to me that one of the...
View ArticleOur panel this week at the Canadian Science Policy Conference
This Thursday, I’ll be attending the Canadian Science Policy Conference in Toronto to run a session on the training the next generation of scientists. The session promises to be discussion-based and I...
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