Government jobs and fellowships

Government science/lab jobs are those sponsored by government entities, organized at either the national or state level. See here for a Science magazine overview article. The below information is not a complete list, but hopefully can serve as a springboard for your own career investigations.

When we think about government jobs in science available to Biology PhDs, we might not consider those at the state level. Examples of these include the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, which provides " clinical, water, environmental, and industrial analytical services, specialized public health procedures, reference testing, training, technical assistance and consultation for private and public health agencies". The Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory serves vets across the state. Other government agencies with state-level offices are APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service), which acts more in a diagnostic role, and ARS (Agriculture Research Service).

On the National level, the CDC is a major employer of biology PhDs. They're headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, but positions are both in the US as well as international. Their career page is here. The NIH (career website here, with the NIAID job listing page here) has labs in several places across the United States. Helpfully, the NIH has a 'what jobs to apply for' page outlining position classification and salaries. An applicable-but-not-straightforward website for the NSF is here.

For federal employers, job applications are done through usajobs.gov. There you can upload your resume and apply for a variety of positions. UW-Madison Letters and Science Career Services has a federal jobs website and a knowledgeable adviser with whom you can schedule an appointment to discuss federal jobs and how to apply for them, including going over resumes and various forms. This comes strongly recommended.

There are several fellowships available for newly minted Biology PhDs. CDC Post-doctoral Research Fellowships are outlined here. These include the Emerging Infectious Diseases Postdoc Lab research program, which is a 2 year program, though it is on hiatus for 2015-2016. Other related fellowships are though through the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL). Another is the ASM/CDC Post-doc research fellowship program, which is a 2 year-program for research done at one of the CDC national labs (the deadline is January 15th). The ASM post-doc professional development page is here, and offers a lot of various planning and awards information links.

7/16/14 Science Writing/Communication event Recap

Did you miss our recent science writing/communication event?  Watch the videos!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

There were a few resources mentioned by the panelists.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison offers a few science writing classes, notably LSC 560, which is geared toward researchers. More information can be found through their website: http://lsc.wisc.edu/ .

The AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship is a highly competitive 10-week program to give participants an immediate introduction to reporting science news via internships at media organizations around the US. Please visit that website for more information: http://www.aaas.org/program/aaas-mass-media-science-engineering-fellows-program .

The National Association of Science Writers offers various resources including workshops for members. (However, membership requires a current member to sponsor you, but perhaps you might ask around and see if you know anyone who is a member?) Website is here: http://www.nasw.org/ .

Other science writing programs/resources that were mentioned include the MIT Grad Program in Science Writing ( https://sciwrite.mit.edu/ ); the UC Santa Cruz Science Communications Program ( http://scicom.ucsc.edu/ );  the American Medical Writers Association ( http://www.amwa.org/ ); and  Promega Connections, a science writers' blog ( http://www.promegaconnections.com/ ).

The single highest recommendation stated many times throughout the discussion is the importance of just writing and building a quality body of work. This might be done through contributing articles to your program's alumni newsletter, writing an article or two for the campus paper (for instance, the Daily Cardinal), or through a personal blog. It is strongly suggested to network with other writers and scientists through Twitter and other social media; science writers are easy to find and follow, and in general are a very friendly bunch.

The CMB Professional Development Committee would like to thank the Science Writer panelists for their time, good humor and advice - it's greatly appreciated!

Science Writing and Communication Event July 16th!

The CMB Professional Development Committee is pleased to announce our next event on Science Writing and Communications

When: July 16th 2014

Where: Room 1120 Biochemsitry Building (420 Henry Hall)

Our invited speakers are:

Kelly Tyrrell: Science Writer for University Communictations here at UW-Madison

Dr Jill Sakai: Communications Director at the Office of Sustainibility at UW-Madison

Ian Clark: Media Specialist for UW Hospitals and Clinics

Dr Bret Shaw: Associate Professor in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at UW-Madison

Ron Seely: Senior Leturer in the Department of Life Science Communication at UW-Madison and a Reporter and Editor for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Dr. Michele Arduengo: Senior Content Developer and Social Media Lead at Promega

Please feel free to invite other students you may know and spread the word. 

In order to properly prepare for the event please register no later than July 14th.

Register Here

Patent Law/WARF event, June 5th!

The CMB Professional Development Student Committee is thrilled to announce an upcoming WARF/Patent Law event on Thursday, June 5th! 

WARF/Patent Law Event:
Thursday, June 5th, 2014
Bock Labs Penthouse (1525 Linden Dr.)
12:00 p.m. (lunch provided)

Featured Panelists:

LauraOpperman, Ph.D. (CMB Graduate): Patent Scientist, Michael Best & Friedrich, LLP

Mark Staudt, Ph.D.: Licensing Associate, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

Victoria Sutton, Ph.D. (CMB Graduate): Intellectual Property Associate, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
Danielle Wampole, J.D.: Director of Scholarship Administration and Recruitment, UW-Madison Law School
SirWilliams, J.D.: Director of Admissions, UW-Madison Law School    

More information on WARF can be found at their website.

Please feel free to spread the word about this to students in other graduate programs across campus who might be interested in the event, and come ready to ask any questions you have for the panelists!

In order to properly prepare for the event, we ask that you register no later than June 3rd.
Register HERE.

Post Doc Panel summary and videos

The CMB Post Doc panel event, held on April 10th, 2014, was a success. Five post-doctoral researchers,  three scientists from academia and two scientists from industry, were on hand to answer questions from current UW-Madison biological sciences graduate students, and discuss how to pick a lab in which to do a post doc, funding questions, daily activities, and shed light on important skills used in their current positions.

If you were unable to attend the event but would like to hear what the panelists had to say concerning these topics, the session was taped and can be found below in three parts. (Please adjust your device's audio as necessary.)

Post doc panel video part 1

Post doc panel video part 2

Post doc panel video part 3

The CMB professional Development committee would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to the panelists, Marie Scwhinn, Megan Spurgeon, Ginger Pocock, Dominique Lisiero, and Andy Dixon for taking the time to participate, and for their thoughtful, practical, and sometimes very candid responses and discussions.

POST DOC PANEL EVENT!

Upcoming Event:

Post Doc Panel!

When: April 10th, 2014 (Thursday)
           4pm - Panel discussion (All are invited)
           5:15 - breakout session with pizza (CMB students only)
Where: Genetics/Biotech Auditorium

Please bring any questions you might have about being a post doctoral scientist for our highly qualified panel of both academic and industrial post docs.

Panelists include:

Andy Dixon: Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Promega
Dominique Lisiero: Postdoctoral Research Associate, UW-Madison (Shigeki Miyamoto Lab)
Ginger Pocock: Postdoctoral Research Associate, UW Morgridge Institute for Research
Marie Schwinn: Senior Research Scientist, Promega
Megan Spurgeon: Postdoctoral Research Associate, UW-Madison (Paul Lambert Lab)

We very much welcome all members of the UW Biological Sciences community for the panel discussion, but please note that the breakout session to follow is limited to graduate students in CMB.

In order to adequately prepare, we request that you register for this event.
Register here.

Versatile PhD website review

The following review is a very informative guest post by the highly regarded CMBer Adityarup (Rup) Chakravorty.

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A couple of months ago I was attending a talk by Dr. Alan Dove, the science journalist (you may be familiar with him in the context of the irrepressible podcast “This Week in Virology). He was talking about how more and more graduate students were pursuing “alternative” careers once they received their PhDs, and one thing he said struck me as being very logical, yet something that I had not thought about until then. He said, “The PhD was supposed to expand my options, not restrict them”, and that got me thinking harder about what career options I would have if I didn’t allow the doubt-clouds to obscure my job-search horizon. As I talked to people and trawled the internet for information about these “alternative” careers, I came across the website VersatilePhD.com. And it was good.  

Versatile PhD (just going to call it VPhD from now on) was started in 1999 by Dr. Paula Chambers while she was getting her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at Ohio State University. Initially it was geared towards students in the humanities and social sciences, but eventually expanded to include the STEM fields as well. As of July of this year the website has a stated goal of being of value to academics from the STEM fields as well. VPhD is focused on what are called “non-traditional” career choices for someone getting a PhD. What that means is that academic careers are not really explored in this website; instead you get information on a plethora of other possible careers such as consulting, IP law and science writing. 

VPhD has both a “Free Community” and a “Premium Content Subscription Service”. Luckily, as students at UW-Madison we do not have to worry if a particular section is freely available or not. The University subscribes to this website and so we get access to all the premium content that we might need. You can go here, and then click on the University of Wisconsin-Madison link. You will need to log in using your Wisc-ID and password, and then register at the Versatile PhD website (the first time only). Then, you are in.

While there are many valuable resources at VPhD, I would like to focus on three that I found to be very useful. Coincidentally – or maybe not – these three resources are also highlighted at the VPhD website.

1. Hiring Success Stories

These stories are a unique feature of VPhD and I love them because they are an incredible opportunity to get a personal and inside look at successful job searches. Graduate students and post-docs who have been hired write about their experience during the job hunting process. The success stories range from a neuroscientist being hired as a Program Administrator at a cancer non-profit to a molecular biologist hired by a technology licensing firm, and many others. These individuals share what position they were in right after their defending their dissertation, how they zeroed in on what they wanted to do, what steps they took to get their current job and they even include their cover letters, resumes and/or CVs! This resource provides a huge amount of information and guidance for anyone who is debating pursuing a so-called “alternative” career within the STEM fields.

 

2. Career Autobiographies

These autobiographies are similar to the hiring success stories. The difference is that the people writing these are more established in their field, and there’s more of a “story” feel to them. These stories have been quite useful to me as they chart the many twists and turns people’s careers take as they grown and learn about what they value and want to do with their lives.

3. Archived Panel Discussions [Career Panels]

Ever so often VPhD will host an online career panel where premium members (aka us) can ask questions of individuals who are pursuing a career in a particular field. The most recent STEM career panel was one discussing science writing and communication as a career. This is a field that I am interested in, and while I cannot tell you exactly what was discussed (The privacy rules of the website prohibit that) I can tell you that the discussion was very informative and useful to me. In the past, VPhD has organized online panel discussions about career choices such as entrepreneurship, patent law and science policy. These discussions are then archived so they continue to be accessible to any premium member. It has been quite useful – and admittedly somewhat reassuring – for me to be able to learn how other graduate students and post-docs have been able to progress into career paths that they found fulfilling and enjoyable. 

In addition to these resources there are also forums where members can discuss various professional, financial, emotional, personal, you-name-it-onal, issues in a supportive, informative and somewhat private environment (This is a premium feature so it adds a layer of privacy to the discussions). There is also a “Jobs” section at the website. I would highly recommend this portal to any CMB student who may be considering a career outside academia.

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(General disclaimer, neither CMB nor Rup are affiliated with VersatilePhD.com, this is done for the general good of grad student-kind). Thanks, Rup!