Hitchhiker's cliff notes to a career in neuroscience 2

I realize in many of my posts I seem to lash out at something. Often its a piece of news from the realm of higher education, but recently it was the seemingly glib treatment that researchers laid out a career guide in neuroscience. They began by glossing over the oversupply of trainees and the intense level of competition both within academia and in the careers that neuroscience trained scientists could easily transition to outside of academia. They then went on to say that there are four things you need to succeed in attaining your own neuroscience research lab within academia that I summarize as, mobility- you have to go where the jobs are, networking - you need plenty of connections to succeed through the backchannels and other paths outside the traditional structures, build your CV - you need to publish a lot in high impact journals in order to chase your own independent funding, and finally engage in neuroscience and the next generation - you have to like what you do and help others like it too.

In my previous post I gave my impression of what a career guide to becoming a research professor actually looks like. Here I'll give another impression expanding the guide to wanting to work in academia more broadly.

1. Engage in neuroscience and the next generation
2. Taking your time
3. Train broadly (yet also specifically)
4. Networking and saying yes (and no strategically)
5. Reflecting and Introspecting

1. Engage in neuroscience and the public/next generation
Before starting down the path towards a career in neuroscience you really have to love the topic and the process. The reason that people with perfect GPAs and GREs but no research experience don't get into graduate school is because without evidence of having gone through the research experience and wanting more, its a gamble whether this intelligent person has the qualities that make them a good scientist. Much of the research process is a grind and filled with ambiguity and failure. You have to enjoy both being by yourself and at times with a lot of other people. You have to enjoy gray areas and trying to sort through tons of conflicting information. You have to go through the grind for few rewards, internal or external. Graduate school is hard and probably becomes nearly impossible if you don't enjoy the topic that you're studying.

Sometimes when you're down in your silo working away you can forget about the outside world. In order to have a future for you to be able to keep doing your work, its necessary to share you process with the public and school-aged children so that they can be excited and understanding of what you're doing. Without public support there will be no academia and no support for research.

2. Taking your time
In the second half of college as students start to think about what they want to do in the future, sometimes I hear students say that they're just going to go to graduate school because they're not sure what they want to do. It scares me to hear that because it seems like they're skipping step 1 above. While I realize that the road to your first position as a tenure-track is a long one (2 years masters, 4 years PhD, 2 years post-doc), it seems that most people who are in the position of giving grants and hiring professors see trainees as fine wines or spirits that need years of aging before they're ready. That means that in general many successful people put in time as a research assistant/lab manager after college and maybe pursue a tangentially related masters and maybe complete multiple multi-year post-docs. Also, within each stage the general theme seems to be hurry up and wait, where you rush to do something but then you have to wait for someone or something. Most deadlines are not even set in stone, so by taking your time to do things well, one time you can save yourself time.

3. Train broadly (yet also specifically)
The triumvirate of academic assessment includes research, teaching and service. If we visualize that triumvirate as a pyramid in terms of the expectations, the bottom of the pyramid is research with teaching in the middle and service at the peak. No matter the path you want to take in neuroscience either inside or outside academia, the foundation of your training is in research. Even if you're looking to train towards becoming a teaching focused professor or a non-profit worker, your increase in effort or experience in teaching or service cannot come at a cost to your research. Graduate schools are now recognizing that there are not enough academic positions available for all of the graduate students who are there (either as cheap researchers or cheap teachers) and have begun to provide training opportunities outside research. As much as a PhD is a ticket towards a research, teaching or service oriented career, the specific skills that you gain as a researcher set you up for success in all of the other realms.

4. Networking and saying yes (and no strategically)
Meeting people both formally and informally in academia is one of the most important aspects of success. The more people you know the better your chance to find out about opportunities that are either not advertised or only offered to select people. Knowing people can help you find jobs, publish in special issues or edited books, speak at conferences and be invited to contribute to grants or new companies. In order to meet people, you have to be open to experiences and be willing to say yes to almost every opportunity. Early in your career its important to say yes to basically every opportunity while keeping in mind that not all of them will work out. After establishing yourself, then you can start to say no strategically while at the same time reaching out to others to make connections.

5. Reflecting and Introspecting
The path to a career in academia is a long one with a number of built in check points. A number of people fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy and stick with the career long after they should. There are both formal and informal requirements depending on your career path and career stage that allow people to check-in and see where they compare. Its difficult if not near impossible to give up on something after putting 20 years into it. Its also especially frustrating when you feel that things outside your own power and effort are the reasons that your (in)formal requirements don't meet up. The path is long and life and career circumstances can change quite quickly, but by following the first four pieces of advice you shouldn't have much difficulty pivoting your career focus at any stage.

The Hitchhiker's cliff notes to a neuroscience career

Source

Both my wife and I are on a galaxy wide trek in attempt to find our path in the neuroscience academic field. While unfortunately our treks have taken us to different zip codes for another year, Neuron published a guide in a recent NeuroView to help us make sure that we're on the correct path. Interestingly, since "throngs" of scientists and aspiring scientists enter the field each year with no less that 1.7 million individual scientists worldwide actively publishing on the brain and behavior since 1996, as the authors state, "not all of these young researchers can make an academic career in neuroscience."

The authors discuss instruments and initiatives that they feel can help people (with a focus on European researchers) progress through early- and mid-career steps:

1. Mobility
2. Networking
3. Build a CV and Seek Advice
4. Enjoy Neuroscience and Engage the Next Generation

The authors are describing a career trajectory towards running your own research lab at a research university, which is important to keep in mind as I revise their suggestions:

1. Publish early, publish often, publish in "glamour" journal
2. Repeat

If you want a research career in neuroscience you need to start publishing in undergraduate with at least a first author publication from your senior thesis. You then likely need to get a "glamour" first author publication in your masters or first year of PhD so that in your second year you can obtain fellowship funding (e.g. NSF, NIH, CIHR/NSERC) from a national funding source. Then through the rest of your PhD you need to publish first author "glamour" articles and use your "networking" and "mobility" and collaboration to beef up your CV with co-authorships in specialized and field-specific journals. With over 10 publications in your PhD you can then find a post-doc and maybe even bring independent post-doctoral funding with you where ever you go (remember mobility means you get to go where ever). More "glamour" first author pubs and at least 20 author publications before you're ready to go on the market, you better make sure that you were PI or co-PI on a medium or large grant before attempting to apply for jobs.

I think any good travel guide not only includes the things you should do, but also the things that you should avoid, the "tourist traps" if you well. So I''d like to hear or see the things that young scientists should not do if they want to find a career in academia. I'd also like to see a guide that goes beyond the research lab PI role to encompass other paths in academia.

Education and Neuroscience: Friends, foes or something in-between?

Three years ago I took a course on service-learning and developed a psychology service-learning course where psychology students would work with local primary and secondary school teachers to implement the latest findings from psychology and neuroscience in their courses. In association with this proposed class I also proposed a research study in which I would assess the neuroscience literacy of teachers and their willingness to learn more about the latest in psychology and neuroscience research and how it could interface with various aspects of the classroom experience. This project was heartily endorsed and approved by the University of Iowa IRB but then soundly rejected by the Iowa City School Board.

At the end of the course, for my final project I wrote a paper that I later submitted to a special issue on ways neuroscience can contribute to education that was rejected. I rewrote the paper and submitted it it to a neuroscience and education journal and was rejected for the neuroscience being to simplified. I rewrote the paper and submitted it to a broad community engagement journal and was rejected with the thought that the community wouldn't want to know about the topic. I then most recently rewrote the paper and submitted it to a higher education and community engagement journal and was again rejected (after being in review for 9 months!) and sent back very few comments where the reviewers appeared to misunderstand the what type of article it had been submitted as.  With these three years of experiences, although I see the relationship between neuroscience and education as potentially fruitful and mutually beneficial, I don't think that sentiment is shared in either field.

Source

Recently the Guardian touched on the contentious relationship between neuroscience and education. The article beings by noting the number of nonsense neuroscience claims that make their way into the educational system. Quickly though it notes a program called, "I'm a scientist - Get me out of here" which is a public engagement initiative connecting scientists with the public, in particular children. I'm glad to see this program mentioned in the context of bringing neuroscience and education together. It tells me that I am on the right path trying to bring neuroscience and education together and taking the right tact by brining educators into the mix early, trying to see what they want to know about neuroscience rather than just telling them that right-left brain teaching and multiple intelligences are nonsense. Once I settle somewhere permanently I'll be able to form the long-term reciprocal relationships necessary to carry out this work.