Name: Monica Alandete-Saez
Job: Intellectual Property Analyst at PIPRA
Source: eLife [original post from June 2016]
Excerpt:
What did you love most about academic research?
I loved the creative and talented atmosphere of the lab, and the excitement I felt before knowing the results of an important experiment. In retrospect though, I wouldn’t have spent four years working as a postdoc. I would have made the transition out of the academic environment earlier.
Why?
My time as a postdoc didn’t add any valuable skills that I hadn’t already developed during my PhD. I think that if you’re interested in pursuing a non-academic career, you should aim to get your PhD (and the advanced technical training and professional maturity that it develops) and then transition immediately after.
Why did you stay in research for so long?
Rather than choosing to stay in academia, I just followed the “expected” and most common steps after you finish a PhD, and so I did a postdoc. It was during my second postdoc that I realized I didn’t want to stay. Then, through the university careers service, friends and my own searches I found out about career paths I wasn’t aware of in grad school, including of course intellectual property management and technology transfer.
Read the rest at eLife.
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