It was a strange feeling, completing my PhD defense. After immersing myself for years in a highly specific research area, the months leading up to my defense felt like a storm rolling in: my mind became increasingly clouded with technical details, emerging concepts in the field, and new hypotheses. And then in a flash, the defense was done. I left the room, the storm began to break, and the light poured in. I could perceive the world around me again, and the question I had buried to focus my attention on my defense re-emerged: what’s next?
A postdoctoral research position (i.e., postdoc) is a common next step for PhD holders, but lately considerable discourse has been sparked as academics have increasingly sought industry positions. Some have even declared the shift an exodus. The skewed supply-and-demand has spurred wage increases for postdoctoral researchers across several Canadian institutions, perhaps to woo PhD graduates back to the academic path. In parallel, a once booming biotech industry that offered a potential harbour for dissatisfied academics has now plateaued, even leading Dr. Michael May (President and CEO, CCRM) to seek help in forecasting the industry’s future by visiting a psychic.
In this tumultuous time, I turned to four PhD holders and leaders in the regenerative medicine field. Herein, Drs. Jennifer Moody (Head of External Innovation in Genomic Medicine, Danaher Corporation), Christine Genge (Associate Director, Global Talent Acquisition, STEMCELL Technologies), Janet Rothberg (Director, Process and Analytical Development, CCRM), and Nika Shakiba (Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia; Co-founder, Advice to A Scientist) provide their sage wisdom and opinions on the utility of postdoc positions as a next step after the PhD.
Clockwise from upper left: Drs. Jennifer Moody, Christine Genge, Janet Rothberg and Nika Shakiba weigh in on the utility of the postdoc experience.
“Should I do a postdoc?”
It’s a question that Genge gets asked frequently, and one that she says only the inquirer can answer. While common, postdoc experience isn’t always necessary, and there are no guarantees it will land a candidate their dream job. So Genge replies with another question: “What is your intention?”
A postdoc is an opportunity to learn new skills and pursue burning research questions. It can lead to academic growth, but it can also serve other functions such as the chance to establish new professional networks and to develop technical and/or behavioural skills.
According to both Genge and Rothberg, companies are typically seeking a certain skillset among applicants; whether those skills were acquired during a postdoc or graduate training is not factored into hiring decisions. In addition, there can be a substantial learning curve when moving from academia into industry, due to a greater emphasis on teamwork, stricter timelines, and different values around goal setting and achievement. For this reason, Rothberg stated that an individual may be able to progress more rapidly in their career advancement in industry compared to if the individual had spent those same years in academia. Thus, she opined: “For individuals who are aiming to break into industry, the sooner they are able to do that, the better.”
Of course, it can be difficult to decide on one’s intended career path after graduation, and all four professionals emphasized the importance of seeking advice from mentors and scheduling informational interviews to help determine career paths of interest. While navigating these conversations, Genge highlighted that a diversity of perspectives is important to circumvent information bias: “You can treat career development in the same way as a research project; [graduate students] are trained in the scientific method – what are the questions you’re asking and where are you getting the information from?”
The feeling of uncertainty in selecting a career path is one that Shakiba knows well. As she approached the end of her doctorate, Shakiba became increasingly anxious about her next steps. She started to engage in what she calls “bet-hedging,” a process whereby she tried to “open all the doors I can possibly think to open,” so that she could in future, “decide which one to walk through.” This mindset continued into the six-month period after her PhD, while Shakiba continued working in her PhD supervisor’s lab as she weighed options to pursue industry roles, go to medical school, or do a postdoc. After a long series of informational interviews and conversations with mentors, she ultimately decided to continue in academia. She set off on a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that eventually helped her land a faculty position at the University of British Columbia.
While Shakiba carefully calculated her next move following her PhD, Moody said she was never one to be married to a plan. She embarked on a postdoc, “mostly because I didn’t know what else to do,” she remarked candidly. At the time, Moody didn’t know what or how she could transition into industry, or even what that entailed. So, she moved to Sweden and spent 2.5 years there as a postdoc at Lund University. “It was just fun!” she said, and while she claims to not have known it at the time, “I now consider it one of the smartest things I did.”
Leveraging the postdoc experience
While their approaches differed, both Moody and Shakiba benefited from their postdoc experiences. As an avid planner, Shakiba holds that a postdoc should be, “a planned, strategic and rooted endeavour.” She recommends that PhD students considering postdoc opportunities engage in “soul-searching” to identify their career goals. These goals can then be overlaid with design parameters for the postdoc experience, including timelines and location, which should be decided based on a combination of personal and professional factors.
During her PhD and for six months afterwards, Shakiba’s soul-searching process involved investigating career interests, values and personal constraints. In doing so, Shakiba mapped out an action plan for her postdoc with the goal of opening her own academic lab. Her intention was to learn synthetic biology skills to combine with stem cell knowledge from her PhD to carve out an academic niche. As a back-up plan, she considered that her synthetic biology training would also make her attractive for industry positions. She selected the location (Cambridge, MA) for its proximity to her partner in Toronto, and she entered her postdoc with a “get in, get out mentality,” planning to spend only two years there for personal reasons. In addition, she communicated her action plan and goals to her postdoctoral supervisors who were willing to support her.
In Moody’s postdoc at Lund University, she was able to travel Europe and build memories with her partner, all while learning a new area of stem cell biology, gaining perspective on how research is conducted in a different part of the globe, and building an international network that she has maintained to this day. Now an eminent figure within the cell and gene therapy space, Moody transitioned from her postdoc into her first industry role as a Senior Scientist at STEMCELL Technologies and has remained in industry ever since. She says that the soft skills she developed during her postdoc, including through leading a team of graduate students, helped her transition into her first industry position. As an added bonus, Moody says others have viewed her foreign excursion to Sweden as a sign of her tenacity and grit, although she acknowledges this was not part of her initial motivation and recognizes that an international move is not feasible for everyone.
For individuals planning their academic exit, industry postdoc positions may have appeal. Genge commented that these experiences can help one learn the language of industry (for example, business jargon) and can provide readily transferrable skills, but these could also be acquired through other avenues. According to Moody, another strategy to increase an applicant’s chance of success for landing an industry role is to gain a valuable technical skill through postdoc training. The postdoc can be treated “as a growth opportunity to learn something that is a hot commodity and that is going to give you an edge,” she shared. In this regard, informational interviews are again useful to help identify “what is the hot skillset that’s rare?” said Moody.
Rothberg added that landing an industry role can be a matter of finding a position that is the right “fit,” both in terms of technical and interpersonal skills, and she emphasized that networking is often critical for getting the position. She believes that academic training can equip a prospective applicant with lots of transferrable skills, in particular, the ability to learn new concepts rapidly. The latter is attractive for industry roles where projects may change quickly and thus, Rothberg recommends that an applicant be open to learning concepts topics outside their previous research areas.
Academia, industry, or something else?
Shakiba recognizes that one cannot control all the variables when mapping out a career path. “A lot of things in life – but also professionally – happen serendipitously,” she commented. As an example, Shakiba met her future postdoc supervisors during a conference she attended while doing her PhD, and it is partly for this reason that she recommends embracing serendipity along one’s career journey.
Moody echoed this sentiment: “My career path was not a direct shot from my PhD. Not even close.” After all, the regenerative medicine field is rapidly evolving and new types of skills are likely to be needed as the field continues to develop. “I never would have envisioned the job that I’m in today; it didn’t even exist when I was finishing my postdoc,” Moody added.
While post-PhD career paths are often reduced to academic and industry categories, Shakiba reminds research trainees that there are many other possibilities, including freelance and entrepreneurial pursuits. “Some [careers] are more accessible because the paths have been paved,” Shakiba said, referring to academic and industry career trajectories. To this, she adds: “other paths have not been paved and if you want, you can pave your own.”
Kevin Robb
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