Biophysical Society Bulletin | January 2024

Career Development

Out of Academia and Back Many newly graduated PhDs decide to leave the traditional academic track for another type of job, be it in pharma/bio tech, government, teaching, or publish ing, just to name a few. Some continue

Apart from bench research, there are many other types of jobs in academia where the principles you learn in the private sector would be very useful. These include, but are not limited to, academic administration, scholarly communications, university publishing (often part of the university library), and technology transfer. Explore your options and keep an open mind! — Molly Cule Event Teaches PUI Professors about Useful Software Platform

their career paths within the work environment they chose, while others find their way back to academia. You might wonder how difficult it would be to go back to an academic job after be ing in the private sector or the government or somewhere else. Good news! You can go back. And you will find that the skills and experience you acquired during your time away are very useful in the academic setting, even more so than you imagined. One of my colleagues has an interesting and very convoluted career path. When she started her career, she assumed she would always stay in academia. She got her PhD from a large, well-respected institution, did a postdoc at another top-tier school, and managed to land two faculty positions. She was happy (enough) with her career, perhaps in part because she didn’t know much about other options, ones that don’t involve being at an academic institution. Then she noticed an ad in a scientific journal that a large publisher was looking for people with advanced degrees, no publishing experience necessary. My colleague applied on a whim and ended up getting a job as an editor, working with scientists on books and journals. Ultimately, it turned out to be a fantastic career choice for her. While she was never truly passionate about bench work, she really liked science and this job allowed her to able to contribute to science without actually doing research. Plus, she learned a lot about business, about how to deal with budgets, reading profit and loss statements, and to understand terms such as top and bot tom lines, financial accountability, and return on investment. As my colleague moved up the ranks in the publishing industry, she found that she was getting further and further away from the science. She missed the hands-on content and publishing work. So, she decided to leave her job and just do contract work. Ultimately, one of the contracts was with her alma mater, but in academic publishing, not in bench research. That eventually led to a full-time job at that university, managing a team of edi tors and instructional designers. The time in the private sector taught my colleague a lot about the business world. She often uses the same guiding principles in evaluating projects, devel oping workflows, and navigating organizational changes. She came full circle, returning to her academic roots and even at the same institution where she started her career, in a completely unexpected and very satisfying way, doing the type of work she loves.

In a prior primarily undergraduate insti tution (PUI) networking event summary, some of the challenges and potential solutions facing todays PUI professors were discussed. In an aim to expand the resources that these professors have available to them, Adam Schuyler , assistant professor at the University of Connecticut, was kind enough to present a tutorial and

Adam Schuyler

Q&A session about NRMbox specifically tailored to PUI pro fessors at the most recent event. Developed by the National Center for Biomolecular NMR Data Processing and Analysis, NMRbox provides a comprehensive and integrated software platform that includes a variety of tools and software packag es for processing, analyzing, and interpreting data, and is ideal for biophysics research and education. NMRbox is completely free and can give each user access to a personal virtual desktop along with powerful, cloud-accessed computational resources. However, while extra processing power will always be useful, the heart of its appeal for re searchers in PUIs lies in its inclusive access to a diverse array of programs. The platform's arsenal includes, among other things, free access to powerful tools like MatLab, open ing educational avenues without the burden of prohibitive software costs. This can enable undergraduates to delve into complex structural investigations and can alleviate many of the issues that researchers face regarding replication in all computational fields. Additionally, NMRbox provides a wealth of educational resources that professors can utilize in both the classroom and the lab. These tools can help facilitate a smooth onboarding process, reducing the strain on labs that need to train new undergraduates each year. We hope that this information can help other PUI professors, and we look forward to exploring further resources in future

January 2024

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