Published online 13 May 2009
Postdoc journal
A Cajun-style meeting
Bryan Venters
Bryan Venters is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Eukaryotic Gene Regulation at Pennsylvania State University, University Park.
Could attending an annual meeting help me decide on academia versus industry?
As a child growing up in Texas I used to spend my summers outdoors, sometimes plodding through creeks hunting for crayfish. I ate fried crayfish recently when I attended the annual meeting for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in New Orleans. It reminded me of my childhood even as I pondered my future.
The meeting represented a milestone for me. For the first time, I gave an oral presentation in addition to presenting a poster. I was both excited and anxious. But I had another agenda: I hoped that contacts I made would help me to decide whether I wanted to pursue a career in academia or industry.
Apparently the meeting organizers anticipated my burning question, offering a plethora of career-development workshops. In particular, a workshop on military scientists opened my eyes to intriguing jobs in the US Department of Defense. Another workshop discussed how to hunt effectively for jobs in the biotech industry. And I chatted with professors in my field — gene regulation — about their research; perhaps this could help open up future postdoc and academic job opportunities.
The Internet, of course, has excellent job-opportunity resources. But there is no substitute for meeting the people who have the types of jobs that interest me. Considering the slow US economy and the increasingly competitive PhD job market, I plan to keep all options on the table.
Postdoc Journal Keepers 2009
-
Julia BoughnerJulia Boughner is a postdoc in evolutionary developmental biology at the University of Calgary, Canada.
-
Bryan VentersBryan Venters is a postdoc in biochemistry and molecular biology at Pennsylvania State University.
-
Joanne IsaacJoanne Isaac was a postdoc studying the effect of climate change on biodiversity at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. She is now in the United States so that her husband can complete a postdoc.
-
Sam WalcottSam Walcott is a postdoc in theoretical biophysics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
