Tag: Careers

Guest Post by Rob Last, Michigan State University, ASPB President. Co-authored by Laura Grapes, Bayer Crop Sciences, and Andrew Hanson, University of Florida. We continue the experiment of expanding participation in ASPB started with the last President’s Letter (http://bit.ly/SecuringFuturePl...).…

Guest Post by Gaurav Moghe The two-body problem has been a classical mechanics problem in physics since at least Newtonian times. However, the first suggestion of Google’s autocomplete feature is “two-body problem academia”, with at least the first 90+ results being very relevant to the topic.…

Guest post by Paul Sokoloff, Senior Research Assistant, Botany, Canadian Museum of Nature Astragalus, the milkvetch genus, is a massive group of plants in the pea family that has diversified into over 3000 species, which can be found in various habitats across the northern hemisphere.  Its also a…

Guest post by George Kantor, Senior Systems Scientist, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University This much is a truism: a successful career in any interdisciplinary field requires collaboration with people from different disciplines. It is more difficult to define what skills are needed to be…

As part of our continuing series on future careers in plant science I spoke to Dr. Ran Chao, Co-founder of LifeFoundry, a startup company aiming to expedite research and reduce cost in synthetic biology, about making the transition from graduate research to entrepreneur and what he looks for in new…

Guest post by Christy Gault My interest in agricultural biotechnology began in an unlikely place. In an undergraduate Wetland Ecology course, we took a field trip to a small patch of wilderness in rural upstate New York. Canoeing past dense vegetation under a brilliant blue sky, I felt a sense of…

How the power in knowing one's self can positively shape a happy and fruitful career-life trajectory Guest post by Emily Wrenbeck I was fortunate to have an excellent graduate school experience in the Chemical Engineering Department at Michigan State University. Under the mentorship of Tim Whitehead,…

Guest post by Guillaume Beaudoin, Scientist, Conagen Inc. About one year has gone by since I had begun seriously looking for a job to end my postdoctoral experience at the University of Florida. I had read all the doom and gloom: how the ratio of the number of faculty positions to PhDs is forever…