After his PhD, Alessandro Sorrentino was in love with Science and finished his post doc with a Nature paper. He had never planned to leave academia. Why should he? After all, his post doc went very well.… Read More “Getting to know yourself is essential for job seeking in the industry”
Thinking about the next step in his career, Marcus Buggert already contacted his future boss during his time as a PhD student and is today successfully building up his own group at Karolinska Institutet.… Read More “Having the inner drive”
Magnus Wetterhall was hooked on mass spectrometry during his master’s thesis and went on to conduct a PhD in analytical chemistry at Uppsala University. “I started my PhD in the late 90s when mass spectrometry was far from as developed as it is today. We were working on technical solutions and methods to enhance the analysis. This new field of research was very exciting, and I was eager to make new discoveries.”… Read More “Remember to bottle the grand feelings”
Helena Idborg has the best job in the world. She is assistant professor in rheumatology at Karolinska Institutet, where she works in a dynamic environment. “I get to change work every time a new project starts. There are always new challenges, new scientific questions, and new methods to learn. I cannot picture a better job”, says Helena.… Read More “Be good and always do your best”
Bastian Thaa, a Senior Medical Writer, got his PhD in Berlin, Germany, in 2011. After his PhD studies, Bastian did his first postdoc in the same laboratory and then did a second postdoc at Karolinska Institutet. He returned to Germany and tried to raise his own money for an independent research project but unfortunately failed. He came back to KI to finish a project that he had started. Publishing this work in PLoS Pathogens was the final achievement on his academic path before he left academia. He got a job in a medical communication agency in Berlin and has been a “Senior Medical Writer” for nearly two years now.… Read More “Use Your Expertise outside the Laboratory”
Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam, professor at the department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC) at Karolinska Institutet, started her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Oxford and continued as a postdoc at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. After her postdoc, she worked in a biotech company for 3 years and returned to academia afterwards. Now, her group focuses on the function of B lymphocytes and immunogenetics. She is one of the two researchers at Karolinska Institutet who received the ERC Advance Grant 2017 (granted in 2018) from the European Research Council.… Read More “Science takes you to new places”
Knut Steffensen left his position as Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet to work as Medical Advisor in a company. “Although many people think the opposite, after 20 years in academia I’m still connected to it and I think I could still go back, not necessarily in research. There’s need for industrial experience also in academia, and more doors are opened now than before”.… Read More “S.O.S. – Stability Over Status”
“Never forget the fun part of your work and choose the right mentor to work with.” This is the secret of Myriam Aouadi, who works as Principal Investigator at Karolinska Institutet since 2015. “At every step of my career I was about to choose between academia and industry: I was not seeing lots of opportunities in academia, while I really wanted a stable job and a good salary. But I still like academia better.”… Read More “Resilience, grit and passion: the key for success in academia”
Ulf Orrenius is now the CEO of a small start-up company with six employees trying to develop new technological solutions for the refinement of biofertilizers which are of better environmental sustainability. After being a technical specialist at the large international company Bombardier for nearly 18 years, his new job deals with a totally different area and tasks.… Read More “Life is a box of new things to be learned”
Lydia Kwak is now an associate professor in the Unit of Intervention and Implementation research at IMM, Karolinska Institutet. Her main research area is intervention and implementation research, with a focus on health promotion at workplaces.… Read More “My passion lies in solving real life problems”
An inside perspective on being a researcher and career advice
An inside perspective on being a researcher and career advice
Sharing PhD experiences across the University of Warwick and beyond
Karolinska Institutet Career Blog 