The Struggling Scientists

Leaving academia can be intimidating. You've spent years training as a researcher, but what jobs can you actually do outside academia? And how do you even get started? 🎓

Welcome to the first episode of After Academia: Coffee With…, our new interview series where we explore different careers beyond academia, together with the people who've made the transition. ☕

In this episode, we're joined by Maria, a Senior Lab Operations Scientist in the pharmaceutical industry, who shares how she transitioned from academia to industry after her PhD.

We talk about what her job actually involves, how she found her first opportunity in industry, which skills from her PhD turned out to be valuable, and what surprised her most about working outside academia.

Maria also shares practical advice for PhD students and postdocs considering a similar career change, including how to approach networking, what to put on your LinkedIn profile, and why understanding the pharmaceutical industry can make finding the right job a lot easier.

Whether you're actively planning to leave academia or simply curious about what else is out there, we hope this conversation helps you explore your options! 🙂

⏰ Chapters

00:00 🎓 Why transitioning from academia to industry is difficult
00:25 ☕ Meet Maria: What does a Senior Lab Operations Scientist do?
03:08 💼 A typical working day in the pharmaceutical industry
05:26 🔄 Why Maria decided to leave academia
07:00 🔎 Finding an industry opportunity through a fellowship
09:07 🧠 Transferable PhD skills that are valuable in industry
11:37 📚 Industry fellowships, training and leadership skills
15:33 🤔 What Maria had to unlearn after her PhD
18:02 🏢 The biggest surprises of working in industry
20:24 💡 What she wishes she'd known before applying
23:54 🚀 Practical advice for PhDs looking for industry jobs
25:59 🧪 What is GMP, and why is it useful to know?
29:08 ☕ Final thoughts and a small coffee confession

🔬 About After Academia: Coffee With…

There are many career paths beyond academia, but it isn't always easy to understand what these jobs actually involve or how to get into them.

In this series, we sit down with former academics working in different fields to talk about their career transitions, their day-to-day work, the skills they use, and the advice they would give to researchers considering a similar path.

Our goal is to make exploring careers beyond academia just a little bit less of a struggle.

💬 Which career should we explore next?

Are you considering leaving academia? Or have you come across a job outside academia that sounds interesting, but you have absolutely no idea what someone in that position actually does?

Let us know in the comments! We'd love to hear your suggestions for future guests and careers to explore.

🔔 Subscribe to The Struggling Scientists for more career conversations, research tools, and practical advice for PhD students and researchers.

🌐 Find more from The Struggling Scientists:
https://thestrugglingscientists.com

#LeavingAcademia #PhDCareers #IndustryCareers

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ResearchRabbit gives researchers a different way to explore scientific literature by visualising the connections between papers, citations and authors. 🐇🔎

In this walkthrough, we show you how we use ResearchRabbit to explore a research field. We start with just one paper and gradually build a collection, before showing how you can start with an existing Zotero library or BibTeX file and explore a much larger body of literature. 📚

We also look at how ResearchRabbit can help you discover connected papers, identify influential research, explore author networks and find connections that can be difficult to spot in a traditional list of search results. 🕸️

🐇 Try ResearchRabbit
https://thestrugglingscientists.com/ResearchRabbit

Chapters
00:00 👋 Introduction
00:56 🐇 How ResearchRabbit changes literature discovery
01:51 📄 Starting with one paper
03:58 📚 Starting with Zotero or an existing collection
04:31 🕸️ Understanding the literature map
05:41 🔎 Refining your literature search
06:20 ⚠️ Research alerts and retracted references
06:49 👩‍🔬 Exploring authors and collaborations
07:23 💭 Final thoughts and takeaways

📚 More research tools and tutorials:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz6aXl5V5V77ziE8Leh9IuMB4yY4m0Yjq&si=OaQLB5nKrTQdyNwJ

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SciSpace has become much more than a tool for chatting with PDFs. In this episode of the PhD Toolkit, we put it through a real research workflow to find out whether it actually deserves a place in your research toolkit.

We test how well it helps with literature discovery, understanding papers, note-taking, writing and overall workflow before scoring it on our PhD Toolkit leaderboard.

⭐ Try SciSpace

This video isn't sponsored, but we do use affiliate links. If you decide SciSpace is right for you, using our link helps support the channel at no extra cost.

🔗 Affiliate link:
https://thestrugglingscientists.com/Scispace

🎁 Discount codes:
JNSS20 = 20% off monthly plans
JNSS40 = 40% off annual plans, best for heavy users or systematic reviews
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Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:10 Setting up the test

01:51 Finding papers

04:56 Understanding papers

05:38 Saving ideas

10:23 Writing

14:32 Research Impact

15:37 Ease of Use

16:31 Value for Money

17:30 Workflow Integration

18:35 Would we recommend it?

19:09 Leaderboard update

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📚 Watch the rest of the PhD Toolkit here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz6aXl5V5V77ziE8Leh9IuMB4yY4m0Yjq&si=OaQLB5nKrTQdyNwJ

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Learn how to apply the core ideas from Deep Work by Cal Newport to your life as a PhD student, postdoc, or early-career researcher.
In this episode, we break down what Deep Work actually is, why shallow work can take over your best energy, and how to use the four Deep Work methods: monastic, bimodal, rhythmic, and journalistic.
If you want to protect more focused time for writing, reading, analysis, or research thinking, this episode will help you choose the Deep Work method that fits your academic life best.

🎓 About our channel
We are The Struggling Scientists. We make honest videos about PhD life, academia, and how to make your research journey a little bit easier.
If that sounds helpful, consider subscribing.

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👉 We’ve created a free AI prompt to help you apply the Deep Work methods to your own research:
https://thestrugglingscientists.com/deepwork

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👉 We also created a full AI Tools for Academics Masterclass, where we walk through how to use AI ethically and effectively throughout the research process:
https://thestrugglingscientists.com/MasterclassAI

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⏰ TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Introduction
01:22 What is Deep work
03:37 Four methods of Deep work
04:26 Monastic method
06:22 Bimodal method
08:18 Rhythmic method
10:22 Journalistic method
13:43 Conclusion
15:08 AI prompt for Deep work
17:02 Final thoughts

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#academia #phdlife #research #scientificresearch #gradschool #academiclife #deepwork

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AI is already being used in academic research, and some of it is going very wrong.

In this video, we break down real cases where the misuse of AI led to serious problems in published scientific papers. This includes fake references, copy pasted AI text, and completely incorrect AI generated figures that somehow made it through peer review.

From a hospital librarian discovering that most references in a paper did not even exist, to a viral paper with biologically impossible AI images, these examples highlight a growing issue in modern science.

But this is not just about researchers using AI incorrectly. It also raises bigger questions about peer review, journal responsibility, and how these mistakes are slipping through the system.
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👉 We are The Struggling Scientists, a channel for all struggling scientists out there.
We share honest experiences, practical advice, and real stories to help make your life in academia just a little bit less of a struggle.

🎓 Want to learn how to use AI properly in your research?
We created a full AI for Academics Masterclass where we show you how to use AI tools ethically and effectively, without risking your work or credibility:
https://thestrugglingscientists.com/MasterclassAI
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⏰ TIME STAMPS
00:00 AI is already breaking research
00:50 Copy pasted ChatGPT in a published paper
02:55Fake references discovered by a librarian
04:40 AI generated figures that make no sense
6:55 What this means for science
7:50 Final thoughts

📱 Follow us for more content
https://thestrugglingscientists.com/newsletter
https://www.instagram.com/thestrugglingscientistspodcast/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-struggling-scientists-podcast/
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https://www.tiktok.com/@struggling.scientists
https://www.threads.com/@thestrugglingscientistspodcast

#academia #phdlife #research #ai #chatgpt #scientificresearch #gradschool #academiclife #researchintegrity

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