Opportunities in Singapore for Researchers, PhD Holders and PhD Students

Top research institutes and world-class universities in Singapore like Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, NUS Graduate School for Integrative Sciences and Engineering, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology and the Singapore University of Technology and Design are recruiting researchers, PhD holders and PhD students with varying levels of experience.

Let Contact Singapore link you up with these organisations through a talk that will take place on 21 September in London. For more information and to register your interest, please visit: www.contactsingapore.sg/CareersSG/Research/Sep2011.

New website for aspiring academics

A new website has been developed by Manchester University Careers service  designed to support aspiring academics: An Academic Career – www.manchester.ac.uk/academiccareer

It includes video clips of academics and early career researchers and has sections on:

- “Is an academic career for you?” (looked at from UG/Masters, PhD and post-doc perspectives, separately)

- “About academic careers” (including what do academics do, career paths and a more detailed section on “PhD and beyond”)

- Finding jobs

- Making applications

- Interviews and assessment

Don’t forget, UCL Careers Service also has information on developing your academic career, located in both our Research Student webpages, as well as our Research Staff webpages.

Posted by Calum Leckie, UCL Careers Service

European academic career paths: country specific information

The League of European Research Universities (a consortium of 22 of Europe’s most prominent, research – focussed institutions, of which UCL is a member) has created ‘Academic Career Maps‘ for 9 European countries. The maps are designed to do the following:

The maps show the different research positions available in an institution, the levels of responsibility, how they are funded at each stage and how a researcher may progress from one level to the next.

For those of you hoping to progress your academic career either in the UK or another European country the maps are a quick way of establishing what roles / job titles you should be aiming for and a rough idea of time scales and employment ‘bottlenecks’.

Posted by Calum Leckie, UCL Careers Service

Interested in Working Overseas as a researcher?

The researcher development site, Vitae, has a ‘Working Overseas‘ page dedicated to providing information for those of you who may wish to continue their research careers beyond the UK with some links to useful websites for finding vacancies, as well some resources on arranging short visits abroad. If you need more country specific information then we highly recommend the overseas academic careers page of the UCL Careers Service (Postdoctoral) Research Staff pages. This site contains down-loadable helpsheets with information on country – specific  online resources for planning an academic career, which includes vacancy sources, as well as in-depth survey reports on the academic career structure and employment issues for five selected countries.

Posted by Calum Leckie, UCL Careers Service

What do PhDs do? Results of UCL Survey

We have recently made available the results of our telephone survey, conducted early in 2010, of the career destinations of UCL PhDs who graduated between 2004 and 2008. We made successful contact with over 100 graduates across all faculties and obtained valuable information about the kind of jobs those with a PhD moved on to, as well as useful advice for current PhDs planning their futures, particularly on making a successful transition to the world of work. Just over half of the respondents currently had roles in academic research or the NHS, whilst the rest had moved beyond academia, although many were still engaged in research or were in managerial or professional level positions. Full details of the survey are available in the ‘What Can I do with a PhD?’ section of the new ‘Postgraduate Research Student’ careers website.

Posted by Calum Leckie, UCL Careers Service

Your Academic Career: Going Global

For many people an academic research career involves global mobility, re-locating to key facilities and research groups to enhance your personal productivity. For those of you who are thinking of working in an institution outside the UK as the next step in your career we highly recommend that you visit our ‘International Academic Careers’ page, located in the Resources section our website for UCL research staff; www.ucl.ac.uk/researchcareers.

This essential resource, created partly from a survey of visiting overseas academic researchers, contains information on the academic career structure and culture in a number of key country destinations, as well as lists of useful online resources. The countries covered by our academics survey are the USA, Germany, Brazil, Japan and France. Lists of key information sources are also available for China, India, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the Russian Federation.

Posted by Calum Leckie, UCL Careers Service

Successful researchers and their social and economic impacts

For those of you who have been following developments in university research funding, you will be aware of the replacement of the previous Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) with a new method for assessing the quality of university research outputs, the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Although the date for the introduction of the REF is still not yet set in stone, and some of the assessment criteria have still to be hammered out, one key element of this process is the future evaluation of research projects based on the their wider impact on the economy or society (for further information visit www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref). If you are scratching your head trying to think how you can adjust your research ideas to accommodate this future requirement, you might want to take a look at a new report from Research Councils UK, ‘Impacts: People and Skills’ that;

profiles a number of researchers from different disciplines who have an impact on the economy and society in a variety of ways.

The report can be downloaded as a PDF file from the Vitae Researcher Development website.

Posted by Calum Leckie, UCL Careers Service.

Podcast on how to get a lectureship

A recent posting on the Naturejobs podcast page is an interview with the head of biomedical and health sciences at King’s College London who explains;

How to get a job as a lecturer, and how to handle a workload of teaching at the same time as building a great track record in research.

Other recent podcasts from the same site include advice on how to get into the life science industry and the results of the Naturejobs salary survey.

Posted by Calum leckie, UCL Careers Service

Your PhD, what next?

One glance at the national statistics from the Higher Education Statistics Agency and you can see that, from the period 2003 – 2007 the destinations of PhD graduates were diverse, with 35 % going into research roles across all sectors, 23% of respondents employed as research staff and 14% as lecturers (for more information, download the PDF ‘What do Researchers do?‘). The end of a PhD is a key decision point for many considering their future career direction, so for those of you who would like some help and support through this process there are a number of sources of advice. The booklet ‘Your PhD, what next‘ which can be downloaded free from the Prospects careers website addresses key issues such as what you will face if you choose an academic career and a non-academic career path, how to find vacancies and develop skills recruiters require, and the job application process. Similar information is available on the Careers section of the Vitae website.  Alternatively, you can also attend our career planning workshops run through the Graduate School skills programme (more will be planned for the autumn of 2010) or you can pop in and talk to one of our Careers Advisers.

Posted by Calum Leckie, UCL Careers Service

Free Media Training for AHRC Award Holders

Recent posting on the Arts and Humanities Council News & Events page:

We are arranging media training for AHRC-funded award holders as they frequently tell us that these are skills that they feel will benefit them. To this effect, we are organising three media training events – to take place as follows:  Monday 12th July – Central London, Thursday 15th July – Central London, Friday 16th July – Central London

Final details on location and directions will be sent out to the successful applicants. These will be an all-day event, running from 10am – 4.30pm, and involve media interview practice for radio, tips for tailoring messages to non-academic audiences, identifying key messages, writing a press releases etc.

These media training sessions are aimed at early career award holders, perhaps people who have had limited, experience in dealing with the media up to now. The AHRC will pay for the full cost of the course, but participants will have to pay their own travel to London.  Spaces are very limited. Places will be allocated on first-come-first served basis. In the first instance please email AHRC Events and PR Officer, Sam Roythorne s.roythorne@ahrc.ac.uk with your full name and contact details, including email and phone number, along with a short paragraph detailing the AHRC research project you are working on. If you require any further information at all, please don’t hesitate to get in touch on 0117 9876 780.

Posted by: Calum Leckie, UCL Careers Service