The community site for and by
developmental and stem cell biologists

Careers for scientists

Careers for scientists

Between 2010 and 2014 we ran a series focused on alternative careers for scientists, hearing from specialists in publishing, law, journalism, ethics and more. Now, in 2024, we have reinvigorated this series – but instead of focusing on other careers after academia, we want to highlight that many valid career paths exist, and there is no such thing as a standard career path.

There and back again…

Posted by , on 26 June 2013

We’ve all heard the aphorism that once you leave academia, you can’t go back. A little over two years ago, I wrote about my transition from academic research to scientific …

A Career in Science Management

Posted by , on 13 February 2012

Last June, Eva summarised the Node’s alternative careers stories, personal accounts of how scientists made their transitions from research into various alternative career paths. As a friend of Andrea Hutterer, …

Leaving the lab: career development for developmental biologists

Posted by , on 6 September 2011

Over the past months, we’ve heard from several people who left research for a career away from the bench. Now, a summary of all these posts appears in Development, followed …

Keeping an Open Mind – A Scientist’s Quest for Positive Change

Posted by , on 12 July 2011

I am the founder and CEO of DataGiving. I founded DataGiving whilst completing my Ph.D. in Genetics at the University of Cambridge. I have always been passionate about helping people. …

How fate determined my career as a science journalist

Posted by , on 21 June 2011

If I shut my eyes, I can still picture  the young boy dressed as a gravedigger. He’s taking centre-stage, flourishing a spade and cheerily telling his audience that if they …

Round-up of alternative careers stories

Posted by , on 8 June 2011

We look back on our collection of alternative career stories, published in 2010 and 2011

In this new career interview series, we chatted to several developmental biologists who have had vastly different career trajectories.

Do you have a career story you’d like to share with the community?

Jobs board

Our jobs board often contains positions away from the bench

Our full archive going back to 2010 is filterable by category, tag and date.

Updated on 19 March 2025