Transitioning from academia to industry – abridged
In March 2021 I moved from a permanent academic position to a permanent applications scientist position at a major international biotech company. In this post I would like to offer an insight into why I made this decision, and what my experience has been like. I moved into industry aged 35, after 15 years working in universities in research and teaching positions. My last 5 years in academia were in 2 different permanent lectureships at 2 different UK universities, in which I was reasonably successful in securing grant funding and publishing papers, building a small research team and developing as a research leader and educator. In my last position I was working 2 hours from home and on average I worked 60 hours per week. It was abysmal for my social life and not great for my relationship but I was very, very happy. However, despite continuing to do good research and publish good papers here I had 10 or 11 grant rejections in a row and was beginning to feel very demoralised, although...