Woman in STEM

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...

  In March 2021 I moved from a permanent academic position at a Russell Group university to a permanent applications scientist position at a major international biotech company. Many people in PhD or post-doc positions in academia see permanent academic posts as the holy grail of science careers, and believe that their working life will be glorious once they drop the stress of moving between short-term research contracts. It seems unthinkable that a person would choose to leave such a position. In this post I would like to offer an insight into why I made this decision, and what my experience has been like. I anticipate that most people who read this will be other women in academia considering moving to industry and so I won’t focus too much on my experiences of the challenges of being a women in academia (you will be all too aware of these) but on how positive it has been to move into a new area. I want to offer hope to people who are unhappy or struggling or feeling insecure ab...