Queen's University Belfast - The Theory of the Postdoc Evolution

In this episode, Dr Caroline Barelle (CEO and Founder of Elasmogen) talks about her career journey from postdoc to biotech entrepreneur, and Kat Maguire (Lean Startup Programme Manager, Queen's University Belfast) highlights some of the innovation programmes she manages, and how they enable postdocs and PhDs to take a step towards commercialising their research and becoming entrepreneurs themselves.

This episode compares the experience of Edel Hyland (Senior Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast), an academic and previously postdoc in the USA, to the one of Jocelyn Tillner (Head of Research and Development in BarthHaas), group leader in a hops company, highlighting some of the similarities and differences between academia and industry.

In this episode, Cheryl McFarlane, Assay development and validation manager for Almac Diagnostics Services, shares her experience of moving to industry after her postdoc, focusing on hiring practices and opportunities for progression in the company.

In this episode, Vijay Tiwari relates his experience of building an academic career, with specific emphasis on how great mentors, planning successive steps strategically and moving all over world enabled his succes.

In this episode, Janet Diffin, Retail Analyst (Consumer Protection) for the Northern Ireland Utility Regulator, highlights her approach to looking for positions in the third sector as well as tips to translate your skills and experiences to roles that appear away from research.

This episode features Dr Panchali Kanvatirth, Research Scientist HTS at AstraZeneca. She talks about what it feels like to work in big pharma and how she transitioned from postdoc to her new role.

In this episode, Dr Paul McCague introduces the ins and outs of the education-focused academic path and how his passion for teaching and getting out of his comfort zone led him to embrace it as his career.

In this episode, Dr Mary Malamatari describes her role as a Pharmaceutical Assessor in the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency as well as how her path led her to drug regulation.

In this episode, Prof Helen Coleman from the Centre for Public Health at Queen's reflects on her career as an academic, including the factors that helped her progress quickly and tips on how she maintained a healthy work-life balance while still developing her profile.

This episode features Dr Donna Small, lecturer in the Patrick G. Johnston Centre for Cancer Research. Donna notably discusses how she used a personal fellowship to turn her interests and experience into her own independent research niche fit to complement local research.