Hey there brainiacs. I'm Alie Astrocyte and I am getting uncomfortably close to
the end of my PhD program, which has me thinking a lot about something that a
bunch of our viewers have been asking us to make a video on, which is what can you
do with a degree in neuroscience? The thing is there are all kinds of
different degrees in neuroscience from a bachelor's on up to a doctorate or a
medical degree and there are all kinds of careers for people with a background
in neuroscience so to distract myself from my job hunt I decided to do a
little bit of research into what kinds of careers are available to
neuroscientists I also invited a bunch of other people to contribute short
videos explaining what they're doing with their degrees in neuroscience so
make sure you stick around to the end to see what other people are working on. The
traditional career paths in neuroscience looks something like this: first you
start by getting an undergraduate degree in neuroscience or in a related field
like psychology or biology from there you either do a master's degree or you
spend a year or two working as a research technician to gain some
practical lab experience then you apply to a 4 to 6 year ph.d program and then on to
a two to six year post doctoral fellowship before you finally start
applying for faculty jobs once you get a job as a faculty member and API or
primary investigator you get to run your own research lab usually that includes
training junior scientists and teaching classes for undergrads the thing is this
is actually no longer the traditional career path in neuroscience even though
lots of people are still getting PhDs in neuroscience faculty jobs are getting
harder and harder to find and it's an incredibly competitive job market some
people literally spend years applying to hundreds of jobs and never end up
getting a faculty position on top of that some people just don't actually
want to be PIs of their own labs so a lot of people are exploring non-academic
or "alt-ac" career paths instead and there are a lot of different options
available I'm gonna talk a little bit about the
different kinds of degrees you can get in neuroscience and what kinds of jobs
are available to people with those kinds of degrees so first up you can get a
bachelor's degree in neuroscience which would include either Bachelors of
Science or a Bachelors of Arts and that really just has more to do with what
kinds of requirements your university has for your degree. Once you have your
undergraduate degree you could do first of all what I did which is I got a job
as a research technician in a lab and I helped a scientist do a bunch of
research on endocrinology so these tend to be sort of support staff positions or
you'd be helping other scientists with their experiments and data analysis and
it's actually really good preparation if you want to pursue another degree in
neuroscience like a doctorate or a medical degree because it actually gives
you a chance to like get in lab and do hands-on research. Aside from being a
research technician you could also get a job in industry which usually would be
kind of similar so an industry you would also be doing research support you'd be
assisting with research it just has a more industrial typically a
pharmaceutical bent although not always and often has sort of a more like
corporate bent to write it's gonna be like a little bit more profit driven. You
could also go into education so that could include becoming like a STEM
teacher in a K-12 classroom or you could work in an informal education
setting so like science museum or developing curricula or things like that
An undergraduate degree in neuroscience would also provide opportunities for you
to get involved in science writing so you could become like a science
journalist and write for a media outlet or you could write for like online
platforms like digital media video platforms or you could do science
writing for an academic journal or something like that you could also get
into science advocacy and science policy so advocating for better funding for
science or science education using your technical background in
neuroscience and finally you could also get into academic administration which
would be working for university in an administrative capacity so this could
include things like overseeing degree programs or overseeing student body
programs there's lots of opportunities available in academic settings to people
with backgrounds in STEM fields so I'm a little bit less familiar with what you
can do with a master's degree in neuroscience mostly because I never
looked into getting one because it didn't make sense for my career plans
but I know that there are a few things you can do including continuing to
pursue the academic route so often people who don't feel like they had a
very good GPA in undergrad will get a master's degree in neuroscience to sort
of buff up and show that they're ready for the lab this can also be for people
who don't have an undergraduate background in neuroscience but really
want to go into neuroscience in the future but if you don't plan on going
under a PhD you can also just work as a research associate in a lab doing
research as a scientist you can also get a job working for an industry company as
a research scientist and I actually think it's more common to find masters
level scientists in industry companies you could also pursue a career in
education so you could teach as I said before you could teach high school
students or elementary school students or you could teach as an adjunct
lecturer at a community college or at a university
Other things you can do with a master's degree in neuroscience include things
like science writing science journalism you get into policy and advocacy acting
as a consultant you get into data science and do data
science work the thing about a lot of these other career paths that you can
pursue with a master's degree in neuroscience is that a lot of them will
require some kind of additional training maybe not like formal schooling like
another degree but some kind of like short training program or on-the-job
training just because you're gonna mostly be trained to do research and not
train as much to do these other things so what can you do with a PhD in
neuroscience that's the question that's been on my mind a lot lately as I'm
trying to figure out what I'm gonna do with my PhD in neuroscience so I could
go the obvious route which is to do a post doctoral fellowship this is a post
doctoral scientists you typically have a little bit more independence than you
would have as a PhD scientists the goal is sort of training you to be more
independent as a researcher and to hopefully eventually help you launch
your own lab at least typically that's the goal if you don't want to go the
academic route there are also a lot of jobs available in industry for phd-level
scientists so pretty similar sort of setup for you're sort of a more
independent scientists but typically working under an investigator and under
the guidance of other scientists and working collaboratively with other
scientists in the lab another popular other people are interested in is
advocacy and policy so a bunch of scientific professional societies offer
fellowship opportunities to help new PhD graduates get involved in science
policies so this can include acting like as a consultant for politicians to help
them better understand scientific issues. It can include advocating for
science policy like advocating for better scientific funding or science
education. It can also include working for an organization or a non-profit that's
interested in for example focusing on curing Alzheimer's disease these
opportunities available in that sector as well you can also pursue a career in
writing but typically if you're interested in science journalism you
really don't need the PhD if you're interested in technical writing the PhD
is actually pretty essential and technical writing is essentially where
you help other scientists write grants and write their papers so this can mean
finding position at a university or at a private Research Institute where you
help other scientists develop these ideas and produce grants to hopefully
get funding. People with PhDs in neuroscience can also go into consulting
or patent law so often this includes acting as a consultant in sort of a
biotech and pharmaceutical industry to sort of consult on scientific issues and
particularly with a focus on patent law and basically kind of have to do some
additional training in that but essentially I don't really know what you
actually do but I do know you can make a lot of money doing it so it's very
appealing to some people. Kind of the last like big field that I know of a lot
of people with neuroscience PhD is going into is data science so data scientists
typically end up working more in the tech sector although not always and data
science usually involves sort of using and analyzing very large data sets to
inform decisions made by the company or organization a lot of students who do
neuroscience research in graduate programs end up doing a lot of coding
and sort of related stuff for their data analysis
and that creates this really valuable skill set that then makes them very
desirable candidates for data science jobs and then of course there are all
kinds of other little things you can do I know tons of people who have ended up
becoming freelancers I know people who have gone on to essentially become just
like public speakers and science communicators so there's lots of things
you can do with the PhD in neuroscience and finally you could get a medical
degree so technically a medical degree is not a
degree in neuroscience but often people who are interested in neuroscience will
pursue that because you can go into a specialty like neurology or psychiatry I
also know a bunch people who have gotten MD PhDs which are dual degrees where you
get both a doctorate in neuroscience and a medical degree and these are what we
call medical scientists so these are people who are trained both in a
clinical setting to work with patients but also in a research lab and these
people often end up doing clinical research where they take the stuff
that's been discovered in regular basic science labs and try to translate it
into patient populations so as you can see there are a lot of different careers
available to people with degrees in neuroscience and now I'm gonna have a
bunch of my friends tell you what they do with their degrees
Hey Neuro Transmissions I love your work please keep up so I'm Adam Tosa I have a
PhD in neuroscience studies an electrophysiologist after four years of
postdoc in I left the rig to become a science writer
I ran the neuroscience Facebook page Neuroscience News and Research and more
recently I've turned my hand to scientific content creation and I'm
doing this we'll be starting a new job for a company called synthesis shortly
but in my spare time I still advocate for neuroscience research and you can
find me on Facebook and Twitter at @adamtosaneuwrite. Hi I'm Alicia
Mosely Austin I have both a bachelor's and a PhD in neuroscience I'm an
academic administrator at the University of Rhode Island
I'm assistant dean at the grad school and I'm also associate director of the
interdisciplinary neuroscience program so I have a fully administrative
position in the graduate program. Hi my name is Nick Wan,
I have PhD in neuroscience and I'm one of the data scientists for the
Cincinnati Reds on a typical game day my view looks like this
hi my name is Nour Marcus's I got my PhD in pharmacology with a focus in
neuroscience I'm currently a postdoctoral fellow in the neuroscience
department and I study how endocannabinoids modulate inhibition in
the cortex. Hi my name is Anna, I have a PhD in neuroscience and I'm
the owner and principal of dracania consultant I was always involved in way
too many projects to keep a boss happy so eventually I embrace that became an
independent consultant and now work with many different clients looking for
therapies for rare neurological diseases and I love being an independent
consultant. Hi my name is Kevin Rekha my undergraduate degree was in computer
science and my PhD was in neuroscience I'm currently working in AI as a data
scientist and machine learning engineer for Walmart technology and volunteer
data scientists and researcher for Austin Pets Alive an animal shelter here
in Austin Texas. Hello my name is Kalira Salas Ramirez and I work at the CUNY
School of Medicine as an assistant medical professor my research focuses on
looking at interventions for cognitive decline as a result of both illicit and
therapeutic drug exposure with a focus on developmental drug exposure as well
as sex differences for these interventions so look at efficacy of
treatments for patients. Hey there, I'm Jens, I studied psychology in Germany I got a
PhD in neuropsychology in Germany and then I transferred over to Florida where
I study the brain using fMRI new neuroimaging and other methods. Hi I'm
Ginny I studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge specializing in
psychology and neuroscience and now I work as a science communicator I write
books and blogs about science I make podcast I have my own YouTube channel
and I also go to festivals and schools and do stage shows all about the brain
Hi, my name is Brittany fair and I have a master's degree in neuroscience
I am the science writer for the Salk Institute of biological studies in La
Jolla California. At Salk, I meet with scientists to write press
releases for their upcoming publications. I also co-host and coproduce a podcast, and I write articles for the magazine.
I got a master's in neuroscience at the same University it's in France by
the way today I'm a scientific communicator and entrepreneur which
means that I you do the best job of the world I talk about neuroscience everyday
I created a YouTube channel drop of curiosity and I make videos about
neurons and brain like neural transmission that's in French. Hi my name
is Dr. Jacqueline Dunphy and I recently earned a PhD in neuroscience from Tufts
University where I studied how astrocytes talk to neurons at the
tripartite synapse now I'm working in the exciting field of biotechnology
where I work with a lot of other scientists to found and fund new life
science companies I call what I do under preneur science because I get to
combine my love for the brain with a need for making new medicines and
therapies that will improve human health Hi my name is Thiago Zola I am a third
year PhD student here at the Medical College of Wisconsin and I'm getting my
PhD neuroscience my current work focuses on stem cells and how those can be
models for certain neurological diseases and more specifically I studied things
called cerebral organoids they can also be called mini brains and
I think they're very cool. Hi my name is Phaedra and I got my bachelor's degree
in psychology with a minor in neuroscience from Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale and now I'm a second year graduate student in the Kent
State biomedical sciences neuroscience program and I'm pursuing a PhD focusing
on learning and memory and that's what I did with my degree in neuroscience
Hello my name is Andrew Neff I did my PhD in neuroscience studying the
connections between the gut microbiome and the brain I now teach part-time
psychology at a local university and I started my own business creating science
media. Hi neuro transmissions my name is Vy and I did my PhD studying the cognitive
neuroscience of the human visual system and now I'm a research scientist
at Intel and I'm applying what we know about the brain to help develop more
sophisticated artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. Hi my
name is Justin Kagan's I have a PhD in neuroscience from the University of
California in San Diego now I work as a product manager
building open source software for scientists to analyze and visualize
their data. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this video it's really
fun to get to show off all of these amazing neuroscientists and all the cool
work that they're doing. So even though I'm really stressed these days about
finishing my PhD and applying for all these jobs and keeping Neuro
Transmissions going and all the other cool stuff I get to do all the time it's
really exciting to think about all of the possibilities that are available to
me and I'm really excited to see what comes next in my career but whatever
happens as I go through this whole process and life transition I'm really
excited to take you on the journey with me and until our next transmission I'm
Alie Astrocyte. Over and out.
what can you do with a neuro degree what can you do with a neuro degree
what can you do with a neuro degree after you graduate?
will I get a job, oh, will I get a job, oh, will I get a job or will I be unemployed?
Maybe it's best to go to grad school,
maybe you can teach STEM, that sounds cool. Maybe you could just delay and wait til you garduate
Maybe there's a job in science writing,
Maybe I should go and do consulting, maybe this whole process feels
insulting after I graduate