The changing career paths of PhDs and postdocs trained at EMBL

Abstract

Individuals with PhDs and postdoctoral experience in the life sciences can pursue a variety of career paths. Many PhD students and postdocs aspire to a permanent research position at a university or research institute, but competition for such positions has increased. Here, we report a time-resolved analysis of the career paths of 2284 researchers who completed a PhD or a postdoc at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) between 1997 and 2020. The most prevalent career outcome was Academia: Principal Investigator (636/2284=27.8% of alumni), followed by Academia: Other (16.8%), Science-related Non-research (15.3%), Industry Research (14.5%), Academia: Postdoc (10.7%) and Non-science-related (4%); we were unable to determine the career path of the remaining 10.9% of alumni. While positions in Academia (Principal Investigator, Postdoc and Other) remained the most common destination for more recent alumni, entry into Science-related Non-research, Industry Research and Non-science-related positions has increased over time, and entry into Academia: Principal Investigator positions has decreased. Our analysis also reveals information on a number of factors – including publication records – that correlate with the career paths followed by researchers.

Keywords

• workforce trends
• education
• training
• graduate school
• early-career researcher
• careers in science