Do scientists stay scientists?

To scientific careers now, and the question of whether the scientists we’ve been training stay in science, or exit to work in other sectors? Speaking with Chris Smith, Rachel Coulthard-Graf, from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, EMBL, wondered this, which was why she’s tracked down and probed the careers of the vast majority of the trainees that have passed through her institution since the late 1990s…

Rachel - EMBL trains a lot of scientists, they stay with us typically around four years and then they move on to other positions and we really wanted to understand what they go on to do so that we can adapt our training to reflect that.

Chris - You've got a nice big cohort. You've looked at, this must be nearly a quarter of a centuries worth of scientists you've got here?

Rachel - Yes. So we looked at scientists who left over a 24 year period, so going all the way back to 1997. Up to to 2020.

Chris - And how did you follow them up? Have you stayed in touch with all of them to then see where they went?

Rachel - Many of them are members of our alumni association. We also tried to really find everyone, so we, we made a list of every scientist that we trained over this period and went Googling for them. And we've got a lot of information also from places like LinkedIn to really look at everything they've done since!

Chris - Do you have a second career as a private investigator!? It sounds like it! What was your pickup rate? Did you get to most people?

Rachel - Yes. So we could identify where around 85% of of people were working. And for many of those also really we could trace back their entire career since they left Bel.

Chris - So what happened? What did everyone do?

Rachel - We found a really wide range of positions. Not surprisingly, over 95% were in some kind of role linked to science. Half of those within academic research or teaching. We also found 15% doing research in industry, so many people, for example, working in the pharma industry and then 15% in other types of role linked to science. For example, secondary school science teachers, journal editors, intellectual property. So lots of different areas of, of science related careers.

Chris - You must regard this then as something of a win because you've invested in training scientists and you've got people who are active in the scientific realm?

Rachel - What we hope is that people who, who train as scientists really use the skills that they are developing during their scientific training. And as you said, what we see is they seem to be, so we were really happy to see this. Of course, it's an observational study, so I think what would be really nice is to be able to do more detailed surveys to find out which of those skills people are using most. But yeah, from the data we have from the study, it seems like they really are using their, their scientific training.

Chris - Did anything stand out in the data that might help us when we're training the next generation of scientists to spot the stars early to help to fast track them, to get people really into the careers they need to be in rather than for them to, to spend a bit of a more meandering course getting there over a longer time period. Is there anything we can do to help people be more efficient with their training? Effectively?

Rachel - For me, doing this study was actually part of this. I think just being transparent about what career opportunities there are and helping scientists engage with thinking about what their skills are and which of those careers they would like to apply those skills in is really what this is about.

Chris - But in terms of, say if one looks at people who became principal investigators, running groups, carrying out lab-based research, were there any predictions early on about who were people destined to fall into those positions? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> versus the people who were going to go into teaching or go into industry for example. What

Rachel - We definitely did see is a, a strong correlation between publication record at EMBL and whether they remained in academic research and established their own research groups. So people who publish two papers were six times more likely than someone who didn't publish as a, as a first author. So the main author of a study.

Chris - And what about the, the gender ratio? We often talk on this program about different outcomes for men and women in science, especially at different stages of science. Was any of that apparent or has anything changed there?

Rachel - Yes, we did observe female scientists were less likely to go into these research group leader positions and more likely to go into non-research positions. But there wasn't any clear trends with time there.