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"I felt that it was time to return, now that Portugal was changing and giving us much better conditions, [and] that we should contribute to the development of the country," says Bruno Silva-Santos.

Franck Diafouka found at the EMEA the opportunity to study the impact of drugs in real life and work in a multinational and multicultural environment.

Diana Marques followed her passion for painting and biology separately until one day she saw an ad for a scientific illustration workshop.

"I like to move very fast and take a lot of risks compared to the traditional Swedish way."

--Mohammed Homman

Sandrine Etienne-Manneville "knew exactly what she was doing, where the project was going, and what needed to be done," says former postdoc supervisor Alan Hall.

"Scientists are always focused on experiments, gaining knowledge, but there is the human side that you need to be exposed to early on." -Anton Wutz

Systems Biology "is one of the areas as a postdoc that you have a chance to become a group leader early," Nicolas Le Novère, European Bioinformatics Institute, U.K.

"This choice was more practical because you try to build up a career, and if you do what people are already doing, you need to be very good, but also lucky, to make it," says Edwin Cuppen.

Azevedo strongly advises other postdocs to start applying even if they feel it is too early in their career.

A rewarding career awaits those who can stand up to the field's fast pace and considerable demands.

My academic CV, which went on and on about kinetics, fluorescence, and other things that would have sent someone outside my field running, was thrown in the fire, and I started thinking hard about what transferable skills I had gained during my time in academia.

"You have a lot to learn, but when you can argue the case of your patent application successfully to a patent examiner, it's great," says Sarah Thompson.

Making courageous career choices, says Linda Ko-Ferrigno, is a lot easier when "you have someone cheering you on."

If you stay in the lab, you can only be as innovative as yourself.

Oldroyd had found an ideal research area to build his career on. "I made very conscious decisions about which fields to go into," recalls Oldroyd.

Beyond the challenges, provided one is aware of the rules of the game, leaving academia doesn't need to be a one-way street--and may provide the opportunity to gain valuable skills.

It is a successful formula for this target group.

"Cases very soon demonstrated a great capacity for working with software and developing systems, a capacity that is unfortunately quite exceptional in experimental biologists." --Systems biologist Alfonso Valencia.

Scientists prepared to deal with a wide range of topics and to help translate findings from the laboratory to the clinic hold the future of research on human genetics and disease in their hands.

The mutual interaction of population dynamics and evolutionary processes is a key theme of Hanna Kokko’s work.