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“The glut of graduate students enticed by the growing support a few years ago have since found it difficult to get their own work funded … and the sudden deceleration in funding has left many researchers feeling slighted even though their funding grew by leaps and bounds in the past decade.” --Yuval Levin

You don’t have to leave scientific training to have an enjoyable (and lucrative) side business as a technical consultant.

"I sometimes think of it as doing a little 'armchair anthropology,' asking what it's like in this lab, and can I thrive here?" --Chris Golde

"Faced with falling grant-approval rates, researchers need to work harder and smarter to get their projects funded."

"The best applications ... have a plan of research ... that is ... realistic [and] at the same time has this visionary quality," says Anders Björklund, chair of the Neurosciences ERC panel.

"A strong application always demonstrates an appreciation of the background of the field, with appropriate references to the results of others."

"We hear persistent reports of postdocs and other folks working on grants who are either forbidden to take maternity leave or told that if they do, they'll be fired." --Joan Williams

"Suzanne is one of the hardest working scientists I know." --Patrick Phillips

"Friendships and work relationships have different social norms, and workplace friendships are fraught with fragility and ambiguity," says organizational psychologist Rachel Morrison.

"A mentor has many characteristics but must first and foremost care about your professional development and have an interest in guiding younger scientists as they move through their careers."

Most PIs recognize that moving is a sacrifice even if it's a good career move. This gives you some leverage to negotiate.

"The best and the brightest seem not to be going into science as much as they did in the past." And those who do opt for research careers "seem to be dropping out at a very high rate." --Mark Donowitz

Spending some time investigating your interests before starting a Ph.D. will improve the likelihood that you pick a project that keeps your interest over several years.

Value these moments of interaction with your supervisor. … If you are well-prepared, progress-review meetings will make a magnificent contribution to achieving your main goal, the completion of your research projects.

"If, in the course of the day, faculty spend some time talking about their career and careers in general, it wouldn’t be something they would have to keep a note of in a logbook and say, ‘Oh, this isn’t research-related.’ ”--Joseph Ellis

Lenggenhager helped develop an experimental concept aimed at recreating out-of-body experiences in healthy subjects as a way to study distorted self-consciousness.

"Trying to get tenure in that department, I perceived, was going to be a battle." --Dawn Del Carlo.

His cultural identity has not caused any real hardships or put any of his professional goals out of reach, Bounceur feels.