Walk down a supermarket aisle and you’ll find most vitamins hiding inside opaque plastic bottles to prevent them from spoiling. So how do energy drinks like VitaminWater, which is sold in clear plastic bottles that often sit in the sun for lengthy periods, keep their touted nutrients fresh?

The extra ingredients are light-blocking chemicals that are infused into the plastic. “The chemicals’ sole purpose is to protect the beverage inside,” says Steve Andrews, an applications chemist and research fellow at chemical giant BASF in Tarrytown, New York. “The consumer will never know this technology is there.”

Applications chemists help develop new uses for their companies’ products. One example is BASF’s UV blockers, which are also used to coat solar cells, helping them last longer and work more efficiently. This sort of work makes a big impact: chemists who work in product development touch every aspect of daily life, such as transforming natural gas into plastic packaging, creating sparkly toothpaste that coaxes kids to brush their teeth and developing the nation’s favourite chocolate bar.

“When I speak to students on campus visits, I tell them they can work on projects that could affect half a billion consumers,” says Peter Gallagher, vice president of global skin R&D for Unilever. “Even drug companies don’t have that kind of reach.”

As a chemist in product development, you have to balance creating something that is novel to consumers and will satisfy their needs with boosting the company’s bottom line, ticking the health and safety boxes and ensuring that you don’t inadvertently step on a competitor’s proprietary toes.

Not only does this make for an absorbing challenge, but with chemical companies increasingly outsourcing their research and development, it also makes economic sense for chemists to look for a job in product development. “Graduates need to switch their mindset and realise that they may not be doing fundamental research but something further down the production line,” says David Harwell, assistant director for career management at the American Chemical Society.

“The closer the product is to the customer, the more the company will invest, so this is where the jobs are. If they can’t sell it, they aren’t going to make it.”

Creative solutions

Kraft Foods, which employs more than 3,000 food scientists, chemists and engineers, is one company that has stepped up investment. In 2011, new products accounted for three per cent more of its net revenue than in 2008, says spokesman Richard Buino. This has included removing more than 6,000 tonnes of salt from nearly 1,000 products sold in the US, and replacing artificial preservatives in hotdogs with celery juice. “Our chemists have played an important role in boosting the popularity of our products by adapting recipes to fit local consumers’ tastes and improving our foods’ nutritional profiles,” says Buino.

Unilever is also doing well, says Gallagher, who puts it down to people’s desire to buy products that make them feel good, even during a recession: “When times are tough, people go back to brands they trust.”

Product development work at large multinational companies allows scientists to think creatively – and it pays well. PhD-level scientists earn on average $10,000 more at companies with 25,000 or more employees than the average wage across companies of all sizes combined, according to the ACS.

So how do you land a spot at one of these multinational corporations? Companies say they seek research scientists who can see things from a business perspective. “If you come up with a fantastic invention that is just not affordable or is inconsistent with the marketing position of the brand, you have to be able to let it go,” says Neil Randle, operations director for skincare at Unilever’s R&D laboratories in Trumbull, New Jersey. “This can sometimes be a little difficult for scientists, because those ideas are our babies.”

Being willing and able to move abroad for a job will also mark you out, says Harwell. So will the ability to speak and write coherently about your research – you’ll be expected to work closely with marketing, supply and finance colleagues, and interact with customers.

“Often you’re explaining what can be quite complex and precise science to people who do not have a scientific background, and you have to find a way to communicate so they get it quickly,” says Randle. “You’re often working to deadlines, and everybody has to play their part to get to a successful product launch.”

When Randle joined Unilever after completing a chemistry PhD, his first big project was the launch of Dove shower gel and bath foam in Europe. Transforming the beloved beauty bar into a liquid was no easy challenge, he recalls. “We had to develop a very specific formula that would be consistent with all the benefits that the bar provided,” he says. That included incorporating the brand’s one-quarter moisturising cream claim, plus a consistent fragrance that consumers would recognise as Dove.

After 25 years with Unilever, Randle says he still enjoys the variety that working for a big company offers.

“Anyone who decides to work in a particular industry, let alone a particular company, for 25 years has to have fun doing it,” he says. “For me, it’s the variety. If you want to work on ice cream, you can go work on ice cream. If you want to work on toilet bleach, you can go work on toilet bleach. If you want to work in more of a factory environment, want to travel, or if you want to become a true world expert, the opportunities are all over the place. You just have to look for them.”

Making the transition from postdoc to faculty is one of the most exciting and nerve-racking rollercoaster rides a scientist will ever experience. Whether it is negotiating the offer or setting up a lab, the challenges may seem overwhelming. But don’t forget to enjoy the journey. The thrill of striking out on your own and calling the shots shouldn’t be diminished by the enormity of the task. What’s more, unless the MacArthur or Nobel foundations come calling, setting up your own lab may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on research without a bean counter breathing down your neck.

If all goes well, you will soon arrive on campus, meet new colleagues, navigate your way through the inevitable bureaucracy and face a cavernous room filled with boxes – with no one to open them but you. “You’re the decider now,” says Garth Fowler, assistant chair in the department of neurobiology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

But let’s rewind a little – this can only happen if you have convinced a hiring committee that you are worth employing. For this, you need to have developed an identity of your own as a scientist. This is what your postdoc years are for. “When you go to a new institution, you need to have your own science and your own projects,” says Juliet Moncaster, a senior postdoctoral researcher at Boston University in Massachusetts.

Your first years as an independent investigator will lay the foundation for a successful career, so a savvy approach is crucial. But where do you start? Three little words: your research plan. This document, included in your job applications, justifies the research you intend to do and hopefully reassures hiring committees that you are worth spending their precious cash on.

Even though money isn’t discussed until after a job offer is made, a well-crafted plan laid out in your research statement can help you figure out how much money you need to build a new lab and bootstrap a research program. This seed money – called a start-up package in the US – will come from your new employer.

Let’s talk money

Start-up offers vary among schools. A small liberal arts college may provide $10,000 to $50,000, while a top-tier research school can drop $500,000 to $1 million on a new hire, says Jeff Yarger, director of the Magnetic Resonance Research Center at Arizona State University in Phoenix. “You have to have some idea of what the start-up is at the institution you’re applying to,” he advises. “You can’t give them all the same proposal and budget.”

Start gathering intelligence on sensible budgets early in your job search. Luckily, this is one area where most people are happy to share their private data. Your postdoc advisor can quiz his or her network, and you can track down recently hired colleagues. Since the interview process typically involves lunch or dinner with faculty and students from the department you are interested in joining, you could even use the interview as an opportunity to find out the going rate from junior faculty.

This approach worked for Matt Might, who became an assistant professor at the University of Utah in 2008. “I would ask how they negotiated their start-up – not right off the bat – and some of them even told me a number and how they argued for it,” explains Might, a computer scientist at the Salt Lake City campus. “At each place, I had a sense of how you should request a start-up package just from the interview process itself.”

Shopping list

Those who have survived the process recommend focusing your start-up request on equipment, lab space, salaries and support for students and staff, and time off from teaching. These essentials will give you the tools to launch a research program, with the aim of landing a big grant in two or three years’ time.

Fowler says postdocs most often trip themselves up when requesting rooms. “Space is probably one of the most limited resources a university has, and you should be as clear as you can about your needs,” he says. Considering every detail, down to the number of internet ports in each room, makes the difference between plug-and-play when you arrive on campus and waiting for renovations before research can start.

Once the bargain is struck, the relief that comes with accepting a job offer does not last long. Unlike a postdoc’s monastic existence, as a new faculty member, your time for research is limited. Running a lab involves managing people, projects and budgets.

Whether you learn on the job or take advantage of training courses offered by some universities, often the biggest management challenge is learning to multi-task. “As you transition from life as a postdoc, you have to get used to juggling different things and being efficient at switching between tasks,” says Conor Walsh, who became an assistant professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at Harvard University earlier this year.

The good news is that with responsibility comes intellectual freedom. Finally, you can chase an unusual result or start a project without asking permission.

“It is very exciting to direct what you want to work on,” says Mark Kramer, a mathematical neuroscientist and assistant professor at Boston University. “I love that part of it.”

Maria Klawe had a feeling her salary was too low when she was hired as president of Harvey Mudd College, an elite undergraduate science and engineering school in Claremont, California. She was right: her base salary was $338,000 in 2007, lower than those of both her male and female peers. The female president of Claremont McKenna College – a sister school to Harvey Mudd – collected a full $71,000 more.

“I felt like they were really underpaying me, but I didn’t say anything about it,” Klawe recalls. “I really don’t understand why. I’m very ambitious, very goal-driven and in every other situation I’m not afraid of speaking up. But when I’m asking for something good for myself and not for the institution, I have a hard time doing it.”

Klawe renegotiated in the end, landing a $22,000 raise the next year, and had nearly caught up with her colleague by 2010. Still, failing to grab a high starting salary can dog a woman throughout her career – whether she’s on the bottom rung or top of the heap. It’s a prime reason the gender salary gap persists, according to a report published in 2007 by the American Association of University Women.

And persist it does (see Mind the gap). In the natural sciences, the salary difference between men and women with a master’s degree or higher was $2,610 a month in 2009 (the latest data available), according to a recent U.S. Census Bureau report. And a 2008 study published in The Review of Higher Education found that there was, on average, a nine per cent difference in starting salaries for junior faculty hired at research universities between 1988 and 2004.

“The only way I finally caught up was through job changes,” says Victoria Sork, who earned $232,211 in 2010 as dean of life sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. “I didn’t get advice on how to negotiate, and I didn’t feel comfortable doing my homework.”

But hang-ups over haggling aren’t the only reason women lag behind. Gender discrimination still plays a role.

“I am certain that it took me longer to get tenure and that I never made as much as men in equivalent positions,” says Una Ryan, looking back on her time as professor of medicine at the University of Miami in Florida. After 20 years in academia, Ryan jumped ship for a career in biotech, and her salary as CEO of Avant Therapeutics hit $440,000 in 2007. That’s better than the $302,800 earned by the man who eventually succeeded her at Avant – but he got a huge bump to $460,000 the next year. “I’ve never felt that I could get exact equivalents, so I’ve always gone by a different standard,” adds Ryan, who is now at the helm of the non-profit organization Diagnostics for All, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I just want to feel that I can live a life that is good.”

In fact, women often do better when they argue for fair pay instead of more money. At the University of California, San Diego, the medical school’s faculty convinced leaders to fund a gender equity study examining salary and working conditions. “It was striking,” says Kim Barrett, dean of graduate studies. “After controlling for the number of years since the doctorate and the number of years since joining faculty, women were paid on average 25 per cent less than their male counterparts.” As a result of the findings, the university reviewed and adjusted faculty salaries.

Negative effects

But without a critical mass for support, such as a faculty-wide survey, women often fear that asking for a pay rise will cast them in a negative light. “Negotiation training for women needs a lot more subtlety and nuance than straight negotiation. It’s not a simple matter,” says Page Morahan, founding director of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine program at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Male and female job candidates get very different reactions when they negotiate salary, finds Linda Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In her 2007 study, volunteers ranked candidates on their employability. While both men and women were penalized for asking for more money, Babcock found the negative effect for women was more than twice as pronounced as for men.

“The same behavior that in a man is ambitious, competent and forward-thinking may be called aggressive in a woman,” says Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.

But other studies show women can overcome this catch-22 and land a better deal. The growing numbers of girls pursuing science and engineering as a career also bodes well for the pay gap eventually disappearing; according to Babcock’s research, women are more likely to negotiate when another woman is in charge.

For Katrine Bosley, who at 43 is already the CEO of Avila Therapeutics in Bedford, Massachusetts, climbing the biotech ladder never meant considering her gender. “There are so many women in biotech, it’s completely normal. It is just one of many kinds of diversity.” Bosley recently led negotiations for the sale of Avila to Celgene Corporation. “All the times I was the only woman in the room, I saw it as a strength.”

You’ve survived the late-night lab sessions, got past the stress of your PhD defense and signed on for a postdoc position. Chances are that you’re in it for the long haul. Unfortunately, enthusiasm and a shining academic track record are not enough to climb to the top of the academic ladder.

There’s no getting away from it: for the tens of thousands of postdocs in the US, the odds of landing a coveted tenure-track position at a research university are slim. It’s a simple case of supply and demand. According to the National Science Foundation, only 26 per cent of people with science and engineering doctorates in 2006 were working as tenuretrack faculty four to six years after earning their degrees.

With such fierce competition, “you need to be the total package,” says Zoe Fonseca-Kelly, chair of the board of directors of the National Postdoctoral Association. To get you started, here are eight ways to ensure you are the pick of the bunch.

1. Make yourself understood

Stellar writing and presenting skills truly make a difference. To be successful, “you have to be able to tell the world about what you do,” says Mary Anne Timmins, administrative director of biomedical postdoctoral programs at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. You also need to be able to do it in a variety of ways, she says, which means adapting your speaking and writing styles to fit your audience.

The abundance of free communication skills training is staggering – check out what your university, scientific society or funding agency offers. The time invested will pay big dividends.

It’s a no-brainer that any job or grant application should be written perfectly, but Eight ways to set yourself apart Competition for tenure-track positions at research universities is fierce – and a stellar academic track record isn’t always enough. Becky Oskin spoke to those in the know to learn what makes candidates stand out an “appalling number” of job application packages are badly written, according to Gregory Petsko, chair of the biochemistry department at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. A well-crafted research statement will therefore stand out.

Pro tip: “Get used to telling people about yourself in five short sentences and making it sound great,” says Fonseca-Kelly.

2. The publication imperative

Let’s face it: a postdoc’s job is to write papers. “When you have 500 applications, the publication record is what’s most likely to get an application beyond the first cursory read,” says John Fourkas, a chemistry professor at the University of Maryland.

Expectations vary among fields, but a good benchmark is six to eight papers by the time you start applying for tenure-track positions. Aim for journals that attract attention in your field, not just Science and Nature.

Pro tip: If you haven’t started a postdoc yet, choose a mentor who publishes in high-impact journals to boost your chances of doing the same.

3. Work independently

A modern scientist must understand the business of science. Learn to manage grants and the fundamentals of running a lab during your postdoc years, recommends Keith Micoli, postdoctoral program director at the New York University School of Medicine.

The National Postdoctoral Association’s core competencies toolkit details the essential expertise: knowledge of your field; research skills; communication skills; professionalism; leadership and management; and ethics.

“Acquiring these skills will ensure you have a head start and also demonstrate great leadership,” says Fonseca-Kelly.

Pro tip: Attend a professional development conference or join a leadership program such as COACh, from the American Chemical Society, which offers professional skills courses and workshops specially tailored to postdocs (bit.ly/yb6cp1).

4. Pay your way

Hiring committees see passing an external peer review process, such as those that dole out research grants, as a strong indicator of future success.

“I think that getting your own [research] funding absolutely makes you stand out,” says Petsko.

To begin with, write proposals with your PI and attend any grant-writing courses on offer at your institution. Apply for awards from your own institution and, once you’ve got a little experience under your belt, approach non-profit organizations and government agencies.

Jacqueline Fairley, a third-year postdoc at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, followed this process step-by-step. Her research applies statistical modeling to human sleep cycles and she is now principal investigator on a National Institutes of Health Training Grant and a NSF‑funded Career Initiation Grant, a role usually adopted by a faculty member.

Pro tip: Ask an expert in your university’s grants office to read and critique any funding applications, as Fairley did.

5. Get a life

As well as keeping your friends happy, there are professional benefits to extracurricular activities. “Whether it’s being involved in the scientific or lay community, I think it’s critical,” says Micoli. “People who spend all their time at the bench have to be amazingly productive, because, at the end, they don’t have a network that will help them.”

Pro tip: “A lot of postdocs don’t even go to department seminars. You never know which visiting scientist may have a job opening in the future,” says Fonseca-Kelly.

6. Network, network, network

It’s been said a hundred times, but it’s important enough to say again: attend conferences and introduce yourself to key people in your field. “You need to spend your time as a postdoc building a brand for yourself,” says Micoli.

To some, even the mere mention of the word “networking” is enough to induce a cold sweat. Even if you’re a social butterfly, introducing yourself to a Nobel prize winner can seem pretty daunting. To help you get over your reticence, talk to their postdocs instead. “Even other postdocs are vital to your networking because you never know where they will be next,” says Fonseca-Kelly. From there, you can work your way up to the big cheese.

To really make an impact, boost your social skills. When postdocs first start at the medical school where Timmins is administrative director, she teaches them how to shake hands properly. Postdocs can then choose to learn business etiquette, including proper dining habits: “Everything they need to not be terrified in a social situation,” she says.

Pro tip: Smaller conferences give you a better chance of connecting with top people. “Big national meetings aren’t necessarily the best places to build these connections,” says Fourkas.

7. Build a support system

Collect a group of people who know your work and will offer support and guidance throughout your career. “I tell everybody, from undergraduates onward, that they need to get to know multiple faculty members they can rely on for long-term support,” says Fourkas.

Fairley has built three different groups during her postdoc. The first, her peers, support one another in their struggles to finish their postdocs and find a job. The second are young faculty members. “They can tell you techniques that are new in the field and will excite someone who is hiring,” says Fairley. Finally, her dissertation adviser, a department chair, reviews Fairley’s application packages and offers advice on what hiring committees look for in candidates.

Pro tip: Start new collaborations during your postdoc. “Institutions are looking to get scholars who are recognized in areas outside of their home institution,” says Fairley.

8. Plan it out

Planning your postdoctoral career from the start will put you ahead of your peers. Some schools provide formal programs called Individual Development Plans; if yours does not, find examples online at the National Postdoctoral Association (bit.ly/xEa4O6).

It is also important to carve out time for personal career development. “Schedule time once a week or twice a month,” says Fairley. Karen Peterson, director of the office of scientific career development at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, adds: “The number one mistake I see is people not preparing far enough in advance for applying for an academic position.”

Pro tip: Pay close attention when job candidates visit your department. Watch and learn from their performance, and from what faculty members say about them afterward. n Becky Oskin is a science writer based in California.

But Guerra’s dream ended in 2004, before she had even finished her internship, when President Bush announced plans to cancel the shuttle program. “I had to look at what my dreams had been, and adapt,” she says. Searching for something that could offer a similar sense of adventure and discovery, Guerra turned to oceanography. She now works in extreme environments such as the frigid Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Siberia, gauging the effect of underwater ambient noise on marine mammals.

The shuttle program was cancelled this summer, supposedly to free up resources to explore deep space. It was a blow to aspiring astronauts and meant the loss of thousands of jobs. And when NASA needs to send astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, it must pay to use a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. To ensure that the US has independent access to the ISS, NASA has commissioned private companies to build suborbital and orbital ships, effectively kick-starting a new space race.

“Space is a $280 billion industry, and NASA is worth approximately $20 billion, so NASA is small potatoes,” says , professor of space policy at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. “Most of the jobs that are available aren’t changed by what NASA does.”

Virgin Galactic, Armadillo and Blue Origin are three of the companies competing to send people into suborbital space (classed as anywhere from 30 to 50 miles up). Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, has already bought seats on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo for two of its scientists at $200,000 a pop, allowing them to carry out trial experiments in microgravity. Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation, SpaceX and Space Adventures are aiming for the ISS and beyond.

Grand plans

Many companies plan to get off the ground by hauling tourists into space, but the big money lies in NASA contracts and space research. Sierra Nevada, one of the frontrunners, aims to ferry astronauts to and from the ISS on NASA’s dime. , a retired astronaut and director of flight operations for the company, says he’s not after a monopoly. “I want the paradigm to change,” he says. “I’m hopeful that more than one company will succeed, and more people will have opportunities to fly into space.”

Lindsey is one of many astronauts to retire from NASA in recent years. The astronaut corps now numbers 60 members, down from a high of 150 in 2001. That’s not enough to meet obligations aboard the ISS, according to a report published by the National Research Council last year. And so, even with no shuttle, NASA is recruiting a new astronaut class, with applications being accepted until the end of January 2012.

Other opportunities for budding astronauts such as Guerra have already sprung up in the private sector. Now a postdoc at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, she has joined Astronauts4Hire, a non-profit group based in Florida that puts aspiring astronauts through their paces. The organization hopes to match its trained scientists with companies wanting to send experiments, but not employees, into orbit. “I think commercial exploration is going to open a lot of doors,” says Guerra. “It’s exciting. It’s completely new territory.”

But before spaceflight can become as commonplace as the commercial CEOs hope, the industry needs to solve the regulatory problems associated with spaceflight. “The technology has never been the problem,” says Mike Gold, director of D.C. operations for Bigelow Aerospace. “The legal, financial and political aspects of space exploration are what has held the industry back.”

In 2006, Bigelow launched its first prototype inflatable space station into orbit on a Russian Dnepr rocket. Despite several further launches, Gold quips that export control regulations were second only to gravity at keeping them on the ground. “I would strongly encourage lawyers and policy people with an interest in space to become involved in supporting commercial crew and commercial space activities,” he says. “In many ways, that’s where the most important battles lie.”

George Nield, associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates the industry, predicts a hiring boom once commercial flights begin. The FAA is already recruiting – everyone from engineers to environmental experts – and has proposed opening a new operational base at the Kennedy Space Center, where several companies will launch their vehicles. “In the past, there have been four or five shuttle launches in a good year, but we’re going to see hundreds every year,” he says. “With all those missions, we’ll see a lot of job opportunities.”

The idea that a protein, with no genetic information, was causing the infection was tantamount to heresy, and the community ridiculed Prusiner. An article in this magazine in 1994 reported that many thought it “a brazen attempt to appropriate an entire area of research with a smart buzzword”.

But Prusiner continued his work on the ‘P word’, developing a protein-misfolding mechanism to explain the infection. In 1997, he was awarded a Nobel prize for “a new biological principle of infection”.

This is a perfect example of the fickle nature of research trends. Working at the cutting edge can be risky as well as exhilarating, but if you pick the right nascent field, the payoff could be great. Here, we look at three hot disciplines that have crossed into the mainstream, with entire university departments now dedicated to research that once felt more like sci-fi than real life.

Artificial photosynthesis

“The biggest energy source known to mankind is the sun, and the best way to store that energy is in chemical bonds,” says Nathan Lewis at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “We should be able to figure out how to do it better, faster and cheaper than a plant does because we’re smarter.”

Taking a cue from plants, it should be possible to harness sunlight to produce hydrogen from water cleanly and cheaply. This can then be fed into a fuel cell, which can store the energy until it is needed. The concept dates back 30 years, but, until recently, the technology was not advanced enough to keep up with the theory. However, thanks to recent advances in materials and US government interest in the area, research into

Artificial photosynthesis now draws influential scientists and big money. “Thing have heated up as our planet has heated up,” says Lewis.

Last year, Lewis received a $122 million grant from the US Department of Energy for the Joint Center for artificial photosynthesis (JCAP). This multidisciplinary energy hub, whose members include people from Caltech, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a select group of universities, aims to build a commercially viable fuel generator from scratch.

JCAP will fund up to 200 jobs at Caltech and Berkeley. And opportunities elsewhere are plentiful for researchers with a background in artificial photosynthesis; the broad nature of the problem means that scientists can work in many areas.

Quantum cryptography

Like a parent cheering a baby’s first ungainly steps, Michele Mosca was excited when he heard about the first hacking attempt on a quantum cryptography system last year.

“I see it as a great step, because this needed to happen for the technology to really mature,” says Mosca, who is deputy director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Luckily, the hacking attempts exposed hardware flaws, not problems with the underlying physics. “People are now looking at the physical security of actual devices,” Mosca adds, “which in the beginning was an afterthought.”

Quantum cryptography exploits the laws of quantum mechanics to thwart attempts to eavesdrop on messages. Data is encrypted into a series of entangled photons before being transmitted. Thanks to a quantum quirk, anyone trying to snoop on the message disturbs the photons’ state, immediately revealing the eavesdropper’s presence.

With companies such as BBN Technologies and MagiQ, both based in Boston, offering commercial systems to banks and other organizations, and tenure-track jobs available at most big physics departments, Mosca says quantum cryptography is “on the other side of the phase transition” as a research field.

Mosca sees a future in which everyone will use quantum security to keep their data safe. “At the Institute, we’re working hard to make the technology widely deployable so we can communicate around the world with quantum bits,” he says.

Brain–machine interfaces

Would housework be a little less tiresome if you could send your Roomba skittering after clumps of dirt with the power of your mind?

Justin Sanchez, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Miami in Florida, thinks that a little Mary Poppins-style wizardry might help ease the tedium of daily life. “We want brain–machine interfaces [BMIs] to help people in everyday life,” he explains. “That brings up a lot of interesting challenges. How do you make them robust in all the complexities of everyday life? If you can do that, I think people will indeed be able to control devices just by thinking about it.”

Sanchez’s research focuses on BMIs that stimulate the brain’s reward center. In his model, someone learning to use an artificial limb tries different actions to discover which is the most rewarding to perform, rather than simply being told what to do.

To make an impact in the field requires training in both neurology and engineering. “You can’t innovate unless you’re an expert in both,” Sanchez says. He adds that researchers can choose to specialize in biology, implantable devices or applications – figuring out how to use the devices.

The field reached adolescence about six years ago, when departments started hiring neural engineers. Sanchez expects the growth to continue. “As the field develops and matures,” he says, “I think the opportunity for jobs is going to increase.”

The vast night sky visible from the Choctaw Indian Reservation in Mississippi sparked Powtawche Valerino’s love of space. “The stars were so vibrant. To me, it was just like another world,” she says. Valerino’s family moved to New Orleans when she was ten, and science outreach programs kept her interested and helped transform the budding astronomer into one of the few female engineers froma minority background in the US.

“Once my teachers knew I wanted to be a scientist, they started suggesting all these outside programs I could participate in,” she recalls. “Almost every summer, I was busy at some kind of camp.” Open to all students, the camps focused on math or science and motivated Valerino to “stick with the hard topics”.

In the summer before her senior year in high school, Valerino interned with a mechanical engineer as part of NASA’s Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program, in which high achievers shadow NASA professionals.

“This was the moment I realized I really enjoyed mechanical engineering,” she says. “It was a culmination of all my interests, from the creative side to science and engineering, with plenty of collaboration and teamwork.”

Valerino always knew she would attend college but it was still a shock when she arrived at Stanford University in California. “It was a really big transition for me,” says Valerino. “I didn’t identify with the big school spirit. Luckily, Stanford has a strong minority community, so I was fortuitous to still feel like I was around family.”

Through internships and fellowships her affiliation with NASA continued. After earning her doctorate, Valerino joined the Cassini spacecraft navigation team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. She currently helps design maneuvers that put Cassini in position to collect data while orbiting Saturn.

“Even today, I may be the only female Native American PhD at JPL,” says Valerino. “To me, that’s amazing because science is so accessible to everyone.” However, she says, obstacles still exist for minorities and women interested in science careers.

“The pathways are not always accessible if you don’t have people to support you or if programs don’t exist at your school. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunities that came before me.”

Mentoring and grants

An empty stomach set Emmitt Jolly on the path to science. In middle school, he missed his free school lunch when a counselor wanted to discuss his high math scores. But Jolly was indifferent. “I never planned to go to college,” he says.

After the following year’s tests and another stellar performance, Jolly’s counselor pushed harder. “That time, we had a conversation about what I wanted to be. I said either a janitor or an electrician,” he says.

The counselor convinced Jolly he could go much further. She took him under her wing, introducing him to the late plant physiologist James H.M. Henderson at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama. The meeting led to a paid summer internship and Jolly fell in love with genetics. “When I walked in there, I said to the professor, ‘You’re going to pay me to learn?'” recalls Jolly. “For me, it was extremely different. I no longer had to work in a cotton field or at a truck stop.”

Jolly’s academic prowess soon garnered awards that paid for his studies, including a fellowship from the Ford Foundation, which aims to increase racial and ethnic diversity in university faculties, and awards from the UNCF/Merck Science Initiative, which provides African-American students and postdocs with grants.

Jolly is now an assistant professor of biology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. His research explores how gene expression is regulated in a parasitic worm that infects more than 200 million people worldwide. He hopes that it will identify future drug targets.

Since realizing science was a viable career option for him, Jolly has tried to inspire others to follow his path. While at Case Western Reserve, he co-founded a mentoring group of biomedical researchers from minority groups that has since grown into a not-for-profit think tank, the Association of Underrepresented Minority Fellows. The group aims to develop and sustain a pipeline of exceptional minority biomedical scientists.

“I think everyone needs mentors,” he says. “If it weren’t for that high school counselor, the potential I had would never have been realized.”

Looking for a job in science or technology? Take a look at the latest opportunities on Newscientistjobs.com.

All it took was a photo of a turtle painfully corseted by a ring of plastic, plus some persuasive words, for 55 people to give $5,000 to Mary Maxwell.

Maxwell, an environmentalist who wanted to study plastic pollution in the Atlantic, raised money for her venture through “crowdfunding”. Just like charity websites, crowdfunding sites provide a platform for individuals to collect many small donations for their fundraising campaigns.

Having seen their traditional funding sources shrink, a few pioneering researchers, inspired by Maxwell’s story, have turned to the public for financial support. These include two biologists in California who recently raised $4,873 to study quail in Mexico and another who hopes to raise $15,000 to map the sounds of the Bornean rainforest.

Jai Ranganathan, an ecology research associate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, is hoping the trend will catch on. Last month, he and postdoc Jarrett Byrnes launched the SciFund Challenge website to convince at least 100 scientists to raise $1,000 or more for their research during November.

“It’s a small amount of money, but at the end there will be a cadre of people who know how to use crowdfunding for research,” says Ranganathan. “They can then use the same techniques to raise $20,000 or $100,000.”

Running dry

Scientists are having to find more innovative ways to fund their work: grants from the US federal government, which still bankrolls 60 per cent of research at academic institutions, are not as generous as they once were.

Rather than being protected, it seems Congress now views the National Institutes of Health, which got $300 million less in this year’s budget than last, and the National Science Foundation, which got $563 million less, as fair game. This will become increasingly true as the budget cuts resulting from the debt-ceiling negotiations start to bite.

“The NIH cannot be counted on to fully fund a person’s research career anymore,” says Renee Reijo Pera, a professor at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. She says it is increasingly hard to get NIH funding in the first place and, when you do, the amounts are smaller than they once were. “They haven’t really kept up with the cost of research.”

Although she directs a research center, Reijo Pera works without much support from federal agencies. Her research into infertility and human development uses human embryonic stem cells, and until recently, federal law prohibited the government from funding such work. Instead, Reijo Pera assembled a plum package of grants and awards from the March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization that aims to prevent birth defects, as well as funding from private donors, financial support from Stanford and funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a state program that has raised $3 billion for embryonic stem cell research. “You just need to keep trying all the different avenues that are available,” she says.

Foundations are one such avenue. For researchers with unusual ideas, they can offer much more leeway than federal agencies. They are also more likely to gamble on young scientists, who typically face the biggest hurdles when applying for federal funds.

One example is the Stowers Institute, a biomedical research organization in Kansas City, Missouri, that provides full financial support for its scientists. The institute opened its doors in 2000, founded with an endowment of $2 billion by owners of a mutual fund company.

This is good news for Kausik Si, who was hired by the Stowers Institute in 2005, as traditional sources of research dollars would have swiftly shot down his research plans. Not only did he intend to switch disciplines from biochemistry to neuroscience, he also wanted to start work in a new organism and study prion-like proteins he thinks may play a role in memory formation – an idea most prion researchers wouldn’t even consider. “Any of these would have been the kiss of death at the NIH,” Si says with a laugh.

Della Hann, deputy director of the NIH Office of Extramural Research, agrees that the NIH does look for evidence that investigators have the training and experience to do the work they are applying for – making it tricky if you want to change direction. Another obstacle is the unwritten requirement that grant applications, whether for the NIH or NSF, include significant preliminary data. These days, there’s no wiggle room in laboratory budgets for exploring new ideas; researchers often have to use the dregs of their previous grants to fund the pilot research that will help them secure the next.

Many universities are stepping in to help, however. Stanford gave Helen Blau, head of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology, a grant to explore why adult stem cells won’t grow in culture dishes. Blau solved the problem – the cells don’t like plastic’s rigidity – and was awarded NIH funding for further studies, which almost certainly would never have happened without the pilot results.

In some fields, industry financing is another option. The Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, is one of many schools that have partnered with a pharmaceutical company. Over the next four years, it will receive $40 million for research and infrastructure from Gilead Sciences. In return, Gilead will have the first option to license the inventions that come out of the research.

“The very best science will still have at its core the NIH [grant],” says Tom Lynch, director of the Yale Cancer Center. “But we’ve seen an extraordinary demand for new money, so people are looking to outside sources for funding. It’s a tough time for the economy, but people are very motivated to help support science.”

Looking for a job in science or technology? Take a look at the latest opportunities on .

Maxwell, an environmentalist who wanted to study plastic pollution in the Atlantic, raised money for her venture through “crowdfunding”. Just like charity websites, crowdfunding sites provide a platform for individuals to collect many small donations for their fundraising campaigns.

Having seen their traditional funding sources shrink, a few pioneering researchers, inspired by Maxwell’s story, have turned to the public for financial support. These include two biologists in California who recently raised $4,873 to study quail in Mexico and another who hopes to raise $15,000 to map the sounds of the Bornean rainforest.

Jai Ranganathan, an ecology research associate from the University of California, Santa Barbara, is hoping the trend will catch on. Last month, he and postdoc Jarrett Byrnes launched the SciFund Challenge website to convince at least 100 scientists to raise $1,000 or more for their research during November.

“It’s a small amount of money, but at the end there will be a cadre of people who know how to use crowdfunding for research,” says Ranganathan. “They can then use the same techniques to raise $20,000 or $100,000.”

Running dry

Scientists are having to find more innovative ways to fund their work: grants from the US federal government, which still bankrolls 60 per cent of research at academic institutions, are not as generous as they once were.

Rather than being protected, it seems Congress now views the National Institutes of Health, which got $300 million less in this year’s budget than last, and the National Science Foundation, which got $563 million less, as fair game. This will become increasingly true as the budget cuts resulting from the debt-ceiling negotiations start to bite.

“The NIH cannot be counted on to fully fund a person’s research career anymore,” says Renee Reijo Pera, a professor at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. She says it is increasingly hard to get NIH funding in the first place and, when you do, the amounts are smaller than they once were. “They haven’t really kept up with the cost of research.”

Although she directs a research center, Reijo Pera works without much support from federal agencies. Her research into infertility and human development uses human embryonic stem cells, and until recently, federal law prohibited the government from funding such work. Instead, Reijo Pera assembled a plum package of grants and awards from the March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization that aims to prevent birth defects, as well as funding from private donors, financial support from Stanford and funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a state program that has raised $3 billion for embryonic stem cell research. “You just need to keep trying all the different avenues that are available,” she says.

Foundations are one such avenue. For researchers with unusual ideas, they can offer much more leeway than federal agencies. They are also more likely to gamble on young scientists, who typically face the biggest hurdles when applying for federal funds.

One example is the Stowers Institute, a biomedical research organization in Kansas City, Missouri, that provides full financial support for its scientists. The institute opened its doors in 2000, founded with an endowment of $2 billion by owners of a mutual fund company.

This is good news for Kausik Si, who was hired by the Stowers Institute in 2005, as traditional sources of research dollars would have swiftly shot down his research plans. Not only did he intend to switch disciplines from biochemistry to neuroscience, he also wanted to start work in a new organism and study prion-like proteins he thinks may play a role in memory formation – an idea most prion researchers wouldn’t even consider. “Any of these would have been the kiss of death at the NIH,” Si says with a laugh.

Della Hann, deputy director of the NIH Office of Extramural Research, agrees that the NIH does look for evidence that investigators have the training and experience to do the work they are applying for – making it tricky if you want to change direction. Another obstacle is the unwritten requirement that grant applications, whether for the NIH or NSF, include significant preliminary data. These days, there’s no wiggle room in laboratory budgets for exploring new ideas; researchers often have to use the dregs of their previous grants to fund the pilot research that will help them secure the next.

Many universities are stepping in to help, however. Stanford gave Helen Blau, head of the Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology, a grant to explore why adult stem cells won’t grow in culture dishes. Blau solved the problem – the cells don’t like plastic’s rigidity – and was awarded NIH funding for further studies, which almost certainly would never have happened without the pilot results.

In some fields, industry financing is another option. The Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, is one of many schools that have partnered with a pharmaceutical company. Over the next four years, it will receive $40 million for research and infrastructure from Gilead Sciences. In return, Gilead will have the first option to license the inventions that come out of the research.

“The very best science will still have at its core the NIH [grant],” says Tom Lynch, director of the Yale Cancer Center. “But we’ve seen an extraordinary demand for new money, so people are looking to outside sources for funding. It’s a tough time for the economy, but people are very motivated to help support science.”

Now doing her third postdoc, Tina Henne has some advice for those just starting out. “Think of your postdoc as career development,” she says. “This is the time to take advantage of opportunities to develop your skills.”

And she doesn’t just mean a deft hand at the bench. While it’s important to make an impact in new research during your postdoc, too many scientists forget that working on critical job skills such as grant writing and good communication are almost as important.

“Whether you go into academia, industry or government, employers will need to know that you are a career player,” says Henne, a bioscience postdoc at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

But how do you pack it all in? The key, say current and former postdocs, is to start with a mentoring plan, which provides a roadmap for achieving your career goals. The National Postdoctoral Association offers examples at its that can be tailored to suit your personality and relationship with your supervisor.

An immediate boon for newly hired postdocs is that the plan opens a door for discussing research projects early on, which some are reluctant to do.

Plan ahead

“With respect to the science, there should be short-term projects that will pay off quickly and projects that will take longer to develop,” says Peter Hitchcock, director of the University of Michigan Medical School’s Office of Postdoctoral Studies.

Short-term projects will land first-author publications that faculty hiring committees seek, while long-term projects should travel with you to a new job or lead to new grants.

For postdocs who end up in labs where evening and weekend hours are the norm, mentoring plans also remind supervisors that you deserve time off from training and networking.

Once you are in the lab, try to be as sociable as possible. “I think the most important thing is to get involved with people who can help, whether it’s lab mates or other people in the department,” says Courtney Wilkins, an immunology postdoc at the University of Washington. “The input into the directions your experiments are going will help keep you on track and moving forward.”

Take advantage of any general skills courses your university has to offer. Hitchcock is a big fan of sessions offered by the University of Michigan medical school, especially those on the ins and outs of scientific communication. Anything that can give you tips on writing research papers, seminar speaking, teaching, grant writing and even the dreaded PowerPoint presentation will be worth attending.

“You have to have very good communication skills,” says Hitchcock. “That is a skill that has value in any setting.”

The poster presentation is another easily overlooked aspect of postgraduate life. But as a postdoc, making a good first impression during a poster session is doubly important – the professor saying hello could be on your next hiring committee.

“Personally, I hate to see a poster jammed with words,” says postdoc Joe Bernstein, an astronomer at Argonne National Laboratory, who recently helped judge a Department of Energy student poster competition. “If somebody walks up and has two minutes to get the gist of it, the way to do it is with lots of plots and figures. I like very clear sections and titles on the poster, and mostly bullet points, with very brief paragraphs. Two or three lines at most.”

Finding funding

Another way to stand out from the crowd is grant writing, either with your advisor or through an independent project. “Going out into the academic world and even the business world, explaining an idea and getting funding for it gives you a leg up on a lot of postdocs,” says University of Pittsburgh bioengineering postdoc Tim Maul, who applied for two grants with his graduate research advisor.

Finally, if all this sounds too exhausting for the two years of your first postdoc, don’t worry. “It is important to realize that it’s not the end of the world, or your career, if you do a second postdoc,” says Stacey Gilk, a postdoc at Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a National Institutes of Health lab in Hamilton, Montana, whose total postdoc time is more than five years. “I feel that I am more experienced and qualified, both scientifically and non-scientifically, to run my own lab because of my postdoc experiences.”