1 Choose wisely

It’s all very well to pick a subject you love, but it’s important to establish yourself in an up-and-coming field. “If you specialise in something that has a demand you can really build yourself a career path,” says Jason Price, a chemical crystallographer at the .

Price followed his undergraduate degree in chemistry with a graduate diploma, and then a PhD at the . He found postdoctoral fellowships in New Zealand and Switzerland without too much trouble, but on returning to Sydney, he struggled to find work.

“I door-knocked the University of Sydney, basically,” says Price. When he found out that the university’s physics department was looking for crystallographers, he jumped at the opportunity to get involved, even though it meant retraining. “I had some experience, but not an enormous amount, and I got to learn a lot more about it,” he says. The move paid off. Two-and-a-half years later, Price has a three-year contract as a crystallographer at the Synchrotron.

Sarah Boyd’s decision to build her career around a niche field has also paid off. Boyd, who is based at in Clayton, Victoria, studies systems biology – a discipline that combines life sciences with maths, computer science, chemistry and even linguistics. The field is so young that it doesn’t even have an agreed formal scientific definition yet.

“I was interested in computer science and biology, and my mentor said ‘don’t do one or the other, do both’,” says Boyd. Because there are so few other researchers within the growing field, Boyd has had the chance to help build .

2 Get networking

Boyd probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to help set up an institute if she hadn’t networked. While surfing the net looking at courses on systems biology, she came across an advert for a forthcoming international conference on computer-based mathematical models. As it was taking place in New Zealand, she decided to go along.

It was definitely the right decision. “I didn’t realise until I got there, but some of the most prominent people in systems biology were at this meeting,” says Boyd. “It was an incredible opportunity to talk to and connect with people in the field.”

At the meeting, Boyd met Hiroaki Kitano, the founder of Tokyo’s . The pair clicked, and Boyd moved

to Japan to conduct her early research in systems biology, with Kitano as her mentor. While she was there, she wrote a proposal for establishing the Systems Biology Institute Australia, where she now works.

“Mentors are so important,” says Boyd. “I can point to so many different kinds of mentors I’ve had, and they’ve all been magnificent.” To find your own mentor, Boyd recommends seeking out leaders in your field of interest and starting a discussion. You will quickly be able to work out who you get on with, and how you can learn from them, she says.

3 Apply for awards

Thomas Faust, a molecular chemist at the University of Sydney, has built his career on the awards he has received. Originally from the UK, Faust travelled to New Zealand to deliver a presentation at the on an – a prize for top-performing PhD students.

Faust is currently preparing for an all-expenses-paid trip to the US to meet researchers and publishers and attend the in Indianapolis, Indiana. The visit is funded by the society’s programme, which rewards “accomplished and committed” PhD students and postdocs. He heard about the award through a chemistry mailing list. “A lot of people get these emails, read them, and don’t apply for the awards,” says Faust. “That’s a mistake.”

Awards not only offer fantastic opportunities to travel and meet the big names in your field, they look great on your CV. You can find out about prizes at university departments and schools as well as advertisements on the websites of subject-specific organisations.

“All through my career I’ve been applying for different things,” says Faust. “I’ve been to Japan and India and other places. People say I’m really lucky, but I keep my ear to the ground and if I see an opportunity, I take it.”

4 Travel the world

To get ahead of the competition in Australia, it helps to get experience abroad. This tactic worked for Sophie Stocker, who is now a senior ethnopharmacology scientist at in Victoria. After struggling to find a postdoctoral position in Australia, Stocker travelled to the . “I spent two years there because the lab was a world leader,” she says.

The post gave Stocker the opportunity to focus on the area of research she was most interested in, and also afforded her valuable experience. It was this experience that helped her secure a job in a very competitive market back home, she says.

, now a lecturer in inorganic chemistry at the University of Queensland, has a similar story to tell. Clegg believes it was the experience he picked up during a two-year postdoctoral position at the University of Cambridge that secured him a teaching post back in Australia.

“If you haven’t done it during your PhD, it is important to spend some part of your postdoc career overseas,” Clegg says. “There are a large number of independently funded postdoc positions, either funded by the or in Australia or other agencies overseas, and obtaining one of these fellowships is a great leg up.”

5 Publish, publish, publish

“It probably sounds like a cliché, but the key tip I have for postdocs is to make sure you have publications,” says Clegg. “This is a key requirement to obtaining research funding, and when hiring staff universities look at your potential to obtain competitive funding.”

Price agrees that the best way to get ahead of the competition is to publish as much of your research as you can. “It can be very hard to break into academia and to do so you’ve really got to have a good publication record,” he says. Make sure you work with supervisors who are happy to share authorship with their researchers when collaborating.

“With a small population, geographical isolation and small number of universities, the academic career path in Australia is extremely competitive, especially compared with the US or Europe,” says Clegg. But the rewards for those who find the right role can be great. “In the academic world, Australia punches well above its weight,” he says. “It is hard, but it is also very rewarding.”

When funding cuts lead to the closure of small labs around the globe, what’s a postdoctoral fellow to do? For an increasing number of postdocs the world over, the answer is simple: go to Australia.

That’s what found when she moved to Australia to be with her boyfriend. “I really like working in smaller labs – you can take bigger risks and do lots of experiments,” says Williams, who completed her PhD at Yale University. But such small facilities are usually the first to feel the effects of cuts as recession bites. “My graduate school facility – one of the smaller ones – actually closed down,” says Williams, who has since secured a position at in Canberra. “The global financial crisis has had a significant effect on research funding and on postdoctoral positions all over the place.”

Everywhere, that is, except Australia. The country’s publicly funded university system is less exposed to the damaging effects of a downturn than commercial or privately funded institutions. This has enabled the ANU to maintain its , the only one like it in the country, even as the federal government strives to create a budget surplus.

Funding boost

The number of postdoctoral fellowships on offer looks to be holding strong, too. In the May budget, for example, – an Australian Research Council (ARC) programme that provides funding for 150 research positions – by an extra year, to 2014.

The scheme is one of many run by the ARC, which directs funding towards government research priorities. These currently include environmental sustainability and technological improvements to Australian industries, such as mining.

Australia’s other main grant funding body, , invests its A$700 million yearly budget in fields that cover the government’s health priorities, such as dementia, obesity and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s health.

In 2012, the , among many other projects.

Such research has enjoyed a significant funding boost in recent years. Since coming to power in 2007, . At the same time, research funding has soared: . But it has since slowed down.

That said, the Australian government’s drive to reduce national debt saw the imposition of an “efficiency dividend” on universities as part of the 2013 budget. Although research funding won’t be cut directly, research institutions will be encouraged to make savings where they can.

, chief executive of the national advocacy body Universities Australia, worries the dividend might “challenge the ability of universities to maintain the quality of education and research” by forcing institutions to drop courses or reduce staff levels. Tertiary education minister disagrees, because university funding will continue to grow overall. Until university budgets are drawn up next year, it’s difficult to predict the outcome.

But the 2013 budget also contained some good news for a number of research fields. has been promised extra funding, totalling nearly A$31 million over the next four years. is also set to receive a cash injection to support research into food, soil and water challenges faced by Australia and the rest of the world.

Pay perks

In the meantime, postdocs in Australia are enjoying substantial salaries. “One of the benefits is that you do typically get better pay than, say, if you are in the US,” says Williams. “I would probably be living very much like a poor graduate if I was over there.”

In Australia, postdoctoral fellowships pay between A$60,000 and A$85,000 at the early to mid-career stage, depending on the institution and the grant scheme. Most ARC grants, for example, . In addition, fellows receive a bonus worth 28 per cent of the grant, which is intended to cover travel and equipment, such as computers and any specific tools needed for a project.

Postdocs in the US, on the other hand, can expect much smaller awards. There, , with a possible increase to US$42,000 proposed in the federal budget. The exchange rate is about 1:1 at the moment. All in all, postdocs in Australia can expect to be paid around A$30,000 a year more than their counterparts in the US.

But tracking down these well-paid positions can be a challenge, says , dean of graduate research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The best way to discover your options is by seeking advice from your research supervisor, she says.

“One of the things that drives success in the postdoctoral area is having a research supervisor who actually mentors you and really talks to you about the next steps, and puts you in touch with colleagues around the world,” says Poole-Warren. “It’s really important to get connected to a network.”

For the postdocs that manage to do this, the future looks golden.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Golden opportunities”