The traditional career path in biological academic research is to do a PhD immediately after a first degree, followed by one or two three-year stints as a postdoc in other laboratories. At that stage, you hope to have accumulated a list to publications on your CV that will get you a positionin a university or research lab, where you can set up your own lab.

Lots of people don’t follow this traditional route; they do something different before their PhD, or are away from ‘academic’ science at some point along the career route, or they take a career break. There are opportunities for scientists with degrees or postgraduate training in many areas—in the pharmaceutical industry, in the media, as government advisors, in patenting and scientific consultancy, and in scientific writing or editing. But it’s quite important to realize from the outset that there’s stiff competition in following the traditional route to running your own lab—and the other career routes are quite unstructured.

Important skills

Interest and enthusiasm are definitely the most important qualities! You really do have to want to understand the mechanisms of life, and to answer the particular questions posed by the research area you choose. Motivation is important because science can be a demanding mistress—sometimes, doing an experiment right requires working odd hours, or puzzling over problems when you’re not at work. The upside to this is that you usually have a lot of control over planning your work and how you spend your time.

Beyond having the commitment, being good with your hands is very helpful. It’s very important to be able to set up experiments accurately and carefully. Often people who enjoy cooking find they like working in a modern biology lab. A lot of molecular biology is surprisingly like cookery.

Intelligence is important but you don't have to be a genius. You do have to be able to understand the logic behind previous experiments and use it to design your own and a reasonable grasp of basic maths, chemistry, and biology is important. Beyond that, perseverance, commitment, and common sense are what's needed to succeed.