Successful Careers beyond the Lab

This book provides an invaluable resource for undergraduate, postgraduate and early-career scientists on the wide range of alternative careers available. It brings together entertaining personal accounts from experienced role models and readable summaries of possible pathways, the skills required and the working lifestyles of careers from business and the media to government, and beyond.

There is a major demand for people with scientific training in a wide range of professions based on and maintaining relations with science. However, there is a lack of good first-hand information about alternative career paths to research. From entrepreneurship, industry and the media to government, public relations, activism and teaching, this is a readable guide to science based skills, lifestyles and career paths. The ever-narrowing pyramid of opportunities within an academic career structure, or the prospect of a life in the laboratory losing its attraction, mean that many who trained in science and engineering now look for alternative careers. Thirty role models who began by studying many different disciplines give personal guidance for graduates, postgraduates and early-career scientists in the life sciences, physical sciences and engineering. This book is an entertaining resource for ideas about, and directions into, the many fields which they may not be aware of or may not have considered.