This series aims to provide PhD students and postdocs with an understanding of different career options in Life Sciences. Through the presentations of invited key opinion leaders and Q&A sessions with our club attendees, we cover a broad range of career paths one can follow after his/her time at the iBV.

For this second capsule, we were delighted to welcome Szilvia Ecsedi, an iBV postdoc alumna, to discuss her journey from academia to industry. After completing her PhD in molecular oncology in Hungary, Dr. Ecsedi pursued a first postdoc to help develop cancer biomarkers at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon. She then moved to a second postdoc position in the team of Dr. Arnaud Hubstenberger at the iBV to study RNA regulation and phase transition.  Wanting to find a more stable lifestyle, Dr. Ecsedi took a career break to develop new transferable skills and network. Rich of this experience, she found a clinical research role before switching to Life Sciences Consulting at IQVIA. There, she now uses all the skills she developed in data analysis and large-scale interpretation of genomic, transcriptomic and clinical data to provide real-time solutions for global oncology clients. We had the opportunity to take Szilvia’s advice on the tailoring of applications to industry jobs, the identification of soft and hard skills during a PhD and how to take advantage of them to build your own career path in industry.

If you missed it, you can find the detailed summary of our Q&A session on the iBV common server (we are particularly grateful to Emily Plumb for keeping a record of our exchange with Szilvia Ecsedi).

(By Nicolas Roby)