Establishing your independent research career

One of the hardest parts of an academic career is transitioning from early career researcher to running your own project. Rather than being given a project and the resources to deliver it by someone else, suddenly you must have your research ideas compete with those of others to secure your own funding. This is a stage at which many academic research careers founder. So, what can you do to maximise your chances of success?

Use your postdocs to get grant ready

A lot of people pursue postdocs without a strategic career plan. They do one as the next logical step on the academic pathway without thinking about what happens afterwards. Make sure you are applying for postdocs that can help you achieve your academic career aims. Three things to look for are:

Space to develop your own research ideas

What do you want to research and why is it different from your previous topics? Developing your own research ideas is a critical step in your academic career path. Make sure you are setting aside the time to generate these ideas. Speaking about your ideas with others from research areas from outside of your area of expertise can be a great way to stimulate these ideas.

Access to mentorship and help to gain experience writing grant proposals

Offer to help your supervisor with upcoming grant proposals, or seek out successful grant winners in your department. Will they share their proposals with you, so you can read them and learn how they were successful.

Opportunities for building your skills beyond your current research

These could include developing project management, financial management or experience of supervising undergraduate or PhDs. Look for postdocs that are adjacent to your current research interests rather than just extensions of previous work. This can help you learn new techniques and familiarise yourself with new research areas, which can be helpful developing new research ideas. Be proactive seeking out these opportunities, rather than wait for them to be offered to you.

Don’t be afraid to ask about these opportunities during your postdoc interview or even during an initial discussion with a potential supervisor before you apply. The reaction to these questions will be good indicators of how much help and support you will get during the postdoc if your application is successful, and might help you decide if the postdoc on offer is right for you or not.

Get grant writing help

You need to write a grant proposal in a different style and for a different purpose than writing your thesis or a paper but it’s a skill you can learn. Rather than reporting what you have done so that others can reproduce it, you need to communicate your ideas to influence funding bodies to award you grants. In a competitive environment, how are you going to stand out? How are you going to communicate a compelling narrative to your research ideas? Can you explain why your ideas are important, why it is important your research is funded now, and what the benefits and impact of the research will be? Why are you the best person to do the research? Just because you are interested in the research area, doesn’t mean funders will be – you have to convince them.

Establishing an independent academic career is an exciting but challenging process.

Seek help from your university research office, read successful grant applications from friends and colleagues, and access help from funders. Funding bodies want good quality applications and so they often support prospective applicants or have an alumni network that you can tap into.

Establishing an independent academic career is an exciting but challenging process. The data available for UK chemistry shows huge barriers to an academic research career which affect everyone, but have a disproportionate impact on women and underrepresented communities. These can be addressed in part by actions such as finding role models and mentors, establishing networks and having access to good sources of information.

If you are seeking early-career research independence make sure you are thinking about your career plans strategically and make sure you access the help and support that is available.