Ask a Career Consultant
Hi there! Every week, the Career Development Team for Researchers at the Office of Career and Professional Development answers an anonymized career development question from the UCSF community. You can also visit the archive of all of our past columns. To submit your own question, email it to [email protected] with the subject line 'ASKOCPD.'
A first-year PhD student asks—
I just finished rotating with a PI who seems like a really good mentor, and they have a bunch of cool research that I’d be interested in working on. But I know their lab doesn’t have any industry connections, and I’m not planning on a faculty career. Am I making a big mistake if I join their lab?
Awesome that you’re thinking about what might come after your PhD as you make your thesis lab choice! But we can take some of the pressure off, since your primary industry connections would come from intentional relationships built outside your lab. Your PI is a key player in your PhD experience, but we recommend that they be one of many. Different people will support you in different ways—whether they are other faculty at UCSF or professionals outside UCSF. And it’s going to be up to you how you find and recruit them. If you’ve found a PI that you think is a really good mentor and also has cool research going on—congratulations! That’s a great foundation for your time at UCSF.
-Ray Care, Program Director, Career Development Team for Researchers