PhD Career Stories

PhD Career Stories podcast marks its third anniversary! We can hardly believe it ourselves, but we are extremely proud that for three years we managed to bring you every two weeks a new inspiring story from our speakers and share with you our thoughts about PhD life and - importantly - the life after it.  We are also happy to say that we are not going to stop - our team is continuously growing and...

In this episode two member of PhD Career Stories podcast team, Alice and Nika, talk about their experience during PhD, earned skills and their career after PhD. They also talk about how they joined PhD Career Stories podcast. Alice is currently working in the healthcare organization in Sweden and She believes her PhD skills like "science communication" helped her to get to her job. Alice also shar...

Michalina Lewicka-Yammine 's passion for Neuroscience evolved during her master degree at the Jagiellonian University and her exchange studies at Uppsala University which led her to a PhD degree at Karolinska Institute in Developmental Neuroscience.  After graduation, her passion for marketing got her engaged with three startups and establishing her own consultancy firm. At Karolinska Institute sh...

Anne Schreiter advocates for researchers and scientists. At the German Scholars Organization she and her team offer guidance and programs to help PhDs on their career path – in academia and beyond. In this episode Anne talks about why she believes in planned coincidences and what question turned out to be the tipping point for her career. Anne holds a PhD in Organization Studies and Cultural Theor...

Dr. Déborah Rupert was born and raised in France where she did her undergraduate studies in physics. Her passion for blending physics and biology brought her to Sweden where she did her PhD in Biological Physics. During her PhD, she reached very close to burnout and informed her supervisor she wanted to quit science. After few months of recovery, she started the PhD again with a very different min...

Fabian Taube   studied Environmental and Health Protection, Chemistry and Education during his Bachelor and Master study at the Umeå  University in Sweden and in 2003 he received a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry. After that, he continued experimenting with different subjects and had two postdocs - one at the Department of Chemistry, Environmental and Biogeochemistry and another at the Dept. of Teacher...

  In this episode, the founder of the podcast Dr. Tina Persson talks about two of the most important qualities you need to have during the job search. If weeks of unemployment have turned to months for you, if you feel that you do not have the required skills and there are no jobs, this podcast is for you. Tina, being the professional career coach and recruitment specialist in the present and the...

Anastasia Moiseeva is a  life coach, mentor, teacher and a life-learner. In 2005 she moved from the cold far-away Siberia to the Netherlands to pursue a master's degree in Urbanism. In 2013, she defended her PhD in Urban Sciences and Systems at the University of Eindhoven.  Her way after receiving the PhD degree was not straightforward: after working less than a year as a coordinator and analyst i...

Aoife O Dwyer was born and raised in Ireland where she did an undergraduate degree in Genetics and Cell Biology, followed by a PhD in Immunology. Two weeks after her PhD was awarded, Aoife moved to Melbourne, Australia in search of her first Medical Science Liaison job. Today, Aoife still works full time as a Senior Medical Science Liaison in Melbourne, Australia. In 2018, Aoife published "Medical...

Data Scientist is often called "the hottest job of the 21st century", but what makes it so attractive? And how can a PhD-graduate transition into this field? Chris Armbruster , a PhD graduate in Sociology from the Lancaster University , spent two years at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy studying the emerging R&D and innovation landscape in Europe. Later he has moved "from inno...

Elvira Ganic is back for another uplifting episode and this time she shares her best tips and tricks from her job hunt experience when transitioning from academia to industry. Amongst other things, she explains why a growth mindset will help you succeed and also make the journey more enjoyable. Elvira received her PhD from the Stem Cell Center of the Lund University. After her defense, through the...

We are joined by Chris Humphrey who is a project manager and careers consultant, and the founder of the popular careers website Jobs on Toast . Chris originally completed a PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of York, before leaving academia for a career in the private sector. Over the past 15 years Chris has worked in the areas of technology, transport, financial services and sustainability...

The job search period that comes after the PhD hardly can be called "fun", "exciting" and definitely not the one "to enjoy". It is the time when you question your achievements, re-assess your skills and talents, restlessly scout job-boards hoping to find a "fit" to your unique set of skills, attend exhausting interviews, and, inevitably, face numerous rejections before you get that one job. In our...

Today you will have a chance to get to know Kajsa Hallberg Adu , who was born and raised in Sweden and nowadays lives and works in Ghana. Kajsa Hallberg Adu is a lecturer in Communications, Leadership, and Political Science at Ashesi University . She holds a PhD degree in African Studies ( University of Ghana ) and a Master degree in Political Science ( Uppsala University, Sweden ). Her research i...

In September 2018 Tina Persson attended the annual Max Planck alumni meeting in Berlin and had a chance to speak with the professor for Applied Mathematics and Physics Dr. Magda Schiegl . Magda Schiegl made her PhD in Theoretical Plasma Physics at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in 1996 and then had a long career in the financial and energy industry. In 2009 she decided to come back to...

Dr. Ali Al-Sawalmih is the director of the Marine Science Station (MSS) Research Institute in Aqaba, Jordan and a researcher on Marine and Coastal Sciences at the University of Jordan in Aqaba since 2012. He has prior 5 years of experience in Germany on Marine Calcification at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPIKG) in Germany. Dr. Al-Sawalmih earned the MSc degree in Physics a...

Fulvio Caruso  received his Ph. D. in Electronic Engineering in Palermo, Italy with a focus on hybrid inorganic-organic materials for photonics and optoelectronics applications. He joined industry in 2016 when he moved to Lausanne, Switzerland to start working at Novagan , an EPFL start-up company specialised in the nitride technology. In March 2018, Fulvio joined ABB Semiconductors in Lenzburg, S...

Girish Kedar was born and brought up in Mumbai, India. For his higher studies, he moved to Sweden in 2009 and since then he studied and worked in different European countries like Sweden, Germany, and The Netherlands. He holds pharmacist degree from India and PhD in Neuroscience from Vrije University , Amsterdam. After a big struggle in finding the right job in the pharma industry, Girish came up...

The career path of the guest of our today's episode is anything but conventional. Dr. Andrew Quitmeyer studied Engineering and Film Making during his master's degree. The trip to Galapagos deviated his direction and led him to pursue a tailor-made PhD degree at the crossing of Digital Media and Field Biology. Today Dr. Quitmeyer describes himself as a hacker and adventurer, studying intersections...

We are joined by Dr Per Olof Arnäs who is a logistics researcher, podcaster, public speaker, blogger and entrepreneur with an - as he puts it - unhealthy interest in the digitalization of transportation. Per Olof has been working in, around, and with the logistics industry since the late 1980s, both as a professional and as a researcher. He has a MSc in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Logistic...

Welcome back  Joakim Muschött , ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and founder and CEO of Skifta Utveckling AB . In episode  episode #58 , Joakim explained  how career coaching can assists you in making the choices that best fit to your personality, to identify your expertise and skills and how to match these to your next career step. In his book on the topic "Courage" (Swedish:  Mera mod! ) h...

In this episode, the founder of the podcast Dr. Tina Persson discusses the question that every PhD faces sooner or later in his/her academic career: "Should I make a postdoc or not?" Tina, being the professional career coach and recruitment specialist in the present and the assistant professor in the past, provides the unique perspective on this issue and gives valuable advice. "In academia, we ar...

We are joined by Joakim Muschött who is an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) that has coached leaders at all levels in Sweden and internationally. Amongst other things, Joakim is the Founder and CEO of Skifta Utveckling AB – a company that train leaders and specialists to think straighter and thus helping them to perform better. Joakim holds a bachelor within dramatics, musicology and law and...

Karin Bodewits studied Biology in the Netherlands and is a PhD graduate from the University of Edinburgh. She founded the career platform NaturalScience. Careers . She works as an author, speaker and seminar leader for a range of communication topics. She is the author of the novel ' You Must Be Very Intelligent — The PhD Delusion' , published by Springer Nature. The novel is a humorous but tragic...

Dr Priya Revathikumar is an Indian researcher with a pharmaceutical technology background that moved to Sweden in 2010 to do a Master's project at Karolinska Institutet . Her interest for immunology and the brain led her to a PhD in Medical Sciences, which she finished in May last year. Today, Priya works as a Failure Investigation Engineer at the molecular diagnostics company Cepheid AB . In this...