Results of our survey “Sought after topics for the upcoming Career Impulse Sessions”
First of all, we would like to thank all 128 of you who completed the survey! The insights we gained and your very constructive and helpful comments are really valuable for us! In the following you will find only a brief overview of the major results. If you would like to have a more detailed look, please email us (career@gauss.uni-goettingen.de) and we will provide you with further details.
Our first question asked where you are based and showed that we have a very good distribution over all the GAUSS institutions across the Göttingen Campus. When looking more specifically at the different positions (e.g. postdocs, PhDs in their 3rd year or above, group leaders etc.) the distribution is similar.
| Institution where you are based | Number | Percentage |
| Faculty of Biology and Psychology | 27 | 21% |
| Faculty of Chemistry | 4 | 3% |
| Faculty of Geosciences and Geography | 3 | 2% |
| Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics | 9 | 7% |
| Faculty of Physics | 9 | 7% |
| MPI Dynamic and Self-Organisation | 5 | 4% |
| MPI Solar System Research | 3 | 2% |
| MPI Multidisciplinary Sciences (former MPI-em and MPI-bpc) | 15 | 12% |
| German Primate Institute (DPZ) | 6 | 5% |
| University Medical Center Göttingen (including ENI) | 24 | 19% |
| Other | 23 | 18% |
This leads to the second question – your current position.
| Your current position | Number | Percentage |
| Postdoc | 69 | 54% |
| PhD student (3rd year or above) | 36 | 28% |
| PhD student (1st or 2nd year) | 4 | 3 |
| Science manager | 2 | 2% |
| Alumni (left Gö Campus) | 13 | 10% |
| Other | 4 | 3% |
We also asked you if you have attended CIS in the past and which ones. One third of you have never attend any – so take this opportunity to learn from first hand experiences and join one of our upcoming CIS! The other two-thirds of you attended at least one CIS in the past.
Our last question concerned the topics you are interested in for future CIS and we are committed to invite Alumni from these backgrounds and occupations for the next year!
| Topics you are interested in for future CIS | Number | Percentage |
| Academic Career (Postdoc Level) | 41 | 32% |
| Academic Career (Junior Group Leader / Professorship Level) | 54 | 42% |
| Science Management / Research Support | 59 | 46% |
| R&D Scientist / Manager (in Industry) | 90 | 70% |
| Data Scientist / Computational Biologist etc. | 52 | 413% |
| Quality Control / Assurance / Manager | 33 | 26% |
| Product Manager | 33 | 26% |
| Project Manager | 55 | 43% |
| Consultant | 44 | 34% |
| Patent Attorney / IP etc. | 14 | 11% |
| Publishing | 20 | 16% |
| Other | 14 | 11% |
The “other” topics included areas like:
- Clinical Research Associate, Medical Liaison
- Medical technology
- Scientific Illustrator
- Science Communication
- Politics for Science/ Lobbying for funding/ Scientist Unionization
- Ecologist Jobs, e.g. Thunen Institut, bfn, and Privat Research Organisations
- Different jobs in the area of psychology rather than biology
- Speakers with background in physics rather than biophysics
We are determined to provide you also with some of these not so common job profiles amongst our Alumni and of course we have also invited more non-biophysics alumni over the past 1-2 years and are committed to do so as well in the future.
Thanks again to everybody who completed the survey and we are looking forward to exciting Career Impulse Sessions in the upcoming months and years!
All the best,
Stefanie and Christin