Topic: Improving Career Paths
Comments by Sonali Sengupta
7/7/2015
Proposed Actions
A questionnaire regarding intent, motivation and evidence of the motivating factors could be made online and be filled by masters students, graduate students, academic postdoctoral fellows, junior faculty,senior faculty,research staff, nobel laureates, industry postdoctoral fellows,industry staff etc. The outcome of the intent, motivating factors would be evidenced by the career position of the inputting person i.e. the output. Based on this if some statistical correlation could be drawn between the input and output, i.e intent/motivation/evidence of motivation versus career position/path. A new questionnaire could be devised, letting an unknown person (high school onwards) put in their intent/motivation/evidence for motivation, and a software could calculate the odds of success based on the prior data. Additional inputs could be year of birth,graduation i.e chronology.
Optional Comments on the Problem
Identify the reason a person is stepping into the field of biological sciences for :Masters,Phd,postdoc,industry research,academic research. What are the motivating factors and evidence for any of the factors such as curiosity,interest in problem solving and following it up inorder to effect a change, life changing experience resulting in wanted to work on a particular disease, entrepreneurial motivation, wanting to be an academic, wanting to teach etc. I think the intent and motivation for pursuing science is one of the indicators for reaching a certain proficiency level in science and scientific research, and obtaining success. For eg a person whose sole motivation is entrepreneurial may not be motivated to do a postdoctoral fellowship.