Career Options for PhDs
This is a list of common careers explored by our graduates. This list is by no means all inclusive. If there are any other areas that you are interested in, we highly encourage you to use informational interviews to investigate these other careers.
Start your exploration by visiting myIDP.
- Clinical Research Management
- Consulting
- Entrepreneur Science Policy
- Principal Investigator at Research Intensive Instituition
- Public Health Related Careers
- Research Adminstration
- Research in Industry
- Sales and Marketing of Scinece Related Products
- Science Education (K-12) or Public Outreach
- Science Policy
- Science Writing
- Teaching Intensice Career in Academia
- Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property and Patenting
- Venture Capitalist
Careers in Science Seminar Series
The Careers in Science Seminar Series runs throughout the year and introduces students and postdoctoral fellows to the wide range of career paths available beyond traditional academic research. Each session features professionals from diverse sectors—along with alumni from our own programs—who share insights into their roles, career trajectories, and day‑to‑day work.
Previous seminars have highlighted opportunities in areas such as:
- academic administration
- patent law
- industry
- science communication
- entrepreneurship
- government agencies
- science policy
- teaching faculty roles
- science outreach
- and many more!
If you are an alum of our university (either graduate or postdoctoral) and would like to give a talk about your career to our current students and postdoctoral fellows, please contact Jennifer Aumiller, PhD
GPILS Individual Development Plans
The Graduate Program in Life Sciences and the Office of Postdoctoral Scholars are committed to providing a top-tier research training environment for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
To further support the development of trainees in their trajectory toward independent careers, each program provides an Individual Development Plan (IDP) as a mentoring guidance document.
Each program's IDP is linked below:
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Epidemiology and Human Genetics
Gerontology
- Please reach out to the program coordinator for this document
Molecular Microbiology and Immunology
Molecular Medicine
Neuroscience
Physical Rehabilitation Science
My IDP by Science Careers
MyIDP allows you to explore your career options and set goals by using a questionnaire that examines your skills, interests, and values and shows you careers that are the best fit.