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ASM takes pride in providing career and professional development opportunities to students, postdocs and early-career faculty. Our digital presence through ASM’s career articles and , ASM’s job board, reached more than 17,000 users in 2019.

With the year coming to a close, we highlight the top 5 career articles for 2019 based on pageviews.

An elevator pitch conveys who you are, ends with a request or next step and is no more than 30-60 seconds long. In this article, we tell you how to craft an elevator pitch and in what types of environments to use it. Then we finish the article with practical ways to execute your elevator pitch. “Regardless of the particular elevator pitch, before you start talking, take a deep breath, make eye contact and smile,” says Dr. Shilpa Gadwal, Career Resources Specialist at ASM.

 

Dr. Ada Hagan, a Fellow in ASM’s Journals Department, penned a letter to research mentors on how to support their trainees’ career development. The path for Ph.D. trainees who don’t want to stay in academia often is not clear. The most helpful thing a supportive mentor can do is not assume that a mentee isn’t invested in their research once they decide to pursue a non-academic career. Hagan provides tips for faculty on how to discuss and explore career options, and how to help mentees network.

Tammy Gonzalez, a 6th year M.D./Ph.D. student at the University of Cincinnati, studies the skin microbiome in children with eczema. She explains the factors that led her to apply to certain graduate schools - like having an exceptional record for mentoring students. Once she started graduate school, she quickly realized that it was not only about generating data, but also presenting data. “Your greatest data and accomplishments don’t mean as much if you don’t know how to convey your message,” said Gonzalez. To prepare herself, she applied for the ASM Capstone Fellowship and learned how to give clear and concise presentations.

The (ABRCMS) gathers one of the largest communities of underrepresented minorities in STEM. In 2019, we highlighted the major speakers of the conference. Dr. uses hip-hop music and popular culture to engage children on the importance of stroke services. The closing keynote speaker, , encouraged students to think broadly about life occurrences, change and equality.

In this article, Dr. Caleb McKinney, Assistant Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Training and Development at Georgetown University, summarizes the five stages of a project management life cycle and how to apply them to your research projects. In the initiation stage, determine the scope and feasibility of a project. In the planning stage, find the protocols and materials that you need, and create a risk management strategy. Execute and monitor the experiments and projects. For project closing, document all of your methods and findings in your laboratory notebook.