Career Development Resources

Graduate Medical Sciences (GMS) is dedicated to the professional development and mentorship of our graduate students. There is a core curriculum for doctoral candidates, with an eye towards providing both theoretical and practical training for future careers in various scientific sectors. The activities in the curriculum include seminars, panels and workshops.  Another important component for doctoral students is to provide contact information for our alumni who have agreed to serve as mentors as students consider future career moves.

Resources to Explore

  • Graduate Medical Sciences offers Career Development Services including career coaching, mentors, internships, site visits, volunteer, opportunities, and biotech courses & forums.
  • The website TOTAL provides alerts about BU and Boston-wide career and professional development events. Both students and faculty can create accounts.  
  • Professional Development and Postdoctoral Affairs offers  information, support, community, and professional development to postdocs, and information related University policies to continue to improve the BU postdoc experience. (Contact: Dr. Sarah Hokanson) 

Science Business/Consulting/Finance/Innovation/Entrepreneurship 

  • Business of Science Class through the Pathology Department (participants write the equivalent of an SIBR grant and learn about drug creation from bench to bedside).
  • BU Biotech Consulting Club, join by getting on their e-mail list for notifications of upcoming events BUstem.cc@gmail.com.
  • MInT, a BU Student Club allowing students to form interdisciplinary teams to tackle unmet clinical needs. 
  • Catalyst Program with Innovate@BU. This low involvement (5 hours a week, which can be done asynchronously – nights and weekends) program allows participants to talk to stakeholders to assess if there is a market need for a project. Contact: Rana Gupta. 
  • Outcome Capital offers a more time-intensive internship that pays up to 20 hrs/week.
  • Idea2 Global – Innovation teams meet at MIT to sharpen their focus on unmet medical needs specifically using medical technologies. Teams come to this program with a technology they want to launch. Early in each edition of IDEA2 Global, the teams gather with medical technology and business experts to improve their new technologies’ focus and their stories about them. 
  • Catalyst – Catalyst sparks innovative and impactful solutions to unmet medical and healthcare needs. Individuals come to this program with no ideas but with a passion to make a change and they create teams throughout the process to help solve an unmet medical need. Two startup companies have launched from this program and are both renting incubator space at BU Photonics center (1. Leuko, 2. Handheld Autorefractor: QuickSee from PlenOptika). Their method for executing research focuses effort, compresses time, leverages resources, and develops change agents in biomedical technology innovation. The Catalyst community provides a 360o perspective to see around corners and draw insights from key experiences, paving the way for impact. 
  • Flagship Pioneering fellowship – A paid, 12-week summer fellowship where exceptional entrepreneur- innovators help create life science startups. 

Science Communication 

  • Be a podcast host for 6 sessions with BU Grad/PDPA office. Reach out to gradpd@bu.edu if you are interested in learning more. 
  • Write a science blog for BU GMS. Topics that are more likely to get approval from GMS leadership are timely/trending and showcase research being done by GMS student or faculty. This is voluntary and not compensated. E-mail GMS Public Relations associate Sarah Rowan.
  • IMPACT – The IMPACT Program prepares early career professionals to make a difference through research. IMPACT challenges fellows to refine their research focus and to identify the most promising paths to achieve real-world impact. Many BU researchers have participated in this program. 
  • Rising Stars in Biomedical – This career development workshop aims to bring together top female and under-represented minority (URM) postdocs and senior graduate students whose research focuses on biomedical applications. The program includes technical talks, panels and discussions with faculty, researchers from Boston area clinical labs and industry. The goal is to provide mentoring and support for top junior researchers as they transition to the next phase of their career, and to enable them to form connections with their cohort of investigators in different areas of biomedical research. 
  • Biogen Worldwide Medical Affairs Fellowship – PhD Fellowship. A two-year fellowship (two months total) spent in each department of the Biogen Medical Affairs program. 

Teaching 

  • Science Club for Girls
  • BU GWISE on the CRC campus has many opportunities to volunteer with younger STEM girls. Mission is to foster excitement, confidence, and literacy in STEM for girls, particularly from underrepresented communities, by providing free, experiential programs and by maximizing meaningful interactions with women mentors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
  • Museum of Science
  • FiBS Teaching Assistants. An opportunity to gain teaching experience, earn some extra income, and connect with other people in your cohort. Anyone who has taken the class and is interested can reach out to Dr. Symes
  • BLCS program or Biology program through the MET College. Beth Bradgon is the Director of BLCS. If you are interested in creating your own curriculum and lecturing (which is required as a professor at a primary undergraduate institution). BLCS is a part-time undergraduate program offered through the Metropolitan College’s partnership with BU. The laboratory is on the 10th floor of 72 E. Concord St. and all courses are at night because this program is for nontraditional undergraduate students who work. You would likely have to TA for a semester before becoming a lecturer for the following semester. 
  • TA an undergraduate BU Biology Course. This is a more time intensive endeavor, but provides a portion of salary. Contact Kim McCall. 
  • IRACDA Postdoc for Teaching Science Policy 
  • STEPUP is aScience Policy Student group, they work on various briefings and skills one would need in the science policy field. Email them.
  • MIT Policy Lab EdX course
  • CASE by AAAS occurs every year and 4 PhD students from BU are sent to Washington DC through the Federal Relations Office. Jennifer Grodsky VP of Federal Relations runs the program and covers the cost of sending students. 

Alumni Association Resources

Throughout your career, from graduation to retirement, Boston University Alumni Association is committed to helping you define and achieve your personal professional goals. To learn more about CareerBeam© and all of the other great career resources provided by the BU Alumni Association, visit “Career resources” at Boston University Alumni & Friends.

Direct2Experts is a Distributed Interoperable Research Experts Collaboration Tool open to all biomedical institutions with the goal of improving biomedical research and leveraging our strengths as a community by creating a network that enables easy access to expertise and related resources across institutions regardless of local platforms and tools, and in collaboration with participating institutions to ensure access to approved and verified data.

WEST, a group whose mission is advancing Women in the business of Science & Technology, hosts various development and networking events each semester specifically for women working in the fields of science and/or technology. More information