Four PhD students and two postdoctoral candidates from Graduate Medical Sciences attended the 2025 STEMPeers Conference, hosted October 4 at the Boston University Metcalf Trustees Center.
STEMPeers is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and mentoring STEM PhDs throughout their career exploration and transition efforts. The conference was sponsored in part by GMS and the Angle Professional and Career Development Program fund from GMS PhD alum Erika Ebbel Angle.
The annual conference brought early- and mid-career STEM professionals and students together for a day of networking and career exploration in academic and non-academic careers. The conference agenda included a keynote address and roundtable discussions on a wide range of careers STEM PhDs can thrive in, including consultancy, research & development, science communication, entrepreneurship, program management and more.
Caroline Ahn and Chelsey Skeete were two of the six representatives from GMS. They attended after reading about STEMPeers in a weekly update from GMS Director of Professional Development Béné Gnangnon, PhD.
Ahn is a seventh-year PhD candidate in the Graduate Program for Neuroscience, where she works in the lab of Professor Chantal Stern, PhD, to study how people use abstract reasoning to learn novel rules and flexibly apply them.
Skeete is a recent graduate of the Program in Biomedical Sciences (PiBS), specializing in the Department of Virology, Immunology & Microbiology. Her dissertation work in the Gummuluru Lab investigated the effect of HIV infection on the brain and how these factors can contribute to neurocognitive disorder development.
For Skeete and Ahn, the day-long event was a valuable opportunity to explore different career paths and meet professionals across a variety of sectors.
“In the long term, it was helpful for me to hear these people later in their careers share their stories about how they also went through a lot of periods of transitions and uncertainty, but eventually made it through.” Ahn said. “It sounds cliche, but that really helped me a lot.” 
Skeete also served as a judge for high school students from the nonprofit, Horizons Quest, who presented independent research during the conference.
“I think throughout your doctoral training, you have extensive experience doing research and hearing about some academic tracks,” Skeete said. “It’s really eye-opening to just see all the different career options that are out there and the things that you can really do with your degree.”
Both Skeete and Ahn are looking forward to leveraging connections and advice received during the STEMPeers conference throughout their career transitions.
“One of the biggest things that I took away from this conference was learning how to translate the skills that you learn during your PhD, like doing lab work at the bench, into a lot of these different career tracks,” Skeete said. “[I learned] how to not only highlight those skills on a resume or in an interview, but also how you can authentically translate these skills over to be successful within industry or academia.”