Surviving Early Career Research and Beyond in the Physics of Life: A concise user guide

TL;DR

This paper provides a concise guide for early career researchers in the Physics of Life, highlighting challenges and strategies to navigate interdisciplinary careers and job market pressures.

Contribution

It offers a summary of key challenges faced by ECRs in Biophysics and practical strategies to manage career development and job security.

Findings

Identification of unique challenges in interdisciplinary physics careers

Strategies for managing job market competition and contract instability

Insights into career trajectories in Physics of Life

Abstract

Early Career Researcher (ECR) development is a dynamic challenge that tensions the urge to perform ground-breaking research against an ultimate practical aspiration of establishing an acceptable level of job security. There is no typical career path for an ECR, least of all in the area of the Physics of Life or Biophysics/Biological Physics. Being explicitly interdisciplinary across the physical-life sciences interface presents more opportunities for a multiplicity of career trajectories through different home academic institutions and departments, as well as offering a broader range of alternative future career trajectories in non-academic sectors. That said, there are key common features, such as the transient nature of fixed-term postdoc contracts, the substantial research and domestic challenges that these present, and the often overwhelming pressures of the realities of competition in the job market. In this short article I outline the key challenges to ECRs in the Physics of Life and discuss simple strategies to manage and potentially overcome them.