In addition to each Alumni Career Paths panel discussion, we ask our panelists several fundamental questions about their fields so you don't have to! Use the answers they've provided below to get a quick take on whether you want to further investigate this career path, learn about the differences between roles and organizations in this field, and as a starting point for informational interviews if you want to learn more:
- What are the responsibilities of someone in your role?
- Is a postdoc required, recommended, useful, or unnecessary to enter or excel in this field?
- What types of experience are important to highlight in your resume and interview?
- What characteristics make someone good at this position?
- What do the typical application and interview processes entail?
Academia questions answered in August 2020 by:
Erin Bank, PhD
Associate Director for Research Development and Strategy (Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCSF)
Benjamin Rubin, PhD
Director of Industry Partnerships, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute; Interim Associate Director, Precision Medicine, Office of Science Policy and Strategy (UCSF)
Catherine Dunn, PhD
Training Specialist, Office of Sponsored Research (UCSF)
Thi Nguyen, PhD
Associate Dean for Graduate Career and Professional Development (CPD) (Washington University in St. Louis)
Olivia Roberson, PhD
Alliance and Business Development Manager (UCSF)
Gabriela Monsalve, PhD
Assistant Dean for Postdoctoral Scholars (UCSF)
What are the responsibilities of someone in your role?
Erin Bank
There are three main parts to my current role. Depending on the department or institution, these functions may live in separate roles, or in some combination. My job has evolved with me over time, which is great, but it also means it’s very unique. I supervise a team of staff to carry out the logistics, manage finances, and get things done – it’s a true team effort.
Research Development and Administration
- The Cancer Center has an $8M/year Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG) from the NCI – I make sure we successfully renew and submit progress reports, that we spend our money the way we’re supposed to.
- There are tons of requirements for data reporting to the NCI each year, so I make sure we have the databases, systems, and people in place to produce these reports (and also use them for our own internal purposes).
- We also award nearly $1M in intramural funding (we get money from a grant or donor who wants to award it as pilot funding to individual investigators), and we write the RFAs, run the application and review process, and monitor awards as they’re being spent.
- I also work with investigators submitting individual or program project grants that align with Cancer Center goals.
Research Support
- Our CCSG is unique in that it funds infrastructure; therefore, part of my job is to support the programs it funds to make sure they are successful, as well as make sure what we’re doing matches what we said we were going to do and also matches what we want to be doing (e.g., Education and Training program, research programs, shared resources, developmental fund allocations, Community Outreach and Engagement programs).
- The Cancer Center also is organized around programs or initiatives that aren’t funded by the CCSG (e.g., Global Cancer), and my team supports those in the same way.
Research Strategy
- Work with leadership to operationalize strategic planning (a.k.a. taking the big ideas and figuring out how to make them happen).
- Lead groups of investigators through strategic planning and brainstorming discussions, synthesizing action items from a bunch of high-level ideas.
- Designing programs, events, etc. to get people out of their silos and working together on transdisciplinary, translational research.
Benjamin Rubin
I currently inhabit two roles at UCSF: 1) Director of Industry Partnerships for the Bakar Computational Health Science Institute (“business development role”) and 2) Interim Associate Director of Precision Medicine in the Office of Science Policy and Strategy (“precision medicine strategy role”).
In the business development (BD) role, I develop relationships, projects, and contractual agreements with pharmaceutical companies such as Genentech and Johnson & Johnson. The work centers on bringing together and managing teams of people I don’t have direct authority over to ultimately scope and fund research and educational projects. For example, to develop a typically collaborative research agreement, I’ll engage with clinicians, data scientists, program directors, lawyers, and others at UCSF and the partner organization to move from an initial discussion about a possible research topic to a fleshed-out project plan, budget, and signed contract. I also manage several of the projects that are successfully funded.
In the precision medicine (PM) strategy role, I help the Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy develop and implement his vision for precision medicine at UCSF, and manage his staff. My responsibilities include participating in meetings and convenings on a wide variety of topics (e.g., computational health sciences, digital health, ‘omics research, health policy, structural racism, COVID-19) and meeting frequently with the Special Advisor to strategize about how to support, improve, and grow PM-related activities in these various venues.
Catherine Dunn
I work in the Office of Sponsored Research (OSR). OSR provides administrative support to all researchers, from proposal development, to award negotiation and acceptance for contracts, grants, and fellowships from government, non-profit and industry sponsors.
My role in OSR as an “Operations and Training Officer” is to do the following:
- Analyze federal, state and university policies and assist in developing and communicating guidance to OSR staff.
- To train and certify the pre-award research administrators in the pre-award process and UCSF electronic systems.
- Maintain the OSR websites including the OSR Intranet and the OSR public website.
Thi Nguyen
- Campus liaison (25%) - build relationships with departmental faculty, grad student groups, student affairs units (teaching/writing/career center), and community partner, be a resource for their CPD needs, deliver workshops as requested.
- Programs/initiatives/events (30%) - take the knowledge from the needs and requests and build long-term, sustainable, grad-student focused programs and initiatives, communicate about the events, program evaluation/assessment were emphasized a large responsibility in this area.
- Counseling (10%) - this was not part of the original job description, but I advocated to include it as essential to the job, and also I enjoyed this part of the job most.
- Strategic leadership (20%) - Play a proactive role in senior leadership meetings and goal setting around the strategic initiatives of The Graduate School to implement strategic plans for graduate students CPD.
- National presence (15%) - benchmarking with peer institutions on programs and data, applying to grants, and attending/presenting at conferences.
Olivia Roberson
- Manage sponsored research collaborations.
- Work closely with teams in Innovation Ventures to monitor and assure relevant contractual and IP obligations and milestones are met.
- Maintain an overall healthy collaborative environment for the program team, including facilitation of disputes.
- Foster transparency and maintain communication between stakeholders at UCSF and partners.
- Coordinate projects with principal investigators.
- Budget and project tracking and organize symposia and meetings.
- Finding solutions to a wide range of programmatic issues.
- Identify new business development opportunities.
Gabriela Monsalve
I oversee the administrative, procedural, access, and community needs of postdocs. I collaborate with folks at all levels within and outside of UCSF to serve the needs of postdocs. On a regular pandemic day, I might be advising a postdoc, sitting on a taskforce to benefit postdocs, bringing in stakeholders from multiple campus units to streamline a process, and strategizing with postdocs, staff, and faculty on how to develop, execute, and access a program/process/intervention to support the UCSF postdoc community. Every day is different!
Is a postdoc required, recommended, useful, or unnecessary to enter or excel in this field?
Erin Bank
Probably unnecessary, but it doesn’t hurt: knowing as much as I do about academia certainly helps in my job and in connecting with faculty.
Benjamin Rubin
For both the BD and the PM strategy roles, I believe a postdoc is useful but not necessary to enter and excel in the field.
Catherine Dunn
Useful, but not necessary.
Thi Nguyen
Unnecessary - though a postdoc in a higher ed office could be useful.
Olivia Roberson
No, a postdoc is not required. However, the project management skills I developed during graduate school, and my postdoc were critical.
Gabriela Monsalve
For my specific position, a postdoc was required, and my experience doing my postdoc at UCSF absolutely serves me well in helping me to navigate my role. For others in similar positions, many of them have done postdocs, but not all. A postdoc for a similar position might not be required at a different academic institution, but it can certainly be beneficial.
What types of experience are important to highlight in your resume and interview?
Erin Bank
- Writing, especially grant writing, but also publications, white papers, presentations.
- Collaborative activities.
- Understanding how academic science “works:” grants, contracts, donations, clinical trials, etc. You don’t yourself need to have your own projects, but get involved in those of your PI. Ask to review grants, contribute to grants, review publications, sit in on budget meetings.
- Project management.
- Attention to detail, adherence to deadlines.
- Ability to work on a team (and manage people who don’t report to you, both upwards and downwards) and also work independently.
- If you’ve ever had to course correct after feedback, how you deal with failure, your managing style (and how you like to be managed).
Benjamin Rubin
For both roles, it’s important to highlight any scientific research experiences. For BD roles, I’d particularly highlight translational work and any experiences in or interfacing with industry. For a science policy and strategy role, any policy-related experiences you’ve had are good to highlight, e.g., participating in UCSF’s Science Policy Group, writing op-eds, serving on any committees that make policy, etc.
More generally–and this applies to so many roles–it’s good to highlight experiences and accomplishments that demonstrate leadership, initiative, project management, communication, and problem-solving skills.
Catherine Dunn
Before I started my current role, I was a research services coordinator (RSC) in OSR. I do not think I would have been directly hired into my current role without first being an RSC.
RSCs assist the researchers in proposal and budget development. What is important to highlight for the RSC role are the following:
- Proposal applications that you have worked on and submitted
- Ability to multi-task and work within deadlines
- Excellent communication skills
- Proficient in Word, Excel, Adobe
Thi Nguyen
I'm copying this from the summary section of my resume for this job -- Deep knowledge of Ph.D. level training programs and career paths beyond the bench. Experienced in designing, delivering and evaluating workshops independently and with collaborators. Track record of writing and being awarded professional and career development grants. Outstanding interpersonal and presentation skills.
Knowledge of university structure is also helpful. Now, focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion is also emphasized. Experience in teaching mentoring practice is also helpful.
Olivia Roberson
- Applicable Professional Experience
- Business Development
- Alliance Management
- Legal
- Scientific Experience
- Leadership & Taking Initiative on Projects
- Experience working across departments
- Ability to understand legal contracts
- The ability to work in a collaborative and dynamic team environment
- Ability to understand the science and value proposition for faculty and the campus as well as external stakeholders
- Minimum two years of experience working in an academic environment, health science organization or biotechnology company
- Thorough knowledge of and application of standard principles, theories, and concepts and techniques such as laws, regulations, and practices pertaining to the protection and management of intellectual property, university technology transfer, and general scientific and / or technical skills in subject matter area
- High-level interpersonal skills
- Excellent communication skills, written and verbal
- Ability to understand the varying objectives and needs of faculty and industry sponsors
- Ability to market technology to industrial partners
- Ability to analyze complex technical data using logic and quantitative reasoning
- Ability to work with a variety of database systems; spreadsheets; reporting systems and electronic document management systems
- Ability to effectively coordinate interdisciplinary project teams in a fast environment and multiple competing deadlines
Gabriela Monsalve
My experience with developing and executing programming for postdocs was key. Highlighting collaborations, and specifically those that I oversaw, was important to showcasing that I can work with different players simultaneously (faculty, staff, postdocs, and students).
What characteristics make someone good at this position?
Erin Bank
- Organization – both for yourself and for a group of people trying to meet deadlines
- Not taking things personally (related: a sense of humor)
- Strong communication skills (written and oral, and I’d put email in another category)
- Confidence without being abrasive (that sense of humor also comes in handy here) – you often have to speak over a bunch of faculty who all think they’re right, you have to remind people of upcoming and passed deadlines, and you have to get people to adhere to your timeline/structure
- Being able to manage faculty –remembering what it’s like to be faculty and the pressures they’re under, and also remembering that they’re just people and not putting them on a pedestal just because they won a Nobel Prize
- Ability to distill common threads from a lot of different sources (e.g., science talks, leadership meetings, reading)
- Being a stickler for the rules and doing things according to grant requirements, but buffering leadership from them so they can just worry about their big ideas and not get bogged down in the weeds
- Learning best by being thrown in the deep end and figuring out how to swim
- Ability to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out for you”
- Ability to say, “I didn’t think about it that way, you’re right”
Benjamin Rubin
For both positions, success depends on the ability to be adaptable and make strategic decisions in the face of uncertainty and changing circumstances. Staying organized while juggling a large number of work streams and relationships is also critical. Being results-oriented and not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good helps. Perhaps more than anything, people and communication skills are needed, though I think that’s true for most roles. For these roles specifically, it helps to be able to “code switch”; i.e., be familiar-to-fluent in the languages and perspectives of different stakeholders, including those working in business, health systems, and policymaking.
Catherine Dunn
- Ability to read and distill out key points from Sponsor guidance
- To clearly communicate complex ideas to a wide audience
- To be self-sufficient in managing workload
- Be able to track multiple tasks with varying deadlines
Thi Nguyen
Coalition building, experience in cross-functional team work and collaborative projects, strategic thinking, listening skills, management skills, agile
Olivia Roberson
- Interested in translational impact on patient care.
- Read and understand different therapeutic areas and cutting-edge science
- Customer service attitude and display professionalism when interfacing internally and externally with faculty as well as current and prospective industry partners.
- Resilient
- Organized, works well with others
- Can-do attitude and a disarming personality
- Hard working, dedicated, willing to go the extra mile
- Ability in to work in a fast pace environment
- Ability to multitask with competing deadlines
Gabriela Monsalve
Empathy, transparency, integrity, a collaborative spirit, resiliency, and humility. I feel like I and others in my type of position can do their best work by bringing people together, understanding their needs, and focusing on developing solutions that work for them (as much is feasible).
What do the typical application and interview processes entail?
Erin Bank
This probably varies greatly depending on the department and institution. Hopefully you’d have a phone screen and then in-person (or a longer Zoom meeting), where you’d meet your supervisor, other leadership you’d be working with, perhaps a few of the staff you’d be supervising. It will be a combination of character interview (“what’s your biggest weakness” type questions), assessing if you have the right technical expertise (e.g., grant writing or research administration), assessing if your values align with that of the department, and if you will fit into the team culture. At a higher level, there should also be the opportunity for you to provide ideas for how you would get things done, how you would identify problems to be solved, what you’d do in your first 3, 6, and 12 months on the job, etc.
Benjamin Rubin
I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with typical application and interview processes for these types of roles, which reflects the meandering path a took to get to my current positions. However, I’ve been on both sides of the hiring process in academic settings and the application process is pretty standardized, especially for public universities like UCSF that are subject to policies designed to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Applications for these roles typically require not much more than a cover letter and CV/resume, and HR staff often help provide an initial screening of the applicants. For those who pass the initial screen, most interviews involve serially meeting for 30-60 mins, usually one-on-one, with whoever will be supervising and otherwise working closely with whoever fills the position. The interviews typically focus on the skills and experiences required or desired for the position, as described in the job posting. Interviewers typically look to assess these skills and experiences, probe at areas of uncertainty where the applicant’s track record isn’t clear and ensure that the applicant has good communication skills and has overcome adversity in work settings. This pretty generic description applies to all sorts of roles, however, not just the types of positions I’ve pursued.
Catherine Dunn
- Apply through UCSF portal, it is first reviewed by UCSF HR recruiter to make sure all the qualifications are there. So if something is listed as “Required Qualification” make sure it is listed in your resume.
- For the RSC role: the resumes go to our Managers/Asst. Managers. There may be pre-screening interview. Full interview will be with 3-5 person panel made up of Managers and Staff. They ask about experience/knowledge of research administration and try to see if you have the characteristics listed above. In some cases, there may be a second interview with department administrators. Our office partners with research administrators within the departments that handle the financial management of the awards. Individuals with science backgrounds and some application submissions can be hired directly as an RSC, we also have an Associate level position that is more entry level.
- For my current role, in addition to the typical panel questions, I also had to give a 15-minute sample training presentation (that I prepared in advance) and give a 5-minute presentation on a topic provided during the interview.
Thi Nguyen
Apply through the job and get referred from your network (helps to know about Graduate Career Consortium job listserv and who is posting the job because the community is collaborative) --same as above. Interview process for this role involved with meeting soooo many stakeholders from all over the university to see understand the role and meet possible collaborators to see how they like the candidate, and interview questions focused on expertise in the CPD field (include benchmarks and status of funding opportunities)
Olivia Roberson
- There was a telephone interview/screen (30-40 minutes) followed by an in-person interview with 4-5 people, that lasted about 4-5 hours total, including a 30-minute lunch interview
- Interview questions were challenging, but thoughtful
- Providing References
Gabriela Monsalve
The process for applying to this type of role is similar to the structure of a faculty hire, but with far fewer components. The first process begins with informal informational interviews completes before the position opened up (essential for building networks, gaining insight into the key stakeholders, etc.). Then one applies with their resume and/CV, a statement of intent (or cover letter), and diversity statement. Search committees for these types of positions are common. The search committee conducts a phone screen for the first pass of candidates, and if you pass that portion of the application, then you’re invited for an onsite (or perhaps now, a virtual) interview. For that interview, you’ll be interviewed by various campus stakeholders AND the search committee. You’ll be asked to give a presentation as well. The most important part – in my opinion – is the interview with the direct stakeholders (in my case, the postdocs themselves). After that, the search committee deliberates and finalizes their choice, and prepares an offer to the candidate.
