CAn I interview you for my School project?

Unfortunately due to time and scheduling constraints, I’m unable to provide one-on-one interviews for students or individual teachers. Astrophysicist Katie Mack has a great FAQ page detailing the various reasons why this is typically not feasible for practicing researchers. I also agree with her view that these kind of interview-based school projects are of limited value from a learning perspective. See also "An Open Letter to Science Students and Science Teachers" from science writer Carl Zimmer, and ”When K-12 teachers assign students to contact experts” from Prof. Terry McGlynn who take a similar stance on school project assignments.

How do I become a marine biologist?

A lot of people dream of becoming a marine biologist when they’re young, but career paths can be wildly divergent depending on who you talk to. My own career path was very sequential (undergrad—> PhD—>postdoc—>professor), but some people end up becoming marine biologists after weird and meandering journeys. Two of my favorite articles offering comprehensive career advice were written by my colleagues at Deep-Sea News: “So You Want to Be A Marine Biologist: Deep Sea News Edition” by Dr. Miriam Goldstein, and “So You Want to Be a Deep-Sea Biologist?” by Dr. Craig McClain. Both articles are packed with great advice, and include copious amounts of external links and lists of resources.

Can you Explain the typical academic career path?

When I say “typical academic career path”, I mean the road to becoming a Principal Investigator (PI) at a university or research institution. PIs (like myself) are the head of a research group and are responsible for bringing in research grants and supervising trainees (postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates). Being a PI is kind of like being the CEO of a small startup company, in that you have to keep track of financial spreadsheets, actively manage projects, and pitch your research ideas through talks, posters, and peer-reviewed scientific articles. These kind of PI jobs are usually referred to as “tenure-track positions”, although you can be a PI without ever having tenure (usually if you fund your own salary through grants, known as “soft money” positions). The typical path to becoming a PI includes the following steps:

1. First you would need to complete a Bachelor’s degree followed by Ph.D. (some people take a few years off to work after graduating from college, others do a Master’s degree in between their BS and Ph.D., and some go straight into a PhD. It really depends on the person and whether they want to take a break from school before committing to an intensive Ph.D. program). A Ph.D. degree in the USA usually take ~5 years to complete, so typically graduate students would get their doctorate in their mid to late 20s (or early 30s depending on whether you took time off in between degrees). Completing a Ph.D. degree is basically a full-time job even if the university technically considers you a student. However, as a graduate student you should not need to pay tuition and you would get a salary of around $30,000 per year as a Ph.D. student in the USA.

2. Next you would work a few years as a Postdoctoral Researcher (“postdoc position”) – this is still considered a “training” position after you get your Ph.D., although you are more independent and self-motivated in the kind of projects you work on (even though you still work under a PI in their lab). The goal as a postdoc to keep up a steady stream of peer-reviewed publications. People work as postdocs for various lengths of times before applying to faculty positions (trying to become a Principal Investigator), although I would say the average length is probably 4-5 years of being a postdoc before your CV/resume is competitive enough for faculty jobs. That being said, I also know of colleagues who successfully obtained faculty positions after only 1-2 years of being a postdoc. So you may be a postdoc until your early/mid 30s, but I think the average age someone starts a faculty position can be wildly different depending on their specific career trajectory. Postdoc salaries can vary a lot by university/institute, but typically they start around $55,000 per year and increase as you gain more years of experience (see this NIH postdoc pay scale for an idea of starting salaries that PIs might use for hiring postdocs).

3. The dream job for many postdocs is to get a job as a tenure-track faculty member at a research-intensive university (sometimes called “R1” universities) - this is the first position where you will usually be considered an independent Principal Investigator. Applying for tenure-track PI jobs is a long and intensive process, often requiring many many job applications and campus interviews (I applied to >60 jobs one year as a postdoc!). Newly hired PIs are called “Assistant Professors” (my current title, although I’m no one’s assistant and I run my own lab!). Assistant Professors usually have a “temporary” position for 5 years until they must go up for Tenure (which involves compiling a giant cumulative resume, getting letters of support from other scientists in the field, and writing self-statements about your research program). As a faculty member you must show that you have mentored trainees (grad students and postdocs) and have obtained sufficient external grant funding to support running your lab’s research program. You also have to keep up publishing peer-reviewed papers at a steady rate. So by the time you apply for (and are granted) tenure, most people are in their late 30s or 40s. Tenure gives you long-term job security in the form of a permanent position – the university can’t fire you anymore, even if you stop publishing papers (IMHO this is both a good and bad thing, for many complicated reasons). Academic salaries vary very widely depending on the geographic location and type of university (public vs. private), and starting salaries for Assistant Professors can be anywhere from $70,000 to $90,000 at public/state universities, and often over $100k at private universities.