Career switch from Industry to Postdoc: Returning to the US

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

When I was pursuing PhD in Buffalo, due to various reasons I shifted apartments 4 times in 5 years. This tendency to keep introducing something different in life has always baffled me. I guess it’s not just me but many who want change in their lives. For me, it was the second quarter of 2017 when the thought of a career switch occurred to me. I briefly mentioned in my other blog “How PhD shaped my industrial stint” about my decision to move back to academia. Had I attempted the postdoc immediately after PhD, it would have been great and the continuity would have worked in my favor. But here was I, with a 2 years industrial stint after PhD, attempting a postdoc outside India. It was a tough decision and so keeping my family in mind, I applied to some places in India but mostly to the USA. In hindsight, I may have made an error in not accepting a good position (permanent) from one of the Indian institutes. I am calling this an error, as I was planning to move to another country with no certainty of the future while leaving my family behind in India. It was a tough move!

From mid’17 to Oct’17, I applied to an almost mammoth 100 professors. Applying for a postdoc is not an easy task as it requires having good publications, recommendations, and continuity in scientific research. So, I was in soup but somewhere at the back of my mind, I knew that this was what I wanted for myself. But you could say, I didn’t think about my family and thought for myself which was a bad decision on my part. I used to travel for 2 hrs in the morning to work and 2hrs in the evening back home. I utilized this time to write emails every day and was lucky to get a few interview offers, but mostly rejections. I guess rejections are part of life!

All this while I used to pester my PhD guide for recommendations and advice on my applications. At the start of October, I stopped applying realizing my fate was to stay in India. But, later that month I got an email from a US lab and I called the prof immediately on his phone from India based on his advice. He promised to schedule a Skype presentation in November. One of the things PI mentioned was to get a strong recommendation from my PhD guide. This turned out to be an important factor other than publications in the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) and interviews, as later I found out that he was collaborating with my PhD guide on a cancer glycobiology project.

I got my paperwork done and received my visa in Jan’18. After meeting everyone at home and leaving my family behind, I flew to Omaha in Feb’18. Since I already had a “Social Security Number” from SUNY, my paperwork at UNMC was completed quickly. After completing some SOPs I started working in the lab.

Holi Milan, Omaha, 2018

So, I was getting back to being in academia and working on my first love, glycobiology, but in the context of cancer progression and metastasis. I was primarily asked to study pancreatic cancer with a focus on glycosylation. While I was getting to know things and had spent a couple of months there, my better-half paid me a visit. Her presence helped me focus better on my research.

During this time, my boss showed me some insilico glycogenes data from the TCGA datasets and that’s how my real project kicked off. I started screening those genes using RT-PCR (Covid has introduced many to RT-PCR !!) and got some astonishing results. Then I repeated the experiment to prove its reproducibility. To add further, many other experiments went into the completion of the project which got published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Graffiti on the Trail, Omaha, 2019

One rotation student joined our lab in summer. As he had prior experience in glycobiology, my boss asked me to train him for a couple of months. He ended up joining as a PhD grad in our group. His project was very exciting and we became good friends until I was there in the lab. Many of us ate at different restaurants, did bike rides, and enjoyed working on Saturdays. Needless to say, getting used cars in the US is affordable which makes it easy to commute. Unlike Buffalo, in Omaha, I didn’t purchase a car and saved money on its purchase and running costs as I stayed near to the university. University ID holders had free access to city buses and a $50 credit per month on Lyft services. I utilized these tricks to commute sensibly and made investments only where necessary, including in my health.

Me after completing 5 miles, Omaha, 2019

While I was working on the project, another professor working on lung cancer approached me and this opened up the possibility to work on another cancer glycobiology project. I contributed to his project in return for authorship. Moreover, my PI allowed me to work with others in our group which helped me expand my research scope. I contributed not just intellectually but also performed metabolomics experiments, ImageJ analysis, RT-PCR, in vitro bioassay, CRISPR KO, etc for others which were rewarded as co-authorship in manuscripts.

During my stay at UNMC, many US universities including UNMC scraped their GRE requirements for PhD admissions. I also heard verbally that for postdocs, UNMC also introduced a new guideline of promoting postdocs to instructors after a productive 3 years in their respective labs. I am not sure how this rule stands today but after NIH raised the postdoc stipends, it’s all the more lucrative to pursue postdocs in the US. In my very first year in 2018-19, the postdoc stipend at UNMC was raised from 41K to 49K per year.

Considering I stayed alone for the most part and had continuous health setbacks, I ended up publishing 6 manuscripts in high-impact international journals in a span of 2.5 years. I completed approximately 2 years there and when my project funding was over, I decided to move back to India in Dec’19. My return to India happened just before COVID hit us. You can say it was lucky!!