Resources and Dscussion for transition from Academia -> Industry

Hi everyone,

This is a continuation of the Industry panel from Neuromatch where we can share resources, links and dicuss how we can help one another with advice.

I found this general advice for Academia -> Industry really helpful: https://andremarques-smith.com/career-advice

Join our “Industry” Slack channel at the Neuromatch Slack Group.

We also have a Telegram group for more casual chat. Join us here: https://t.me/nma2020

General recommendations from the Industry pannel (Kachi Odoemne, Kyle Frankovich, Rebecca Clarkson, Feryal Behbahani):

  • Make a Github account, leearn the basics of git (i.e. what is a commit, push, pull, branch, etc.) and put some code. As you advance you can build up a code portfolio including Jupyter notebooks which can be easily converted to e.g. blog post.

  • Learn the basics of Python. A good starting place is this 1 day course from Software carpentry. Checkout the NMA Python crash course too. Another good place is this kaggle course. If you come with Matlab background, have a look at this blog from Patrick Mineault.

  • Make a kaggle account. Go there and take part in coding challeneges. Use those to build your coding portfolio.

  • Make a LinkedIn account. Connect to people and build your profile there too.

  • More generally take charge of things and be proactive. Cold emailing people is fine. Network, have virtual coffees with people. Use NMA too to find relevant people. Don’t be afraid to bug people!

  • If you can, set up a fixed time every day/week which is dedicated to only coding and building your skills. Better, setup a study group with other people and social pressure yourself to actually do it.

  • After learning the basics, focus on doing actual projects and applying the stuff you’ve learned more directly. Take a Deep Dive approach where you go for projects, interviews and just get as much experience as possible even if you don’t feel ready.

Some specific recommendations from the Industry panel:

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https://t.me/nma2020 telegram group link :wink:

also NMA on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/neuromatch-academy/

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Well done! Thank you.

Get some handle on the business side of things too

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Don’t be afraid to bug people, among other popular advices:

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Thank you @jparent , we can do more IM stuff there and here for links and more general stuff!

Amazing initiative. We can start networking from here. I also recommend https://neurotechx.com/

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NMA also is apparently on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/neuromatch-academy/

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Thank you @alex_ivanov for the ‘readiness’ in creating the Neurostars thread and @Kianoosh for the Telegram group!!

“BOTHER PEOPLE and BUILD NETWORK”!!

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Thank you so. Your questions and your responses are really help us a lot.

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Learn CS fundementals
GitHub !
coding interviews…

Kaggle NMA team for some project sometime?

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Let’s not forget about this amazing program that 2 of the speakers at panel 2 attended!

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Kaggle NMA team would be awesome! Count me in if it gets started

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in case you missed the facebook reality lab’s career fair panel

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I might suggest renaming this thread about general career / PD / industry OR academic links/ discussion / panel talk , etc

Thanks for the resources, @alex_ivanov! Could we start a Discord/Slack instead of/in addition to the Telegram group? This could help people who don’t use telegram and would also collate links and resources better than Telegram does.

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@alex_ivanov @jparent @bmede @btrovo and everyone else, do you have any suggestions for someone who is really early in his academic life (undergraduate) to better prepare for future neuroscience? (I know it’s really hard to predict something so uncertain) Something in the lines of how to stay up to date with the research, where the industry/academia are tipping towards etc?
Additionally, if you could add a little of what you learnt on your stride to be where you are/ mistakes that one could avoid? I’ll hugely appreciate any inputs :slight_smile:

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You’re welcome @btrovo. Thank you all for this great efforts :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Find good mentors. NMA seems like a great place for that.

The reality is, early in your career its likely you may not know exactly what you want to focus on. You may end up in physics, or cognitive science, or even not in a “stem” field. A good mentor who is interested in knowing you as a person authentically will help you do quite a lot of mitigating. Being here and finding things out is great start.

It took me a long time to find my general trajectory - I’ve been in non-stem majors, career paths, and life paths, and found my way here. I probably won’t go 100% into computational neuroscience, but computation and things related to cognition seem to be the deal for me.

You may realize you want to be a professor, or go 100% into industry or a start up. And then change your mind a month later. That’s fine. Getting varied experiences now is good, and it will help you pursue things. Just keep listening to yourself and trying to do the things you seem to want to be able to do. Stay in touch with the people here, they can bridge a lot of topics and ideas for you, I’m sure.

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link doesn’t work :frowning:

Link does not work for me either