Keeping Up With the Ever-Changing World of Biology
This blog was written by assistant professor Dr. Beth Stauffer and professor Dr. Joe Neigel from the Department of Biology at UL Lafayette.
Research and training in biology graduate programs are in a period of rapid change, and at UL Lafayette we are working very hard to address these changes in our programs for a master’s in biology and PhD in biology. We’re keeping up with the latest biology news and have identified three major areas where the discipline is changing:
- Biology’s transition to a “big data” science.
- The growing importance of a variety of career paths beyond academia.
- The need for collaborative multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to solving big, complex problems.
Big Data
“Biologists are joining the big-data club. With the advent of high-throughput genomics, life scientists are starting to grapple with massive data sets, encountering challenges with handling, processing and moving information that were once the domain of astronomers and high-energy physicists.
With every passing year, they [biologists] turn more often to big data to probe everything from the regulation of genes and the evolution of genomes to why coastal algae bloom, what microbes dwell where in human body cavities and how the genetic make-up of different cancers influences how cancer patients fare.”
-“Biology: The big challenges of big data” by Vivien Marx. Nature 498, 255–260 (13 June 2013)
Technological innovation and automation have led to exponential increases in the rate at which biological data are produced. It is now sometimes impossible for a student earning a PhD in biology or researcher to simply “look” with their own eyes at the data they generated in a laboratory experiment or on an oceanographic research cruise. These data sets are massive beyond the human scale of seeing.
Instead, biologists must create software toolboxes to visualize, analyze and interpret all of that computer-based data. A researcher can perform routine analyses with software that others have developed, but to explore new ideas and ask new questions, it’s helpful to develop the ability to craft their own software tools.
Our students earning a master’s in biology or PhD in biology find that as they finish their theses and dissertations and begin to explore the job market, those computational skills are often listed along with more traditional requirements in want ads.
The Department of Biology has taken a proactive stance in preparing our students for the big-data challenge. We offer graduate level courses focused on developing the computational skills needed in many areas of biology. For example, one course is focused on statistical analysis of biological data, one on computer modeling of ecological systems, and another on writing custom software to manage and analyze biological data.
But this training is not limited to just a few specialized courses—computational methods are woven into many of our courses, with some offering a computer programming project as an alternative to a final exam.
The Department of Biology collaborates with colleagues in the UL Lafayette community and beyond to bring state-of-the-art computational resources to our campus for research and training. For example, the professor who teaches the course on statistical analysis of biological data, Dr. Scott Duke-Sylvester, was hired with funds from a multi-institutional grant that created LONI, a high-speed, fiber-optic network that connects supercomputers at choice Louisiana universities.
LONI provides researchers and students at UL Lafayette with access to the supercomputers that are needed to analyze big data sets and model complex biological systems.
In the future, we hope to provide even better opportunities for our graduate students to hone their computational skills. This will likely involve teaming up with our colleagues at UL Lafayette to bring together the disciplines of biology, computer science, mathematics, and education. We recently planned a collaboration with our colleagues in the School of Computing and Informatics, the College of Education, and the Department of Mathematics to submit a $2.9 million proposal to the National Science Foundation that would provide our graduate students with cross-disciplinary training in biology and computer science.
Alternatives to academic careers
The career paths of PhD in biology graduates and, especially, in ecology are becoming much more diverse. While the number of available academic positions remains largely steady, the number of PhD programs in science is continually expanding around the globe.
Many recent studies have pointed to an oversupply of PhDs relative to the small number of tenure track positions available (e.g., “Reform the PhD system or close it down” by Mark Taylor; “Education: Rethinking PhDs” by Allison McCook; and many others), despite the fact that an academic position remains the goal for more than half of biology Ph.D. students.
In 2014, University researchers published a study (Hansen et al. 2014) based on published educational and employment trends combined with survey results that showed that less than 20% of PhD graduates specializing in ecology across the country obtain jobs in academia within 5 years of graduation. We argued in that paper that academic careers are actually becoming the less common “alternative” outcomes when compared to the majority of scientists going on to careers in consulting, state and federal agency research, or the private sector.
Infographic from The American Society for Cell Biology
While acknowledging this imbalance between PhD supply and professorship demand is a start, we are also beginning to understand that graduate training must change to reflect the changing career landscape. The UL Lafayette Biology Department has been tracking career trajectories for graduates for several years. While more than 80% of our PhD graduates go on to academic positions in the first year after graduation, those are mostly limited-term postdoctoral positions. Approximately 11% of Ph.D. graduates take positions in government in the year after graduation. Over 98% stay in the field of biology, regardless of the organization.
Many of us are trying as mentors and researchers to implement changes to the way we recruit, retain, and move students through our graduate program to best prepare them for the diversity of career paths they may pursue after graduation. As a department we:
- Provide the reports on graduate student outcomes on the departmental website and share them with prospective students, so they can be assured of a quality graduate experience for a variety of career choices. Providing this information publicly and without spin is unique for a graduate program.
- Develop and offer courses that stress scientific tools (e.g., big data, spatial/quantitative analyses, etc.) in addition to biology content. These courses are likely to better develop students who may leave academia but still be intimately involved in the scientific endeavor through other organizations or roles.
- Create multidisciplinary and applied research programs that expose students to partners across sectors (e.g. consulting, government, NGO, etc.) and introduce them early on to the many options that lay ahead.
Graduate education in biology is still a highly personalized experience for each student. This is a function of both unique student-mentor relationships and different cultures in subfields of biology.
However, as mentors, administrators, and educators, we can and should all do more to make sure our students build skills that will help them succeed in a variety of future careers. For example, we have graduate students write often and get feedback from their peers, since technical writing is one of those “soft” transferable skills that are highly prized in non-academic sectors. We also have them prepare short “fact sheets” at different stages of projects that one might expect to find in a governmental briefing or private sector quarterly meeting. Even small exercises like these can help build those skills that will ensure smoother transitions for the students who choose not to pursue academic careers.
Multi- and interdisciplinary research in graduate education
Many of the faculty in the Department of Biology are significantly engaged in inter- and/or multidisciplinary research, whether that is understanding the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on blue crab populations in the Gulf of Mexico (e.g., Joseph Neigel), how wetland restoration affects plant and coastal bird populations (e.g., Mark Hester, Paul Leberg), the long-term effects of environmental contaminants on natural aquatic ecosystems (e.g. Paul Klerks), or the ecology of spreading diseases (e.g., Scott Duke-Sylvester).
These multifaceted ways of engaging in the scientific process are not necessarily new. Many of our newer professors and instructors have been engaged in cross-cutting research during their graduate or postdoctoral training.
Changing funding situations are creating opportunities for meaningful engagement in multi- and interdisciplinary research. Programs at the National Science Foundation, for example, fund interdisciplinary research related to Coupled Natural Human Systems, Water Sustainability and Climate, and Macrosystems Biology. These programmatic changes, combined with saturation of narrowly-defined disciplines and increasing competition for jobs and funding, mean that today’s PhD and master’s in biology graduates have a greater need to understand the reality of multi/interdisciplinary research and build skills to pursue it.
Many of the Biology faculty are submitting research proposals to interdisciplinary programs, including the NOAA RESTORE Science Act, which focuses on solving issues related to coastal restoration and sustainability in the Gulf of Mexico, and many others.
UL Lafayette is helping to stimulate these collaborations through centers like the Institute for Coastal and Water Research (ICaWR) and by building communities of practice around large, complex topics (e.g., sustainability). ICaWR brings together faculty in the Department of Biology, School of Geosciences, Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Child and Family Studies, Department of Mathematics, Department of Civil Engineering, and the School of Architecture and Design and encourages them to work collaboratively. ICaWR also awards one doctoral fellowship each year to a graduate student working with affiliated faculty.
As faculty and graduate student mentors, we have the unique opportunity to expose our graduate students to the more collaborative aspects of the scientific process by involving them in those projects, encouraging them to build skills that cut across disciplinary boundaries and supporting them as they publish and present at conferences and in journals that feature multi/interdisciplinary research.
Our students must still become experts and earn their graduate degree in a specific discipline; however, we are constantly adapting how we train future scientists as the opportunities and needs for multi/interdisciplinary research continue to grow.