Postdoctoral researcher in medtech
What is Postdoctoral Research?
A postdoctoral researcher is an academic position where you could increase your managerial skills and knowledge. This position is the most common option after a PhD because it allows you to advance your career within academic and/or industrial environments.
What does a Postdoctoral Researcher do?
Mostly depends on your attitude and your project.
A postdoctoral researcher is part of a bigger team, which usually corresponds to all the people in the lab, but also part of a smaller team, which is represented by the people involved in your specific project (for example 3-4 people). Part of this job is planning a project, writing scientific papers or reports, presenting results during internal meetings or conferences and reading a lot of scientific publications. Fortunately, this job does not involve only reading and writing, but also designing new devices, planning tests, implementing new setups and ultimately analysing data and results.
If you love to design and build products, prototyping new devices are the best part of this job. I usually spend most of the time working in the lab with other researchers, colleagues or students, trying to find the optimal solutions to every challenge.
Frequently, I interview doctors and clinicians to find unmet needs and/or validate my solution and it's common to stay in touch with other researchers to discuss the advancement of healthcare technologies. It is a continuous journey, where the motto is “never stop learning”.
Every day, you learn something, but you also get to teach to younger researchers or students.
A day in the life of a Postdoctoral Researcher
The working day of a postdoctoral researcher starts in the laboratory and it is a mix of desk and lab work. Most of the work is individual, but each researcher has a supervisor, who helps to organise and manage the project as well as to plan the next steps. Usually, there are weekly meetings among all the people in the lab. During these meetings, each person describes his projects’ status and advancements.
Job outlook: stats and growth of this role
A postdoctoral researcher is an academic job, so it requires one or more rounds of interviews to get this position. A postdoc position is a common option for people who have completed their PhD and who want to continue their journey into research. This career path might bring you to become a principal investigator, then assistant professor and finally a full professor. At any time, of course, you could choose to leave academia and explore the business world, although it's not a common route after getting professorship roles.
For example, in my department, there are different researchers with different seniority. The number of researchers in an institution depends on the number of available projects.
How much does a Postdoctoral Researcher earn?
The pay depends on the institution and the seniority. Usually, the gross salary increases every year. In Ireland, the gross salary starts from 35k yearly.
In Italy, it ranges from 21k to 60k per year, while in the USA it starts from 52k. After 5 to 7 years you become a senior researcher with a higher base salary.
Top skills needed
This job requires the ability to plan and manage a project, flexibility and creativity. In my opinion, the most required skill is effective communication, as research remains just an idea if you are not able to communicate it.
You must be able to work independently and in a team as you will be asked to supervise other projects and be a mentor for younger researchers.
Technical skills depend on your background and project requirements. In my case, they include mechanical and electronic design, FEM simulations, computer programming (Matlab and Python are the most used).
