My name is Robert Pijewski and I am the co-founder of the Academia-Industry Opportunities Group (AIOG). Read more about me below!
Hey all, I’m Rob. I’ve never written a blog post before so let’s give this a try. I am currently a 4th year PhD candidate in Biomedical Science in the Department of Neuroscience at UConn Health in Farmington, CT. My research is on the role of cellular aging in neurodegenerative disease and healthy aging. However, my research is not the reason why I am here. During my studies, I found that there was a lack of education regarding careers beyond the traditional academic setting, i.e. becoming a tenure-track professor at a research institution. I’ve also heard dozens of PhD candidates just sayin “I think I am more of an industry person”, but my question to them is “what kind of industry?”. With that question in mind, I started a group…I did a thing. The sole purpose of the group is to provide education to students about the vast number and types of careers outside of academia. As a group, we are breaking the phrase “alternative careers” because in fact, these are the majority of careers and academia is the minority.
When I am not in the lab or writing blog posts (see what I did there), I find myself exploring new recipes in the kitchen as well as working out (have to stay healthy if I am preaching about cellular aging and disease!). As I continue to grow as a person, I will hopefully continue to update my introduction section. I hope you all read the content that we post!
