Non-academic careers after PhD
8. 6. 2022 from 10:00, VŠCHT Praha
Do you study a PhD program or are you considering to join one? Still unsure, what the degree will be useful for and how your career may look like if academia is not your cup of tea? We invited inspiring people who left academia to run their own business, do research in a private company or become a freelance PhD holder to share their experience with non-academic careers.
The workshop is organized in cooperation with University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague (aka VŠCHT Praha).
Registration
The workshop is open to all students. We believe it will be most beneficial for PhD students from natural and technical sciences, however even motivated undergraduate students or students from social sciences and humanities may benefit from attending.
This workshop is co-organized with University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague with the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The General partner of Czexpats in Science is DIANA Biotechnologies.
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Program
10:00 - 10:15
MH Kolář: Opening word
10:15 - 12:00
Short talks (Mořkovský, Pokorný, Hubálková, Keznikl, Benroth)
12:00 - 12:15
Break
12:15 - 13:00
Panel discussion
13:00 - 14:30
Lunch, networking, and informal discussions
Guests
Ing. Martin Benroth
investment director in Silverline Real Estate
Martin is an alumnus of the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague, where he studied physical chemistry. He spent a year at the Technical University of Denmark and worked as a research associate at the Institute of organic chemistry and biochemistry CAS. After his studies, Martin joined Kearney, a global consulting company, where he worked as a project manager. Recently, he co-founded an investment fund Silverline Real Estate.
Ing. Pavla Hubálková, Ph.D.
science journalist
Pavla is a science journalist at Charles University’s magazine Forum. She also writes about science and scientists for Hospodářské noviny, HROT, Universitas, Vědavýzkum.cz and other media. She graduated in Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Chemistry and Technology/IOCB CAS and obtained a PhD in neurosciences at the Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University/IPhys CAS. She was an intern at EMBL Heidelberg and spent a year as a Fulbright Visiting Student Researcher at Northwestern University in Chicago where, in addition to her own research on NMDA receptors, she also focused on science communication.
RNDr. Libor Mořkovský, Ph.D.
technical director in Behavio Labs
Libor came to Prague to study molecular and developmental biology. He obtained his PhD in zoology from the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague with a thesis on genomics in nightingales.
He spent more than 10 years working for Avast, borrowing ideas from bioinformatics to do malware classification. Started as a research scientist, later managed a data science team.
Together with his schoolmates from České Budějovice, Libor co-founded Behavio Labs, a research agency and a technological startup focusing on understanding how the subconscious mind affects our decisions. He serves there as a Chief Technical Officer.
RNDr. Jaroslav Keznikl, Ph.D.
lead software engineer in H2O.ai
Jaroslav studied informatics and obtained his PhD in Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague. He worked as a software engineer for Google in Dublin, Ireland and Zurich, Switzerland, where he developed cloud solutions. Currently, he is based in the Czech Republic, working remotely for an US startup H2O.ai as a lead software engineer.
Mgr. Daniel Pokorný, Ph.D.
research scientist in DIANA Biotechnologies
Daniel completed his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Biochemistry at the Masaryk University in Brno, specializing in protein (bio)chemistry, biophysics, and structural biology. Being interested in pursuing a scientific career, he then decided to give it a boost by relocating abroad and starting a PhD at the Max Perutz Labs at the Vienna Biocenter in Austria. Here, he was able to use and significantly broaden his skills in the effort to understand the inner workings of protein kinases involved in cell signaling.
Towards the end of his PhD, he realized how little he knew about how the biotech industry works and what the career options for a biochemist there are outside of academia. After a bit of a search, he was able to secure a position as Research Scientist in DIANA Biotechnologies, s.r.o. in Prague, where he works on protein expression, purification, and characterization.