Career Outcomes

Employment Landscape. One important component of CBI@Wayne is ensuring that CBI students are provided with information, skill sets, and opportunities to explore the breadth of careers available to biomedical researchers. In 2013, WSU launched a program (collaboration between the WSU Graduate School, Office of Institutional Research, and WSU BEST) to track Ph.D. alumni over a 15-year period (1999-2014). Through coordinated efforts, employers and job titles for 568 of 642 contacted alumni were determined (88%).[i] Census surveys are done annually to monitor the career progression of Ph.D. alumni in CBI departments, which increases awareness regarding career trends and job placements for current trainees. The data are shared with students through CBI Seminars and BEST workshops. The outcome data for WSU mirror national trends,[ii] with our biomedical doctoral alumni working across employment sectors, including industry/business (43-46%), academia (39-43%), government and law/regulatory sectors (4-5%), nonprofit (4%), science communication (3%).

[i] Feig A. L., Robinson L., Yan S., Byrd M., Mathur A.. Using Longitudinal Data on Career Outcomes to Promote Improvements and Diversity in Graduate Education. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 2016 48, 42-49. 

[ii] Fuhrmann, C. N., Halme, D. G., O’Sullivan, P. S., & Lindstaedt, B. Improving graduate education to support a branching career pipeline: Recommendations based on a survey of doctoral students in the basic biomedical sciences. CBE Life Sciences Education, 2011, 10, 239-249. http://dx.doi: 10.1187/cbe.11-02-0013.

Career Outcomes

The graphs above show the breakdown of career outcomes ((A) Job Functions and (B) Job Sectors) of graduates from CBI departments over time using the taxonomy of Mathur et al.[i] (PLoS One 2018)

Job Locations and Job Functions for CBI Graduates from 2000 to 2025 (202 total alumni)

The tables below list the job locations and job functions for alumni from the 6 CBI graduate programs.