Talk:National Institute for Medical Research

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[edit] School Project

I have a question for a project im doing for school. What are some job responsibilities a Medical Researcher does?

Well, like many careers, depending on what stage or level you are at, you will have different roles and responsibilities. The three major classes are:

• Research technician. This person will typically have a BSc degree and their job may be to run specific experiments under the direction of more senior colleagues, which they will write up in a lab book. They may also be involved in managing the practical aspects of the lab (ordering material and equipment) and looking after the needs of animal models.
• Postdoctoral fellow (post-doc). This person will have a PhD and will usually be responsible for thinking up a research project which they will manage. Day to day they will manage devise and manage experiments (often managing research technicians to help them) to test a hypothesis, they will read a lot of the scientific literature to learn more about their project, they will occasionally attend conferences and meeting to present their work and discuss it with other scientists. It is their job also to publish papers based on the results of their work and occasionaly write project proposals to obtain money for personal fellowships. They may also be involved in supervising PhD student's experiments.
• Principle Investigator (PI). This person (often called a Professor in the USA, but only more senior ones are called that in the UK) manages the other two types of scientist and co-ordinates the entire laboratory into a cohesive unit. Their interests that dictates the overall research goals of the entire laboratory, so that the different postdoctoral fellows, students and technicians may all being doing different things, but that the overall findings from the different projects can be put together to answer a larger biomedical problem or question. While some PIs will still do experiments many take on a more managerial role, meeting with and supervising the post-docs, providing experience and mentorship. They are also responsible for attracting money to fund their labs research, writing for grants and balancing their lab budget. This takes up quite a lot of their time. They also tend to travel quite a bit, meeting with other PIs, presenting their work, generating ideas and building collaborations which they will bring back to their labs. PIs are responsible for training postgraduate students and will often lecture undergraduates also. PIs are also responsible for writing research papers (usually with a Post-doc) and review articles. They also act a peer reviewers for academic journals, reading the work of other scientists and providing criticial analysis on whether they work is scientifically rigorous and pertinent.

Hope that helps, to be more specific would depend on which type of medical researcher you are talking about (as there are plenty of sub-fields that do slightly different things). See Biomedical scientist for more information. Rockpocket 23:02, 3 November 2007 (UTC)