EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
BECOMING AN ACADEMIC RESEARCHER
IN HUMAN GENETICS
Do your students like to search for solutions to impossible problems? Do they always thrive to understand things that they don’t understand yet? Are they creative team players during classroom activities? Let them know about a possible career in genetic research!
Whether they work in hospitals, universities, pharmaceutical or even biotechnology companies, researchers in human genetics all have something in common: they all study genetics from plants, animals, and humans to find or prevent diseases. A researcher in human genetics not only conducts research and experiments, but they are also creative minds, trying to ask and answer the next scientific question. Curious to know more about this job? Meet Emanuele Panza, Academic Researcher in Human Genetics!
SKILLS
Find out about the key skills to become a Researcher in Human Genetics.
Creativity
It takes creative minds to shake up the normative way of thinking and come up with new questions and solutions to a problem. Being a Researcher in Human Genetics is nothing but a creative job. They sometimes have to think out of the box to research diseases whose causes are unknown and understand their mechanism.
Scientific Computing
Researchers in Humans Genetics conduct researcher and experiments using different kind of tools and technics. Often, they use advanced equipment, such as microscopes or DNA scanners, but they also use computers to track and evaluate genetic data using special software.
Writing
If conducting research and experiments and interpreting and documenting lab results are some of a researcher in human genetics’ main activities, concluding findings and publishing them in scientific journals are often the outcome of their research. If data sometimes speak for themselves, researchers need to know how to translate into writing the results of their work.
Open-mindedness
Researchers in human genetics who want to be innovative have to be open-minded. Because they are seeing and asking questions from news angles, it is almost as if they were working on the edge of science fiction. They need to be willing to open their minds to other ways of thinking.
Diligence
If being a researcher requires a varied set of skills, diligence is the glue that holds them together. It is “particularly important to perform experiments very diligently, trying to be as precise and analytic as possible. This involves data analysis and problem-solving skills”.
Persuasion
While researchers face many challenges, “research funds are crucial and are the bottleneck for the expansion of research activities”. As part of a team or leader of a scientific project, it is crucial to persuade stakeholders of the project’s necessity and its encouraging results to be able to receive research funds to support the research.
Curious to
know more?
Meet Emanuele Panza,
Academic Researcher in Human Genetics
Emanuele Panza is an academic researcher in human genetics at the Medical Genetics Unit of the University of Bologna. Having an interest in genetic disorders and the understanding of the mechanism causing these diseases, Emanuele worked as a post-doc in the USA for eight years, in the lab of Nobel Laureate Mario Capecchi, at the University of Utah.
In this fifth episode of our STE(A)M IT STEM Careers Podcast, Jessica Niewint Gori from INDIRE (Istituto Nazionale di Documentazione, Innovazione e Ricerca Educativa) spoke with Emanuele Panza, an academic researcher in human genetics.
Working on the study of rare genetic diseases and fascinated by the ones whose causes are unknown, Emanuele Panza told us about his job as an academic researcher. He also shared some valuable advice for students, parents and teachers about finding our passion and the importance of mentorship. Listen to the podcast and find out more!
CC BY 4.0: all the materials and content presented on this STEM Job profile have been provided by STE(A)M IT, a project funded by the European Union’s ERASMUS+ programme project STE(A)M IT (Grant agreement 612845-EPP-1-2019-1- BE-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD), coordinated by European Schoolnet (EUN).
