Alden Conner

Alden Conner is a PhD neurobiologist who enjoys working with interdisciplinary teams to advance scientific discovery. Knowing she wanted to explore careers outside academia, she first worked as a product manager for microscopy companies, then shifted to a consulting contractor role, and ultimately ended up at her current position as Research Application Manager at the Alan Turing Institute.  

Can you describe your academic and professional background? What path led you to pursue this field? 

I majored in Biology at Williams College (a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts), where I did a senior thesis looking at song learning in zebra finches. I had a wonderful mentor for my thesis and I decided that I wanted to pursue a PhD in neuroscience. After graduation I moved to Denver and got a job as a research associate in a lab at the University of Colorado Cancer Center. I actually didn’t get into grad school the first time I applied, but I tried again and was accepted to the Molecular and Cell Biology program at UC Berkeley. I did my thesis work in a neurobiology lab, studying cellular signaling in glia in zebrafish (I like “zebra” model organisms!). 

Towards the end of my PhD I knew I didn’t want to pursue a postdoc, so I started looking for jobs in the microscopy industry. I didn’t know exactly what type of position I wanted, but I found my position as a Product Manager after a friend forwarded me a job posting from a microscopy listserv. I had a great time working as a PM for a small microscopy company, where I learned a ton about microscopy and got the chance to travel to universities all over the US and Europe to train customers on the microscopes. After 3 years there I moved to another microscope company, also as a Product Manager, but it was a very different type of role and I discovered that working in marketing wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing, so I started looking for a position that would allow me to work directly with scientists.

The next stop on my career path was as a contractor for a small life sciences consulting firm that was looking for someone to help out with work they were doing for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It was a great move for me in terms of finding a position that allowed me to directly impact scientific progress by providing support to CZI grantees, but unfortunately it was only part time, so I continued to search for other opportunities. 

This past May I had the most serendipitous moment so far in my winding career path when a friend of mine re-tweeted a job posting at the Alan Turing Institute in London, which is the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. Although I don’t have a background in data science or AI, I have always wanted to live in Europe and I figured there was no harm in applying. I got the job and started in September as a Research Application Manager, which is a role that was created in order to support Turing research projects by connecting researchers with external stakeholders and users to help deploy open source tools for real-world applications. This position requires all the skills I learned in product management, and I’m learning a ton about data science, modeling, and software engineering across a wide range of fields.  

What do you enjoy about your current job and work environment?

I love working with researchers from a variety of disciplines, including public policy and health. I get to apply my skills learned as a product manager to tools that are designed to solve real-world problems, and I get to learn about data science and AI and their applications in different fields. Although the Research Application Manager team is only 3 people, I also am lucky to be part of a super-supportive group of people who work for or contribute to the Tools, Practices, and Systems group at Turing, which is dedicated to furthering open science practices and infrastructure. Everyone is great about sharing technical skills and advice as well as moral support, and I’m learning a ton about reproducible science and community building.

What’s changing in your industry? Are there any future trends we should be aware of?

The Turing Institute was only founded 6 years ago and is at the forefront of research in data science and AI, and I think a very important thing that we’re doing is driving a new model for open and reproducible research. Open science has been “trendy” for a while now but I think it’s so important to not only publish openly but to engage directly with other scientists in your field and in other fields to truly understand best practices in open science and how they can benefit your research and your field as a whole. 

What activities, internships, or organizations would you recommend someone get involved with to help them break into this field?

Anything to do with science communication! And if you are at all interested in writing, start now. You’ll learn helpful skills, meet great people, and have a portfolio of written work outside of academic publications.

Is there anything you would have done differently given what you know now? 

I’ve probably had many different answers to this question over the past 6 years since I finished my PhD, but at the moment I wouldn’t want to do anything differently since my weird, winding path led me to a really exciting new job at this moment. I know it’s a cliche but it’s true that you never know where your next move will take you and how it will define your overall career path. Even if you are working in a position that you don’t enjoy, you’ll definitely learn something and it will help you better understand what you want to do in the long run. And never be afraid to apply for something that sounds cool, even if you think it’s a long shot!