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 Posté le: Lun Sep 02, 2013 2:16 pm Sujet du message: No job at home for award-winning academic |
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{No job at home for award-winning academic}
Aaron Shafer is one of Canada's best scientific PhD researchers. His professors describe him as a dream student. He's just won a prestigious national award for his work researching the evolutionary history of the North American mountain goat from the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies.Now all he has to do is find a job and the one he wants - as an academic researcher at a Canadian university - isn't looking good these days. Many universities are coping with funding cuts.Shafer, 31, is halfway through a two-year postdoctoral research posting at a university in Uppsala, Sweden, studying the evolutionary history and population patterns of marine mammals, such as the Galapagos sea lion.It's similar to the work he did using genetic tools to research the mountain goat for his PhD at the University of Alberta."My dream and my plan is to enter into academia," he said from Uppsala. "I love the idea of research,Michael Kors Outlet, I love the idea of supervising students and I love the idea of teaching, so that's my goal. I hope, I mean I will attain that hopefully sooner rather than later."In the last year, he's applied for jobs in Europe and the United States. No suitable job has come up in Canada.One opening at Colorado State University attracted more than 500 post-doctoral applicants, many of whom already have faculty jobs, Shafer said."So I'm a first year post-doc (post-doctoral researcher), and sure I've got this great award, but I'm going up against someone that's been running their own (research) lab for five years and has many papers." Finding a job "could be a long haul," he admitted.Shafer's doctoral supervisor, David Coltman, a professor and associate research chair in biological sciences, agreed."It's hard right now in Canada. Universities are under siege, there's funding cuts and in Alberta we've just suffered a huge, devastating cut,Michael Kors Handbags Outlet, so the prospects for jobs here are not very good in academia. It's actually quite scary."I hope something works out for him because he's immensely talented. He's receiving a national award, but we can't find a job for him,michael kors canada," Coltman asked. "It's sad. It's frustrating."Like many Canadian academics, Shafer has had to go abroad for a few years to broaden his skill set, Coltman added."We've made a tremendous investment in these people and they've done really well. We've all done our part. Now we need for him to land somewhere on his feet so he can contribute."His work in Sweden,Michael Kors Handbags, where Shafer said "the science climate and funding for research is quite good," will help his resume."It makes me a little sad to see the direction Canada has gone, especially since there's been a push toward applied research and what the government deems as applied are things related to the oilsands. I think they forget that a lot of good knowledge and good research comes from basic research like what I do."I'm Canadian. I love Canada. I want to come back, but right now the job market isn't great and funds for academics, particularly science researchers, isn't that great either."Coltman said he and a colleague from the University of Laval had planned to study the evolutionary history and population patterns of the North American mountain goat yearsago, but had to wait for the right student to come along."We'd been accumulating samples over a number of years and they were in a freezer waiting for someone to work on them and Aaron came along and he brought just so much more to it. He branched out and went to Alaska and worked with wildlife management people, hunting groups and then he worked with academics and moved seamlessly between those groups of people who don't always see things the same way," Coltman said.By comparing modern DNA samples with fossils, Shafer was able to trace mountain goat genetic diversity and migration back before the last glacial period in northwestern North America. |
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