Career Development Strategies E003 From Managing Teams in Telecomm Industry to PhD. How Do Projects Differ Between IT & Academia?
Dr. Maciej Jedynak holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience (Cum Laude), an MS diploma in Computational Physics (Cum Laude), and a Postgraduate diploma in IT systems design. Before his Master’s studies, he was also working as a Research Assistant at the University of Iowa.
Maciej was never faithful to one single domain; during his studies he coauthored a publication on complex networks, only to move to the field of particle physics, where he did his Masters and stayed for one more year of PhD studies, working for CERN and BNL experiments. Being faithful to unfaithfulness he quit and moved to industry, where he earned a long track record of IT projects. In particular, he has years of experience in telecommunication companies where he worked as an IT Specialist, responsible for IT project development, from requirements analysis to maintenance on production. Currently, Maciej works on human brain functional tractography at Grenoble Institute of Neuroscience as a postdoctoral researcher and a member of the Human Brain Project European collaboration.
In this episode, Maciej reveals why he decided to leave his well-paid and diverse job in the Telecommunications industry to embark on the academic journey. What are, in his mind, the similarities and differences between the academic and the industrial life? How to make sure that you will work for someone whom you enjoy and respect? How to actively (rather than passively) look for jobs?