Any advice going from physics to neuroscience?

[gerardofingurbe]

Hello , I'm currently a MSC. in physics student at Cinvestav in Mexico , recently while looking at potential thesis advisers , I discovered lots of physicist where turning to biology to develop a theoretical framework , i started reading about it and became fascinated , Perhaps I'll try to get a phd in neuroscience instead of physics , however i wanted to ask in this forum if anyone has done or knows someone who has done this kind of transition

Also there's no one in the department that does this kind of research , what do you guys think would be more useful for the future , soft condensed matter or dynamics of lipid membranes ?

 

[symbolipoint]

Hello , I'm currently a MSC. in physics student at Cinvestav in Mexico , recently while looking at potential thesis advisers , I discovered lots of physicist where turning to biology to develop a theoretical framework , i started reading about it and became fascinated , Perhaps I'll try to get a phd in neuroscience instead of physics , however i wanted to ask in this forum if anyone has done or knows someone who has done this kind of transition

Also there's no one in the department that does this kind of research , what do you guys think would be more useful for the future , soft condensed matter or dynamics of lipid membranes ?

Help us to understand.
Do you have an undergraduate degree in Physics?
Do you have an undergraduate degree in Neuroscience?
Do you have an undergraduate degree in Biology?

 

[gerardofingurbe]

No , my undergraduate degree was in electronics engineering and I'm currently in a master in physics , i actually have little knowledge of biology itself , i know a little of what we nowadays call systems biology from reading uri alon's book but that's about it

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Several years ago, as a Physics PhD, I became an active researcher in the field of traumatic brain injury. Several things facilitated this transition:
1. Lots of soldiers were returning from the battlefield with blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI), and it was getting billed as the signature injury of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2. There was lots of funding for progress in this field.
3. There was a dearth of physics talent in the field, and the physical mechanisms of the injury were a mystery. How does a blast wave injure brain tissue?
4. There was a dearth of affordable experimental approaches for creating realistic blast waves for laboratory experiments.
5. I've always thought like a biologist in terms of hypotheses and cause and effect.
6. I was able to keep the ship afloat financially while transitioning to the new field.
7. I had a few great colleagues who were willing to come along for the ride and do a few projects on a shoestring budget (unfunded or minimal funding).

Our first two papers focused on physical mechanisms and were thorough reviews of the literature through which we were able to synthesize the available data into new support for specific mechanistic hypotheses and also to provide some of the first available estimates of blast pressure injury thresholds for specific mechanisms.

Using real high explosives in experimental blast injury work tends to cost upwards of $10k per blast. Even when we obtained funding, our means remained more humble than that, so we invented a series of laboratory blast wave simulators that can be assembled for less than $1k each and with operational expenses of less than $10 per blast. These could also be used without the facilities requirements of real high explosives. These yielded a series of publications and led to partnerships helping other labs install and use them. They also provided approaches for our lab to test various ideas relating to blast wave transmission through various materials (including cranial bone and candidate armors).

We've published in journals such as NeuroImage, Brain Injury, Frontiers in Neurology, and Neurosurgery. But am I really a neuroscientist? Probably not. I think of myself more as a scientist without borders. It's been an amazing ride.

My advice to others? You have to be willing to do a lot of work for free, because it takes about 2000 hours of hard work to become sufficiently knowledgeable in neuroscience to make productive contributions. And even then you need to be able to leverage lots of your existing knowledge base and skills. You need to be able to solve problems that are interesting and relevant and with which others have been struggling. Finding problems where your background in physics gives you an advantage is a tricky part of this process. Finding problems where the field is sufficiently desperate that they are willing to listen to outsiders can be even trickier. My transition had a lot of right place - right time - right skills events in it. I'm not sure there is a recipe for duplicating it at will.