Science Jobs

johnnyskeleton

Given the downturn in the Irish economy and all the talk about the knowledge based economy, I was wondering:

1) what science jobs are currently available in Ireland; and
2) what science jobs are available in other countries that could be done in Ireland?

Apart from Engineering, computers and pharmeceuticals, I'm not sure what other kinds of science jobs can generate a profit suitable to bring in multinational companies. There is a lot of talk about people with science degrees not being able to get jobs, and also students chosing less science based subjects is seen as a bad thing.

So, on the basis of pure economic utility, what jobs should Ireland be trying to attract, and what should we be doing to attract them?

cavedave

So, on the basis of pure economic utility, what jobs should Ireland be trying to attract, and what should we be doing to attract them?

Your presuming the best usage off Irish people is to work in an imported multinational. It is quite possible (likely i would think) that the biggest gains in economic growth would come from small companies developing technology without the constraints imposed working in a big company.

Big science tends to be expensive though so you would have to reduce the cost and focus on areas that are less expensive. So for example if you made drug testing easier here that would make developing drugs in Ireland easier. You could do this by allowing drugs to be tested on brain dead people before life support is switched off. Not a popular option I would venture but you did ask about economic efficiency.

As for other areas, material science is pretty cheap and physicists are massively underutilised in Ireland. So for example the blue LED was developed as an after work project and is now very important. A way to get our small set of physicists working on material science that incentivised results (using prizes say) would probably increase GDP (in the medium term) more then any other small group of people would in my opinion.

r3nu4l

There are many small biotechs in Ireland. Some are off-shoots from University/IT campuses, others are stand-alone outfits, some made the shift from campus to stand-alone.

Many biotech companies only have between 5 and 10 staff. I know of one where the MD does a lot of the lab work!

The Universities themselves have technician and post-doc positions.

The public sector needs policy advisers (mostly at PhD level)

Then there are outfits that manage clinical trial data and regulatory submissions. Places such as Quintiles...

The government plan to double the number of science PhD students in the hope of attracting more high quality jobs in this country, rather than much of the manufacturing/quality control jobs we have at the moment.

Flamed Diving

People may find this interesting.

http://www.entemp.ie/science/technology/sciencestrategy.htm

r3nu4l

Flamed Diving wrote: »

People may find this interesting.

http://www.entemp.ie/science/technology/sciencestrategy.htm

Indeed, a friend of mine works for Forfas as a science policy adviser to Government. She has a PhD and post-doc experience so it's not like she's 'another civil servant sticking her nose in'. She has some very interesting points about the future of science in Ireland, most of which I can't share on a public forum

/waves at Government spais

Irish Halo

r3nu4l wrote: »

The public sector needs policy advisers (mostly at PhD level)

They've started expecting them to have real PhD's now* :P









* In case anyone has forgotten this is a reference to the "Dr" Barry McSweeney problem a few years ago, when the Governments Chief Scientific Advisor had a PhD of dubious quality.