From PhD to Senior Research Scientist
Jessica Ribado, a Senior Research Scientist at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, shares how she went from a PhD in Genetics to using data and models to inform global health decisions.
👔 The Job 👔
As a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Disease Modeling (IDM) at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, Jessica works at the intersection of data science, infectious disease, and global health.
In her role, she:
Builds and applies models to understand infectious disease transmission
Analyzes empirical genetic data
Supports data-driven decision making in global health
Communicates scientific findings to diverse audiences
Best part of the job:
Collaborating with people across academia, industry, government, and nonprofits while continuously learning about the broader global health ecosystem.
🛣️ The Path 🛣️
Jessica took a proactive and self-directed approach to finding her role by Google searching (with pointed search terms) for opportunities that aligned with her interests.
Key steps in her career journey:
PhD Graduate ➡️ Postdoc (same organization) ➡️ Researcher
🧠 The Decision 🧠
For Jessica, the decision to leave academia was tied to both career goals and lifestyle.
She recognized that academia is not just a job but a lifestyle choice. While she enjoyed research, she was especially drawn to projects that created impact beyond the lab.
That pull toward real-world impact and science policy-adjacent work led her to explore opportunities outside traditional academic paths.
💡 The Advice 💡
Talk to people to discover what is out there.
The best way to learn about careers is through conversations. Attend seminars, networking events, and connect with alumni. If those opportunities are limited, reach out directly for informational interviews.Reverse engineer the roles you want.
When you find a job that interests you, ask what makes someone successful in that role. Use that information to start building those skills before you graduate.Create your own opportunities.
Jessica started a science policy group during her PhD, which helped her discover new career paths she had not previously considered. Taking initiative can open doors you did not know existed.
🔑 The Takeaway 🔑
Jessica’s story highlights the importance of curiosity and initiative in career exploration.
The more you engage with people, explore ideas, and take action, the more visible new paths become.
Sometimes the right career is not one you planned from the start, but one you uncover by actively exploring what is possible.
Explaining the theory of everything means that we finally move away from only experiencing effects. We measure effects brilliantly we observe them carefully and manipulate them in experiments, and then guess away at what the causes of these effects might be.
Go to my co-authors publication by Google searching medium light orbits, and read his wonderful chapter called validations. That explains that we are not arguing with the facts, we are are arguing with the interpretations of the facts.
I apologize I should have started with saying why you care. Being able to explain why atoms interact, and we just call it chemical reactions, is a huge leap forward. Huge huge huge!