‘Marjolein Mijnders’ Academic Journey to Success: How you can do it too!

What can students do to make the most out of internships? How do you build a research career? Marjolein Mijnders, a successful post-doc researcher at the paediatric gastroenterology lab at UMCU, has some recommendations.

During her studies Marjolein found a passion for proteins, especially how simple folding errors can cause human disease. This drove her to seek two internships, one at UU and one at the University of Edinburgh, to learn more about this topic. From her experience, she advices students to really think about what they want out of an internship; plan the experiments and techniques they wish to learn. By doing these things during her UU project, Marjolein managed to successfully apply for PhD funding to extend her master's project.

She also gave another important piece of advice for master students: ‘You should only do a PhD if you really want to do it’. It is a lot of hard work, long workdays and even weekends. ‘You have to be passionate and love the science that you are doing, otherwise you will have a hard time.’ For her, a PhD was exactly what she wanted and lab work even became quite relaxing for her at times.

You have to be passionate and love the science that you are doing, otherwise you will have a hard time.

After finishing her PhD, she now has a postdoc position. She mentioned that the biggest difference between all the different stages in her academic journey is increased confidence. By becoming more independent throughout, she gained confidence in her abilities to setup experiments and do science. With all her obtained experience, she is now a supervisor for two PhD students.

Stay positive and resilient.

Now of course academia is not only about being a good scientist. She said that having a pleasant atmosphere in the group is essential to have a good time and come up with creative ideas. A great example of this was at Christmas, their group used to hand out an award to the person who did the dumbest thing in the lab that year. Naturally, it is all in good spirit and to have a laugh, but moments like this can make the journey a lot more enjoyable. And to all the students who aspire to embark on this journey, she had one key advice: ‘Stay positive and resilient!’.