Fábio Rosa, Gil Costa, Patrícia Monteiro – Taking Opportunities and Blazing Your Own Trail

This episode is a special one – it was recorded live with three guests who were speakers at the 2019 edition of BEBday, a meeting organized by the students of my PhD program at the University of Coimbra, Portugal – the BEB PhD Program. This year's edition brought a group of scientists who had a diverse set of experiences carving their career path and shared great insights with the grad students. Around the table, for this interview, you'll hear Fábio Fiúza Rosa, a PhD student/entrepreneur, Gil Costa, a scientific designer, and Patrícia Monteiro, a  researcher with a passion for knowledge transfer and science outreach. ​Fábio Fiúza Rosa is graduated in Biology and holds a MSc in Biochemistry, both by University of Coimbra. He is currently a PhD student at Center for Neurosciences and Cell Biology (CNC) from University of Coimbra (PDBEB) and at the Faculty of Medicine of Lund University. He holds 3 patents and is Co-founder of two start-ups: BRT Blood Reprogramming Technologies, Lda (Coimbra, Portugal) and Asgard Therapeutics AB (Lund, Sweden). Fábio Fiúza Rosa participated in multiple accelerator programs, being awarded with Arrisca C (University of Coimbra, 2016), Entrepreneurship competition Montepio Acredita Portugal (Health Prize 2017). Recently, he was awarded with the Jury’s Best Pitch Award promoted by EIT Health (Oxford University, UK. August 2019).​ ​Gil Costa obtained a degree in Biology (University of Coimbra) and a PhD in Neurosciences (PDBEB, University of Coimbra), integrated in Doctor Zachary F. Mainen’s laboratory at Champalimaud Foundation also in collaboration with Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), Lisboa. Since completing his PhD, Gil Costa has been working as Scientific Illustrator at Champalimaud Research and Gulbenkian Foundation. More recently, he established as a freelancer and here you can consult some of his works: Gil Costa | Science Design. ​​Patrícia Monteiro has a degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Coimbra and PhD degree in Neurosciences (PDBEB, University of Coimbra), where she worked at Doctor Guoping Feng’s laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA). She was awarded with an EMBO fellowship and also a Branco Weiss fellowship to study how stress impacts brain networks. Currently, Patricia is a researcher at the Neuroscience Research Domain, ICVS/School of Medicine, University of Minho. Join the Papa PhD Postgraduate Career Exploration Group! What you’ll learn about in this episode: As part of a research team, you can take part in translational projects developed in your lab Getting to your dream job is an incremental process with different stepping stones along the way, where you gain experience and skills The important role collaboration plays in scientific research and innovation Why you should say yes to opportunities that arise that may be outside your comfort zone Making use of structures supporting innovation and knowledge translation offered by your university, if you have an research-related business idea How universities have grown to foster researchers developing outreach initiatives How as a woman in the STEM space you can be a role model for girls and young women This episode's pearls of wisdom: "If you're interested in entrepreneurship and really have an opportunity to translate it or, at some point, to understand the path that you have to take to translate the idea to the clinics, grab it as hard as you can and, no matter what, work for it." "Make sure that any idea you're generating in the early stage, you really understand it, you really know your competitors, you really know your market. And make sure you will have a place whatever what market or field you're aiming for." "Whatever you do, do it with passion. Be the best of yourself in every hat you wear. If you're a father, be the best father you can be. If you're a scientist, be the best scientist you can be. If you're a podcaster,