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Research & discovery

Natural Sciences

Running experiments to find out how the world works: physics, chemistry, biology.

This suits you if…

You find it satisfying to establish carefully that something isn't the case, you write well and often, and you can accept several years of fixed-term contracts, frequently in a different country each time, before knowing whether a permanent post exists for you.

Look elsewhere if…

You need a settled life in a chosen city by your late twenties. Far more people are trained as researchers than there are permanent posts. And if chasing funding rather than doing science would feel like a betrayal, industry research asks much less of you on that front.

What the work actually is

What the work is actually like

Long stretches of careful repetition punctuated by rare, genuine surprise. You plan an experiment, run it, find the equipment or the sample was the problem, run it again, and record everything. The other half of the job is writing: papers, grant applications, reviews. In research, work that isn't written up and funded doesn't continue.

The catch

The academic career structure is the honest problem: far more people are trained as researchers than there are permanent research posts, so many spend years on short fixed-term contracts, often moving country each time, before finding out whether a stable position exists for them. Pay during those years is modest, and a great deal of the job is chasing funding rather than doing science.

What people get wrong about it

That it is about discovery. It's mostly about elimination: establishing carefully that something isn't the case. A successful career is built from many small, solid, unexciting results rather than one breakthrough.

The jobs inside this area

  • Research scientist
  • Physicist
  • Chemist
  • Biologist
  • University researcher / lecturer

A list, not a recommendation. You narrow it, we don’t.

What this kind of work usually offers

Independence · Helping peopleA generalisation about the sphere, not a promise about a salary. Pay and security vary enormously by country and employer.

How you get there

The one-line version

A science degree, then usually a PhD. Real research programs and science fairs (ISEF) start it early.

Stage by stage

  1. While you are still at school

    Depth in one science plus real maths. Science fairs and any genuine lab placement matter, because they show whether you like the daily reality of experiments rather than the idea of them.

  2. What you study

    A science degree, then in most cases a PhD, which is an apprenticeship in research, typically paid a stipend, lasting several years. Choose the supervisor and group at least as carefully as the university; that relationship shapes the entire experience.

  3. How the first years actually go

    Postdoctoral research: fixed-term, usually abroad, working on someone else's grant while trying to build your own record. This is the stage where people decide whether to continue in academia or take their training to industry, and both are ordinary outcomes.

Where this work lives, and how you reach it

What you would study for it

Each says what the first year is really made of, and who should study something else instead.

13 countries · 14 cities · 29 institutions named for this field. Each one states its catch as well as its appeal.

  • Kazakhstan

    Named here: Nazarbayev University · Al-Farabi Kazakh National University · Satbayev University

  • Germany

    Named here: Technical University of Munich · Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich · Humboldt University of Berlin · RWTH Aachen University

  • Switzerland

    Named here: ETH Zurich · EPFL · University of Geneva

  • Netherlands

    Named here: University of Amsterdam · Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  • United Arab Emirates

    Named here: Khalifa University · New York University Abu Dhabi · United Arab Emirates University

  • Türkiye

    Named here: Middle East Technical University

  • South Korea

    Named here: Seoul National University · KAIST

  • Japan

    Named here: The University of Tokyo · Kyoto University · Osaka University

  • Singapore

    Named here: Nanyang Technological University

  • China

    Named here: Peking University · Southern University of Science and Technology

  • Hong Kong

    Named here: The Chinese University of Hong Kong

  • United States

    Named here: Massachusetts Institute of Technology · University of California, Berkeley

  • Canada

    Named here: University of British Columbia · McGill University

Without leaving home

2 of the routes that need no visa and no move lead into this field.

Test it this month

Free, and finishable in a few evenings

Do one small experiment properly: a real question, a control, repeats, and an honest write-up of what went wrong. Then read a paper in the field and see how much of it is method and caveat rather than result.