Lack of guidance, support and training - PhD Student IFOM Employee Review

2.0
18 Jan 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The campus has a wealth of students form all over the world and should be a highly stimulating place to work. It is in many respects with a lot of interesting seminars organised and access to all online journals to keep you up to date with publications. There is no shortage of facilities, reagents and excellent organisation in this respect. This allows you to to dedicate the most time to your project and actual experiments without worrying about sterilising equipement or preparing basic reagents and solutions.

Cons

The PhD program doesn't offer training or lessons. You need a good basis or some actual experience in the field of your group before you start or you will find it very difficult. You are left very much alone to navigate your way though experiments and projects with little guidance or feedback. A group leader seems to give out pseudo projects to give you something to do but in reality it is a project of little importance to the leader. This attitude is very isolating and demoralising. In the initial stages of a PhD I think some training and supervision is needed to design a simple but effective project for the purpose of developing subsequent independence in research. There is great emphasis on publication and more attention is given to key post-docs who have the experience and initiative to provide the results to satisfy the group leader. I know many people who followed the PhD program and never published, around 60% of the students. You may get your name tagged on the end of someone else's paper but as you have not been given the guidance needed in this early stage of your career to learn and mature through a project it is unlikely you will publish anything you have done. I would advise anyone thinking of going to this campus to choose the smaller research groups but be very aware of their publication record. Smaller groups, which would be ideal for a PhD student as they are close-knit and the leader cares about the person, have often become the target of the campus board and have disappeared overnight with the group members being distributed in other groups if lucky. Opportunities to participate in Meetings was also limited. I never got an opportunity, it was never offered and when I asked I was told it had to be a meeting related to my project. At the time I had 3/4 lines of experiments with negative results and no project. I argued that a meeting in general would be of value but it was rejected. I went to a very small meeting in UK and paid for it myself just to be able to see what a Meeting entailed. It was a enlightening experience and was annoyed this kind of opportunity was not readily available.

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1.0
18 Jul 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I wouldn’t say there were any pros

Cons

I was fortunate to be selected for several PhD opportunities abroad, and one of them was at IFOM – an institute dedicated to cancer research in Milan. I joined a newly established lab under a junior principal investigator (PI), and was their first international student with prior training in cancer biology. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my travel was delayed for months. However, my PI and I utilized this period productively—regularly connecting over weekends to plan the project and even co-authoring a review article together. Eventually, I made a bold decision to travel to Italy via an alternate route, determined to pursue the opportunity. When I finally arrived in Milan, I was excited to meet the team and immerse myself in the research environment. I had realistic expectations—European institutes often don’t have large campuses, and that was never a priority for me. However, what I experienced was something I hadn’t anticipated. As I settled in, I began to notice certain dynamics within the institute. A number of researchers, including my PI, were closely tied to the leadership, having been mentored by the institute’s then-director. This created a somewhat insular environment, where professional boundaries seemed blurred. It became clear that the institute functioned more like a tight-knit, internal network than an open, international research community. I also noticed that communication was a barrier—outside of international researchers, very few spoke English fluently, which made collaboration and day-to-day interactions challenging. More concerning, however, were subtle—but deeply unsettling—experiences of racial bias. I heard frequent generalizations about Indian students and their capabilities. Remarks such as “Indians only publish in garbage journals” or “they don’t train students well” were not isolated instances. I was also expected to be present in the lab by 8 a.m. sharp, including weekends, with no regard for work-life balance—an expectation seemingly more stringently applied to Indian researchers. While I initially assumed weekend work was part of the early project planning phase, in hindsight, it was an early indicator of a deeper issue: a culture that normalizes overwork for some, but not all. I believe it’s important to share these experiences honestly for prospective students, especially those considering international research positions. Institutional culture, inclusivity, and transparency are just as crucial as academic rigor—and should not be overlooked.

4.0
11 Sept 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

All the facilities, faculties and the possibility to easily create collaborations

Cons

Poor work/life balance, standard retribution with no benefits

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