Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists
Conduct research dealing with the understanding of human diseases and the improvement of human health. Engage in clinical investigation and research.
Salary distribution (US)
Real salary data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The p10–p90 spread tells you more than the median alone.
Top skills
Knowledge you'll build
- Biology
- Medicine and Dentistry
- Chemistry
- English Language
- Mathematics
- Education and Training
- Computers and Electronics
- Administration and Management
A day in the life
You arrive at the lab early to check on cell cultures or animal models from an ongoing experiment, reviewing overnight data and adjusting protocols before the rest of the team arrives. Your day is spent designing and running experiments, analyzing results with statistical software, writing up findings for peer-reviewed journals, and meeting with your research group to troubleshoot failed assays or plan the next phase of a clinical trial. You interact with lab technicians, postdoctoral fellows, clinician collaborators, and grant-review panels, often pivoting between bench work and the administrative grind of writing grant proposals and institutional review board applications. The work is profoundly rewarding when your research leads to a new treatment or a breakthrough in understanding disease, but the long road from hypothesis to published result, combined with the uncertainty of funding cycles, demands persistence and passion.
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