From Neuroscience to Neurotechnology: Starting a New Career at 35.

0. Background

I work as a Neuroscientist at CoMind Technologies, a venture-backed London startup building Brain-Computer Interfaces. Before that, I spent 12 years in academia, graduating in Psychology from Universidade do Minho in Portugal, doing a PhD in developmental neuroscience at Oxford and a postdoc on the same topic at King’s College. I switched to Systems Neuroscience for another postdoc at the Sainsbury-Wellcome Centre, for which I was awarded in 2018 a Henry Wellcome postdoctoral fellowship.

I enjoyed my career in academia, worked on exciting projects, met inspiring mentors and many kind, talented people. I was convinced for a long time that academia was going to be the “book” of my professional life. But at age 34, I realised it had just been a chapter and I was faced with a blank page.

This blog post is about how I began writing a new chapter on that blank page.

0.5. Introduction

After I announced my new position at CoMind, several friends and colleagues rang me up for advice. I knew from my own process how difficult it could be to take the leap out of academia. University career offices mostly showcased “alternative career” paths which I found unappealing, such as science publishing or management…