Job title and description
Professor of Magnetic Resonance Physics at the King's College London Institute of Psychiatry.

What degree did you study?
BSc Physics from the University of Nottingham, followed by a PhD also from the University of Nottingham.

What are your main duties of work?
My job is research based, so the day to day aspects are largely self determined (and depend on what funding has been obtained from the various grant funding bodies). The job involves a lot of computing (programming a Magnetic Resonance Scanner; writing reconstruction and analysis programs). There is also "hands on" time on the scanner, scanning either "phantoms" (test objects) or volunteers, and a lot of interaction and collaboration with people from different disciplines (physicists, chemists and biochemists, geneticists, radiographers, clinicians, neuroscientists, neurologists, psychiatrists...).

What are your favourite aspects of the job?

• Flexible working arrangements.
• Low level of required lecturing, along with the opportunity to teach the things I'm interested in.
• Travel - there are lots of conferences in interesting places!

What kind of salary can a graduate expect to earn in this job?
A postdoc typically initially earns between £20,000 and £25,000 per year (the salary scales are standard across the UK universities), rising to £28,000 to £35,000 per year for a lecturer and £38,000 to £42,000 per year for a senior lecturer or reader.

Working hours and holiday arrangements (30 days plus bank holidays, etc) are usually quite flexible (note that working in a medical institution is different from many other university departments in that, despite their job title, lecturers typically have very low teaching commitments, and spend most of their time on research).

How has your degree helped you?
My degree has given me the numeracy and general scientific background necessary to work in a research field; the details of the degree have turned out to be much less important than the general questioning mindset that it promotes.