Networking for Nerds: Find, Access and Land Hidden Game-Changing Career Opportunities Everywhere

Foreword

Networking is the Essence of Research

To many budding researchers the thought of networking brings about visions of unsavory representations in smoke-filled rooms – of prostituting one’s scientific ideals to get ahead in the world. My experience is that networking is instead the essence of scientific progress, and should be embraced as one of the reasons why we choose to do research as a career.

The author and Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt, Copenhagen, 2014.

Humanity is a small part of a small planet, which is only 1 of 100 billion planets in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which itself is only 1 of 100s of billions of galaxies in the visible universe. Yet, through the scientific process, over the past 400 years we have managed to build a comprehensive understanding of the cosmos from the sub-atomic particles that make up normal matter, to the universe on its largest scales. We are insignificant, yet our knowledge is able to explain the vast scales of the universe from the first few moments after the Big Bang to its current state 13.8 billion years later. This knowledge has been gained by building on the toils of previous generations of scientists, working sometimes competitively, but always collectively, towards furthering knowledge. Networking is all about the connections that enable science to progress.

While many of us might like to work on problems in isolation, ...