Past PhD students reveal career paths

15 October 2026 – Where will my PhD take me? To places you would never expect. That was the message from the careers panel at this year’s Riddet Institute Colloquium.

The careers panel was made up of New Zealand Food Safety Senior Advisor Dr Feng Ming Chian, Fonterra Senior Research Scientist Dr Siqi Li, Opo Bio co-founder and CEO Dr Olivia Ogilvie, and Massey University Senior Lecturer in Packaging Technology Dr Eli Gray-Stuart.

All four Riddet Institute alumni revealed the extraordinary roles their PhD studies opened up for them. The panel had a strong message for today’s doctoral researchers: your future is never linear and careers are often unexpected.

Dr Chian said after her PhD she, like many others, wondered, “What should I do?”, when trying to find a job. She was first a research assistant, then took on a maternity leave position for a food pilot job. This opened up opportunities to then get into product development, leading on to her current Ministry of Primary Industries food safety advisor job where she sets up food standards.

Fonterra Senior Research Scientist Dr Siqi Li researched dairy milk for his PhD and then took a post-doctoral position in dairy digestion. Almost inevitably, he now works at Fonterra, a company he says has been a world leader in dairy science and research for nearly 100 years. During his studies he had read academic papers authored by the staff he now works alongside. But what does industry research look like?

“Fonterra is a bit different in that there is a big emphasis on research,” Dr Li says. “But it is different... than academic research.”

Dr Li says there are lots of new projects and problems to solve in the role, which in his three years he has found very motivating and engaging so far.

The Opo Bio co-founder and CEO Dr Olivia Ogilvie was next to speak. Opo Bio is a biotech startup focused on cell line research and development for the cultivated meat industry. In 2024 Dr Ogilvie was named in the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia list of Healthcare & Science entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery.

After unexpectedly producing a valuable by-product, the company has recently pivoted into supplying bio-based ingredients such as recombinant mammalian collagen for cosmetic and medical applications.

“We had some in-house discoveries and found we were very good at producing collagen.”

But this was certainly not what she expected to be doing when she was a doctoral student. Dr Ogilvie researched gluten allergens and how food processing changed the structure of food proteins, potentially affecting food allergies and coeliac disease.

She says after her studies were completed, she started to think about what she would do next but found it a very stressful time. There was no obvious career path on offer.

“I talked to a ton of people working in science and non-science,” she says, to get some ideas. “I felt I didn’t want to do lab research every day.”

In her talking, she came across commercialisation – the job of taking science to something a consumer could have in their hands.

“I tagged along to a lot of meetings, met some people in venture capital and was offered a part-time internship role. At the same time, I was working on a post-doc in future foods.”

She says the Covid-19 pandemic then became a melting pot of opportunities which formed the foundation for Opo Bio. As the CEO, Dr Ogilvie says her job is doing “everything that needs to be done”. She doesn’t “do science” in her day-to-day role at all.

Dr Eli Gray-Stuart is a Massey University lecturer in Packaging Technology, which is also a considerable sideways move from his PhD in process engineering.

Dr Gray-Stuart says in the last year of his PhD he found himself running out of scholarship money and took on a paid fixed-term research project looking at improving fibre-based paper and box products for transporting food.

He says this work was a “complete flip” from what he was studying at the time. He enjoyed the work and took on another fixed-term project. And then another.

“Then an opening for a more permanent position came up which expanded the role from being strictly research-based to taking on teaching as well.”

He says this was a very steep learning curve, but he found he also loved the teaching side and being involved in research projects with students.

“I really enjoy the role, even though it wouldn’t have been my initial choice when I first did my PhD.”

The panel was also asked what skills from their PhD have proven most valuable.

Most panellists agreed being able to solve complex problems and break them down systematically was a key skill they developed, with most scientific knowledge being able to be transferred to other things. Developing resilience and calmness in the face of difficulties was another common response, as most said doctoral studies accustomed you to things not going to plan.

Failure was sometimes inevitable, so today’s researchers were advised to expect it, not take it personally and learn from it.

The panel’s closing advice was focused on using the doctoral study time to build relationships and networks, which could pay off with projects and jobs later, and, most of all, to learn how to communicate.

“Communication and collaboration are very important, together with the science,” Dr Feng says. “Learn how to communicate to all audiences; it is a critical skill.”