You don't need any results to be included in your abstract. When you get your results, just put them onto your poster. Even if you don't have any results for your poster, it'll also be fine cos I've seen several posters without any results shown, and some of them even won best poster prizes.

[quote]Quote From sciencegirl3456:
I am hoping that now Christmas is over that there will be more jobs to apply for. I am going to widen my search to abroad (not UK) as well but the thought of moving abroad terrifies me but I need money... I have tried speculatively for the USA but unfortunately the only lab interested did not get the funding but I agree it might be worth trying again. I guess if I don't get anything soon I will take some related science job not research based and just accept research wasn't meant to be.

You are 100% right about the thesis corrections, my supervisor gave me a telling off for not doing them as she says it will increase my chance of getting a job when they are done because they know for sure I have a PhD awarded. I ddi start the corrections today.

Thank you!

[quote]
Actually you don't need to worry about money. As far as I know, US universities pay new postdocs a 'relocation fee', which will make your moving easier.

I know that many years ago, PhD graduates without first-authored papers could be accepted to postdoc positions. But now the academic job market has become tighter. Have you seen anyone who finished their PhD in recent years (2017-2020) that became a postdoc without publishing any first-authored papers? Especially in science?
My concern is, currently I don't have any first-authored papers, and my supervisor isn't planning on making me write one. I'm in my third year, and I'm very worried about this. I hope I will become a postdoc right after I finish all my PhD work and three years later become a PI in a prestigious uni (Russell group level).

You can contact them and ask if they want to collaborate with you, and if they want, you can publish a paper with them. If they don't or your supervisors don't, then try to publish before they do. If they still happen to publish before you do, then read what they have done and try to do some more work and make your work look more complete than theirs, and then you can still publish your work.

If your supervisor and labmates treat you well and you like your research project, then why not continue?
It indeed sounds a bit odd when a person from a developed country chooses to live in a developing country. But the country you live in isn't an usual developing country - it's China, which has lots of £££££ invested in scientific research. If you have a look at those prestigious journals in your field, you'll notice China has a big amount of research outputs. I'm not in your field, but I'm also doing science. When I read quality papers by authors working in China, I quite often notice that their lab equipment is as good as mine (I'm at a Russell group uni). You know, in experimental science, when you have loads of money and good equipment, you can achieve a lot.
But I do suggest that you come back to the UK or go to another developed country for your postdoc, unless you decide to permanently live in China. Many employers in the West will look down on you if you do both your PhD and posdoc in China.

I’m a self-funded PhD student, so I have to pay for the costs myself if I attend a conference.
Is a conference worth so much money? I don’t think so.
I recently have been to an international conference, which is expensive. The registration fee is £500, accommodation not included. The conference was held in a luxury hotel with nothing else around (in the suburbs), so for the sake of convenience, I stayed in that hotel for the week-long conference. The whole trip cost me around £1,500.
However, I don’t think the trip is worth so much. I didn’t get much from the conference. Before I went to the conference, I had no idea why I should go there but my colleague suggested me to go – he said this was one of the most renowned conferences in our field. But I didn’t know what I needed to do during the conference. I brought my poster there, but no one was really keen to see my poster. The four-hour-long poster session was very boring with so few visitors. And none of the visitors said anything meaningful after I talked through my work. And of course I listened to all the lectures, but it seems bonkers to fork out £1500 to just listen to the lectures, whose content has already been published – why didn’t I just read them online for free? My supervisor was also at the conference, and it seemed people were always flooding to him to get a chance to chat with him. But that means I was alone all the time. So the conference was less than fun for me.
So now I don’t want to go to any more conferences. I need to pay for the trips, but I can’t come up with a good idea why the conferences worth the money.
What’s your opinion on this issue? Why do you go to conferences and what did you get from them?

I'm a 2nd-year PhD student who's just come back from an academic conference. I'm feeling really sad now.
I had been doing my PhD project alone since the start of my PhD program, and I made quite a lot of progress. But three months ago, my supervisor said that he would like a senior PhD student to work with me. I said 'fine, I'm gonna have a new perspective.' So a final year PhD student, let me call him 'Sam', joined this project. Sam has his own PhD project, so he doesn't have too much time for this one, and he has been making far less progress than I have.
A month ago, my supervisor registered both of us for a conference. A few days after the registration, he told me that he asked Sam to make a poster about our project and Sam had already started to make it. He said Sam might need some of my data to make this poster. I was shocked. I didn't understand why my supervisor asked Sam, not me, to make this poster - this poster is about my PhD project! I'm the main player in this project, and he just helped a bit, so what on earth was my supervisor thinking about? Also, this was the first time for me to attend a conference, and I'd never made a poster before (Sam had made quite a few before), so I needed the opportunity to learn and practice to make an academic poster. By no means should my supervisor have asked Sam rather than me to make this poster, right?
I was quite unhappy at that moment, but I'd been trying not to think about this issue any more. However, the poster session at the conference yesterday was really annoying! Many other group members (we're a huge group) also attended this conference, and one of them saw our poster, whose first author is Sam, and said to me surprisedly, 'I thought you were doing this by yourself! Was Sam guiding you through these experiments?' 'No,' I said, 'I learned all this stuff by myself. Sam has just joined. He hasn't done much to this project.' But she looked unbelieving. During the poster session, our group members and other conference attendees asked Sam loads of questions but almost ignored me. And Sam behaved like he was the main contributer to the project. Now the conference is finished, and I'm sure people have believed Sam has been leading this project, not me. I feel distraught. I don't understand why my supervisor made Sam the maker of the poster. Does he prefer Sam to me? Does he trust Sam more than trust me? I'm too scared to ask my supervisor these questions because I fear he says 'Yes'.
So what do you guys think? What's the possible reason that my supervisor chose Sam over me?
By the way, a few days before the conference, my supervisor said he wanted us to write a paper about this project. Sam looked excited and quickly proposed an outline for the paper. So I wonder if my supervisor's gonna make Sam the first author of the paper....I feel so scared now.