Question: How long will it take until you become a classified scientist?

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  1. I am not sure what you mean by a classified scientist panda. Scientists are anyone who is trained to do science! Some scientists don’t even have a degree, but have been trained on the job. Some of these are the most knowledgeable scientists i have ever met! However, these are becoming rarer every year as people prefer those who have been to uni.

    If you simply do an undergraduate degress, you can be a technical assistant. This generally means you help with the more technical part of experiments. you usually don’t plan them, you just do waht you are asked. if you have an honours degree (like what Kate is doing now) you can be a research assistant. This means you do the experiments, but you are usually expected to contribute to where the research will go next.

    If you are a PhD student (like Katelin, Cindy and Yagiz are currently doing) you spend 3 years working on one project. you are expected to help plan experiments and present and defend your work to experts.

    When you finish your PhD (I finished mine 3 years ago) you become a postdoctoral research associate. You are expected to plan experiments, train students and other staff, teach, be on committees, present and defend your work at conferences regularly, and most importantly you begin to start putting together proposals to ask for money from the government to fund your research, Unless you have a PhD and can officially be called a Dr you cannot apply for money to do your research.

    Once you have obtained funding from the government you become a chief investigator and the head of a lab/group. You can then progress up to an associate professor then a professor. Some of these go on to become vice chancellors and essentially run universities. Some sit on government advice panels on things like climate change.

    I hope that helps you understand how you progress as a scientist and how much training you need for each

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