What is Vitamin PhD?

Vitamin PhD is a podcast produced at Boston University for anyone who is currently pursuing a doctorate, has a doctorate, or wants to support others on their doctoral journey. The podcast delivers career narratives and skills know-how in multiple formats in capsule seasons. Whether you tune in during your daily commute or while working on your research, we hope that Vitamin PhD can help you learn about career possibilities and connect with colleagues in our listening community.

The podcast is hosted by current PhD students at Boston University from across the disciplines. Each season has a new team of hosts, PhD students from different department, at different stages in their program, and representing a variety of identities. Hosting teams, mentored by PDPA staff, produce a capsule season of 6-8 episodes. This experiential learning opportunity offers hosts the chance to focus on their collaboration skills, while also building their personal networks through connections with episode guests. The result is an excellent portfolio piece, especially for those looking to demonstrate their public speaking skills, and showcase their ability to communicate with audiences outside of academia.

Introducing: Season 11

Season 11, hosted by Whitney Souery (Bioinformatics) and Ayantika Saha (Biophysics), takes a deep dive into the lives, careers, and daily habits of successful PhD graduates across a range of disciplines and career stages. In these conversations, Ayantika and Whitney go beyond the bullet points of a CV and explore the difficult decisions, challenges, and truths that guided these PhD graduates to where they are today.

We envision the future of the podcast as a platform to showcase the voices of PhD students and address career and professional development topics of interest to you! The training and learning associated with producing a season of VitaminPhD will provide participants with the opportunity to develop skills in project management, communications, teamwork, and teaching. Reach out to gradpd@bu.edu if you are interested in learning more about hosting future seasons.

Subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts