Part of me has always regretted not going abroad during my undergrad. I know PhD you’re dedicated to research, but I’m curious if there exist programs where you can temporarily “transfer” to another lab abroad where you can continue doing research related to your thesis while also experiencing the culture and lifestyle traveling abroad has to offer. Are you or do you know anyone who has done this? I’d like to know your story.
Yes. But in graduate school, it’s different in that the opportunity needs to be directly tied to your research interests in some way. This will likely be harder in chemistry.
There are formal programs for this. One example is the Fulbright full grant program - the one where you write a research grant to do a project abroad. You, of course, have to justify why you need to go to Botswana or Vietnam or Uruguay to do your research rather than doing it right here in the U.S.; it’s not for kicks and giggles. I’m sure there are other granting agencies that fund research abroad, but again, it needs to be justified - why should we (the agency) pay for you to go do research in a different country for a year?
Another example could be one of the summer research programs that accepts doctoral students. These are usually for early doctoral students - so first and second year students - but otherwise, they are pretty similar to REUs that undergrads do (and indeed, they may even be mixed with undergrads). Some of them are abroad, although most are domestic. The difference, though, is that since you are in grad school you’ll need to okay this with your advisor - and it may not be in your best interests if staying at your home university will yield more benefits, like a paper or a conference presentation.
Some universities have formal exchange programs with other universities that include grad students. Most of these are domestic (e.g., Columbia had a program with some other Northeastern universities where doctoral students could spend a semester or a year in a different lab), but some are likely international. This will take some digging to find, though, as most departments won’t advertise it - the information about this program might be buried somewhere on the graduate school’s website, and even many current students and professors may be unaware of its existence. And again, it needs to be justifiable. Area studies, foreign language, social science students may be the primary target of this kind of program; it’s possible that STEM doctoral students rarely or never do it.
And then there’s the informal type of program, which is probably one of the biggest types of these arrangements. PhD programs are very flexible, and lots of faculty are amenable to PhD students trying just about anything if you ask/propose it the right way and justify it. For example, let’s say Jenny Smith is studying the chemistry of neematoads. Dr. Best, a scholar at a university in Bulgaria, is one of the foremost scholars in the world on the chemistry of neematoads and has done some work with Dr. Awesome, Jenny’s advisor. So Jenny (with the help of Dr. Awesome and collaboration of Dr. Best) creates a little program for herself that involves doing 6 months of research with Dr. Best in Bulgaria. Of course, all of the legwork for this falls on Jenny - she needs to think of a project she can complete, secure support from Dr. Best and Dr. Awesome, get buy-in from the university (and perhaps find a way to cover her credits and get out of a teaching requirement), and perhaps even secure some outside funding for the project. But the payoff could be that she can basically design her own program and do what she wants.
Are you in a PhD program yet? My advice to you is that if you still have the study abroad bug and you haven’t yet begun a PhD program, consider finding other ways to live abroad before you start the PhD program. That may take the form of a Fulbright grant (or ETA), CIEE, the JET Programme, EPIK or maybe some other program for post-college grads. The reason for this is that unless your research is already pretty international in flavor - or, in certain cases, your work is mostly pursued by scholars outside of the U.S. - it’s actually pretty difficult to secure funding to study abroad, precisely because it is so difficult to justify a need for it. Foundations are fine with throwing money at young 20somethings for increasing cultural understanding and exchange; but (reasonably) they only want to spend money to fund international research if the international part is going to contribute to the research.
But, also, it’s just HARD to find the time to be away from your department and your main line(s) of research for a couple months. The further you get, the more work you need to be doing to professionalize yourself and prepare for finding a career after grad school - whether that’s networking, attending conferences, writing papers, writing grants, or other things in your field. The summers you could be using to intern or consult or do other things that will increase your employability in a very competitive market.
@juillet This was incredibly informative, thank you very much I highly appreciate this. As of right now I’m working as a scientific associate in a biotechnology company. I’ve had a passion for doing research since doing an REU during my undergrad which is why I wanted to pursue a PhD. I’ll take this information home with me as I apply for graduate school next year