Transition from Academia to Industry and Back

Many doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows face at some point in their career the decision between continuing in academia or pursuing a job in industry. Both career paths come with their advantages and disadvantages as well as associated clichés. Our scientific journeys have led us from an university Ph.D. degree to an industrial postdoctoral stay and back to a young faculty position in academia. In this perspective, we share our experiences while changing perspectives. We will discuss the insights we gained through the phase as industrial postdoctoral fellows, the motivation to return and take up a young faculty position in academia, and the freedom and the burden of starting out as a principal investigator (PI). We end with our thoughts on "quo vadis" computational chemistry.