Build a PhD Student Resume for Internships, Fellowships and First Jobs
PhD student resume example with dissertation framing, teaching and research bullets, transferable skill keywords and a full writing guide.
Example PhD Student summary
Doctoral candidate in computational biology developing clustering methods for single-cell transcriptomic data across nine tissue datasets. Three peer-reviewed publications, one as first author, and an industry internship that automated a variant annotation workflow. Maintains an open source R package with outside contributors and leads the graduate statistics recitation. Seeking a computational scientist role after the defense next spring.
Skills to list on a PhD Student resume
- Research design
- Data analysis
- Python
- R
- Statistical inference
- Machine learning
- Version control with Git
- Workflow automation
- Scientific writing
- Literature review
- Conference presentation
- Teaching assistance
- Open source contribution
- Technical documentation
- Project planning
What actually gets this resume read
- Decide who is reading before you write, because a fellowship panel wants the dissertation and an industry recruiter wants the tooling.
- Give your expected completion date and your candidacy status, since employers and funders both need to know when you are available.
- Describe the dissertation in one plain sentence a non-specialist can follow, then let the bullets carry the technical detail.
- Translate research work into deliverables for industry applications: datasets built, pipelines automated, models validated, code released.
- List teaching separately from research so the reader can see instructional experience without hunting for it in project bullets.
- Include internships, consulting and collaborations outside the laboratory, because they answer the question about working beyond academia.