Helping with grant applications, ensuring compliance and coordinating with funders is all part of the job.

The 2011 earthquake in Japan changed neuroscientist Tadashi Sugihara’s career path forever. Sugihara had been working as a senior research scientist at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, but the damage to his laboratory and other setbacks from the quake prompted him to reconsider his dream of becoming a principal investigator.

His lab had been partnering with Japanese automotive manufacturer Toyota to integrate brain science into car-safety systems, and Sugihara had learnt that he was good at the intensive budgeting and report writing that such a collaboration entailed. “I realized some of the researchers really did not like these kinds of negotiations with a big company,” he says. “I was gradually understanding another side of my skills that made me very useful.”

So when the Japanese Ministry of Education launched an initiative in 2011 to fund the appointments of academic administrators, Sugihara applied for a job as research administrator at Kyoto University. Although he was initially worried about abandoning his dream, he was able to move past those concerns. “I didn’t feel bad at all,” he says. “The transition was very smooth.”