Lego Grad Student is the alter ego of an early career researcher whose schadenfreude-laden Twitter posts "capture an adult's distress in adult education." He tells Jack Leeming how a childhood love of Lego was reignited after a painful dissertation catch-up with his supervisor. Jack asks about his anonymity, his advice to other graduate students, and if his 63,000 @legogradstudent followers need to worry about the real-life person behind the poignant posts. 

Julian Kirchherr applied his experiences of running a start-up to his PhD, which he completed in less than two years. His book, The Lean PhD, describes how the principles adopted by many start-ups to get "minimal viable products" to market quickly can make PhD programmes more time-efficient and impactful. Kircherr discusses his ideas with Julie Gould.

In early October more than 800 early career researchers attended the annual Naturejobs Career Expo in London, the last to be held before the UK is due leave the European Union in 2019. Julie talks to four PhD students about their career aspirations, and if Brexit is influencing their plans.

See also:

• How to build a better PhD
• Graduate survey: A love-hurt relationship
• Teach undergraduates that doing a PhD will require them to embrace failure

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