For Dr. Suzanne Xu (formerly Lewis) the analytical toolkit she developed as a Duke postdoc turned out to be a perfect fit for an unexpected destination: marketing. After completing her postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Dr. Kevin Franks from January 2023 to March 2024, where she collected electrophysiology recordings in awake, head-fixed mice to study how the brain encodes odor identity and concentration, Suzanne is now a Principal Data Scientist at Hive Science, a startup that helps clients understand consumer psychology.

The transition from neural data to marketing data is less of a leap than it might sound. The core skill — extracting meaningful signal from complex datasets — transfers directly. At Hive Science, Suzanne splits her time between optimizing existing data pipelines and developing new analytical approaches to tackle novel questions. “My favorite thing about my work is that I get paid to explore challenging data problems,” she says. The variety has been a welcome surprise: though she admits to occasionally missing the deep dives that academic research affords, she’s found that the breadth of problems she encounters in industry more than makes up for it.

Suzanne’s path to the role came through networking. After spending several months informally chatting with data scientists across different sectors to understand the landscape of industry roles, an offer arrived through a connection who knew she was looking — a reminder that who you know matters as much as what you can do.

For postdocs interested in making a similar move, Suzanne’s advice is practical: seek out exposure to as many different types of datasets as possible, take courses in statistics and applied mathematics, and — if you haven’t already — make the switch to Python. “It would have helped me if I had spent more time in Python and less time in MATLAB,” she notes. Congratulations, Suzanne, and best of luck at Hive Science!

Feel free to connect with Suzanne on LinkedIn