Working Scientist

Experiments fail and careers plans can go awry, forcing us to pivot in a different direction. Organizations also make mistakes. But failure, at both an individual and institutional level, can be a useful teacher. In the first episode of a six-part podcast series about failure in science, Nature editor-in-chief Magdalena Skipper says: “I find it surprising that we don’t talk more about failure, that we’re not more honest about the role that it plays. Nobody wants to talk about it. Hence, it’s a taboo.” In April, the journal partnered with Imperial College London on a one-day conference looking at the role of failure in science. Some of the themes from that event will be covered in future episodes, including how Silicon Valley celebrates ​​​​​​​“failing fast” as an important learning tool which academia can learn from, and the importance of risk-taking in research. Launching the conference alongside Stephen Webster, who leads Imperial's Good Science project, a programme that examines research culture, Skipper…

Theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander was 12 years old when his father bought him a saxophone at a garage sale near their home in the Bronx, New York. Soon after he heard Ornette Coleman, a pioneer of free jazz, on the radio. “There was this saxophone playing that was completely out there, completely wild,” he recalls. “You could just play whatever you want and make up whatever you want.” Alexander, a jazz saxophonist who now directs the Brown University Center for Theoretical Physics and Innovation, in Providence, Rhode Island, says: “I would not be the physicist I am today if weren't for my practice as a musician, especially as an improvisational musician.” He credits it for making him “more fluid and flexible mentally in terms of approaching and attacking physics problems,” some of which he ponders while watching performances in New York jazz clubs. In the final episode of Creativity in Science, a six-part podcast series, Alexander also lists his former high school physics teacher Daniel Kaplan as a key…

Frances Brodsky believes that writing her three mystery novels set in the world of bench science has improved her scientific writing. “I love making up titles for my books and chapters,” she says. “One of the best ways to train someone in the lab to focus on their project is for them to come up with the title of a paper that they want to write. That tells them where they're going. Also, when I interview people, I ask them: ‘What is the title of the thesis you plan to write?’​​​​​​​” Brodsky, a cell biologist at University College London, writes under the pseudonym B. B. Jordan. Her books feature Celeste Braun, a virologist in San Francisco, California, who uses her scientific expertise to solve mysteries and fight crime. “Sitting down to write these novels, my scientific writing became markedly better,” she says. “The exercise of fiction writing helped me put my work into a narrative.​​​​​​​” In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series on creativity in science, Brodsky says the discipline of…

Brandon Brown “fell into farming” after tiring of city life during the COVID-19 pandemic and now tends more than 150 fruit trees alongside his research into HIV and public health ethics at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. “I had to look at farming the same way that I look at my academic career, and to take it one day at a time with my eyes towards a goal,” he says. Brown says it took him a while for the realization to dawn. “My PhD taught me that the work is never done, and there’s always a new research project to pursue, more students to collaborate with, more policies to work on,” he says. “And since research builds on research, the fun never ends.” Mornings spent outdoors also gives him time to think about work priorities. “I have lots of free time to think as I do the farming, and many times I write down notes as I’m working, because ideas and kind of reminders and goals and deadlines pass through my mind,” he says. There are other benefits. Brown says he now falls asleep to…

Baking bread during Covid-19 lockdowns provided Chantle Edillor with some career inspiration. “I knew I wanted to do something different and an exploration in sourdough presented an opportunity that I felt uniquely able to pursue,” she says. In 2022, after completing PhD research into metabolic diseases at the University of California Los Angeles, Edillor began a postdoc there, where she researched the anti-inflammatory properties of fermented foods. She now works as a fermented food scientist at Microcosm Foods, a non-profit research organization that maps connections between fermented foods, microbes and human health, a role she combines with assay development at the Astera Institute, a similar non-profit based in the Bay Area, San Francisco. In the third episode of a six-part podcast series about creativity in science, Edillor says fermentation techniques re-ignited a childhood interest in cooking: “I have early memories of sitting and watching the Food Network with a metal bowl full of egg whites in my…

Yasmin Proctor-Kent likens sewing to science. “I find them really hard to separate them in my brain. I don’t think I can sew without engaging the same part of my brain that I do science with,” she says. For Proctor-Kent, a research and development scientist at the cancer diagnostics company Leica Biosystems, based in Melbourne, Australia, the two pursuits require similar approaches, relying on her own and others’ prior knowledge and expertise, reading papers, or reading from other people who have sewn a similar garment. “It’s about applying theoretical knowledge to something tactile, something practical that you’re doing,” she adds. In the second episode of a six-part podcast series about creativity in science, Proctor-Kent recounts how she honed her sewing skills during the Covid-19 lockdown before applying to The Great British Sewing Bee, an annual TV competition, reaching the 2025 finals. Kit, a semi-finalist and mathematician, was similarly creative. “Mathematics and spatial reasoning and 3D plotting and…

The French biologist and Nobel prizewinner François Jacob talked about day and night science as part of the creative process that underpins research. The former, he argued in his 1988 autobiography, is a “cold, orderly logic” leading to a conclusion of the kind that gets covered in seminars and papers. Night science, in contrast, is a “stumbling, wandering exploration of the natural world.​​​​​​​” In the first episode of a six-part series about creativity in science, Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher describe how they apply the day/night science concept in their own research and collaborations. Yanai, who studies gene regulation and cellular plasticity at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, recalls telling his lab colleagues to change tack when they get stuck: “We need to snap out of this. We need to zoom out. We need to pop out into the world of night science, into the world of ideas, where we’re going to have to use abstract thinking. We’re going to use every trick we got, And that’s going to give…

Among the barriers faced by researchers who move abroad to develop their careers is a so-called “hidden curriculum,” says Sonali Majumdar, whose book, Thriving as an International Scientist, was published last year. Navigating these unwritten rules that cover social norms and cultural expectations, both in the lab and outside work, can feel particularly daunting to scientists who, like her, were born elsewhere, she adds. In addition, international scientists often have restrictive funding arrangements that tie them to a particular lab or Principal Investigator’s research focus, she says. US visa restrictions can often mean missing family events back home. Majumdar, for example, who gained a biochemistry and molecular biology PhD from the University of Georgia in Athena in 2014, could not return to India to attend her parents’ funerals. “It was probably the biggest sacrifice I’ve had to make in my life,” she says. In the final episode of a six-part podcast series covering books about the scientific workplace,…

Simon May describes his 2025 book Jump! as a new approach to conquering procrastination. Unlike self-help manuals that urge readers to break tasks down into manageable chunks with clear deadlines, May digs into the philosophy of why we put things off. He also explores not only why we fear career failure but also (more mysteriously, he says) career success, and why boredom and regrets are a “phenomenal wake-up call” to be learnt from. The modern cult of work, May tells Holly Newson in the penultimate episode of this podcast series about books covering the scientific workplace, forces us onto a productivity treadmill that can sap our motivation. “If something becomes cold and alienating and simply production-oriented, it ceases to engage,” he says, highlighting some scenarios: “I need to get this out by Monday morning. My competitor in the next lab has produced three papers this year, and I’ve only produced one.” But how do you make an important personal or professional goal less important, less intimidating,…

Joseph Jebelli believes burnout and overwork has reached pandemic levels, telling Holly Newson that it kills 750,000 people annually, with three out of five workers struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance. His 2025 book, The Brain At Rest, proposes that regular bouts of doing nothing can change your life. Finding time to let your mind wander and take a daily 30-minute nap can make you more creative and efficient, he argues. In the fourth episode of a six-part podcast series focused on books about the scientific workplace, Jebelli describes the "productivity guilt" he felt during his neuroscience PhD at University College London, where he studied the cell biology of neurodegenerative diseases, followed by a postdoc at the University of Washington, Seattle. "It's the guilt in which you equate your worth as a human being with your output, with how many hours you're in the lab. If it were up to me, there would be a napping room in all laboratories. We have to get it out of our heads that we’re…

Gertrude Nonterah helps researchers step off the academic hamster wheel and seek opportunities beyond their specialty. She does this by tapping into her personal experiences of losing a postdoctoral position when her lab leader’s funding ran out, followed by a role at a biotechnology company that ended after two months. Nonterah now works in medical communications and career counselling through The Bold PhD, a consultancy she set up in 2021, and a podcast, which she launched last year. Her 2025 book, Navigating the Pivot, promises strategies and insights to power career transitions from academia. In the third episode of a podcast series focused on books about the scientific workplace, Nonterah, who is based in San Diego, California, tells Holly Newson how to tailor a CV or resume for industry employers. Instead of focusing on publications, she urges industry job applicants to show evidence of problem-solving, a highly-prized skill in the sector. Another thing to include are examples of communicating their…

Learning to care less about how you come across in a conference talk, funding pitch or networking event frees you to communicate more naturally and confidently, says Susie Ashfield. In the second episode of a podcast series focused on six books about the scientific workplace, Ashfield, whose 2025 book, Just F**king Say It, includes real-life case studies of both good and bad communication, says scientist interviewees are often burdened by the “curse of knowledge.” This means they include too much detail instead of focusing on telling a simple story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Ashfield, an actor-turned-communications coach based in London, tells Holly Newson that presenters often fail to rehearse a science conference talk sufficiently. They also default to listing their academic achievements rather than focusing on the messages that their audience needs to hear. In the case of an investor pitch, this could mean focusing on a technology’s potential to save lives, not a detailed description of the…

In the first episode of a podcast series focused on six books about the scientific workplace, Cordelia Fine tells Holly Newson why she wrote Patriarchy, Inc: What we Get Wrong About Gender Equality and Why Men Still Win at Work. Fine, a psychologist and workplace gender-equity researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia, offers a blueprint for a fairer society that does not single out women as “a problem to be fixed.​​​​​” Describing the gender pay gap as largely a “motherhood pay gap,” she outlines how employers can support staff who return to work after a career break, without fostering resentment among colleagues. She also explains why many workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including unconscious bias training, are ineffective and can sometimes be offensive to the groups they aim to support. Fine also draws on historical examples of women being pushed out when men enter professions in larger numbers, and the effect this can have on the workplace culture. Hosted on Acast.…

In his role as research director at NielsenIQ, a consumer intelligence company based in London, Josh Balsters helps global brands drive product innovation. Balsters relies on expertise he gained in psychology and neuroscience, both during his PhD and as an assistant professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. But when he made the decision to quit full-time academia in 2020, Balsters struggled to tell his colleagues because he worried that he had let them down. “There’s a feeling...that you’ve taken up a space, taken an opportunity away from somebody else who would have wanted it more,” he says. “I felt much more comfortable talking to people who had done it, who had already left.” Ashley Ruba took a different tack. After completing her PhD in psychology at the University of Washington, Seattle, she spent three years as a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before doubling her salary in an industry role. After sharing her story on social media, Ruba was bombarded with messages from early…

Alison Behie was approaching 40 when she underwent multiple rounds of IVF, enduring the mental and physical turmoil of miscarriage and uncertainty along the way. How good is the academic workplace at supporting women like Behie, a biological anthropology researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra? “The primary feeling was just this guilt that I had prioritized trying to get where I was in my career over my family. That’s not a way anyone should ever feel,“ she says. Behie is joined by Karen Jones, whose research focus at the University of Reading, UK, includes women’s career advancement and gender equality in higher education. Jones says the precarity of research careers is often most pronounced at the point when many researchers are contemplating parenthood, telling Levy: “It’s not uncommon for people to be employed on one temporary contract after another possibly for several years. And this often coincides with the age at which people are making decisions about having a family.” Finally,…

In the sixth episode of Off Limits, a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the academic workplace, three researchers describe their personal experiences of loss and how their respective institutions handled it, both practically and emotionally. Krista Harrison, a geriatrics researcher at University of California, San Francisco, recalls colleagues being very supportive when she suffered a spate of deaths in her family. But overall she needed advice, direction and resources and, ideally, a year off from having to think about writing grants. She set up a grief group and wrote articles calling for academia to shift norms and expectations around loss and bereavement leave. In 2023 a colleague of Katie Derington, a cardiovascular researcher at University of Colorado Anschutz in Aurora, died of a chronic illness after being hospitalized for around a month. At the time of her death she was co-author on a series of papers with Derington and other colleagues. Derington describes having…

Wendy Dossett tells Adam Levy why the stigma of having an alcohol dependence in academia can be a huge barrier to seeking help. “We’re supposed to be the brightest and the best, moving the frontiers of knowledge forward,” says Dossett, who has been in recovery for 20 years. “We’re not supposed to be struggling with cognitive issues, mental health problems, damaging ourselves in the way that somebody with an alcohol addiction is doing.” Dossett, now an emeritus professor of religious studies at the University of Chester, UK, says that as an early career researcher she saw alcohol as the fuel to her academic life, driving her creativity and making the social elements of academic life easier to navigate. When, in her 30s, a colleague suggested she might need help, Dosett says she felt a “mixture of horror and absolute gratitude that somebody had the courage and care for me.” She went on to research the spiritual elements of recovery from addiction, which she says is less talked about in academia than, say,…

Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist who studies attitudes towards religion in academic workplaces, says that scientists often feel they cannot be open about their faith at work. In the fourth episode of Off Limits, a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the workplace, she tells Adam Levy: “I would love for academic scientists to recognize that religious scientists can be good scientists, to break down some of their own stereotypes, and to see religion as just one of those identities that sits along other sides, other identities, like one’s social class and background.” Ecklund, who leads the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University in Houston, Texas, says that despite the reticence felt by many religious scientists, many of their colleagues are in fact quite open to their colleagues’ beliefs, based on her research. But some marginalized groups can face particular challenges. Maisha Islam, research culture lead at the University…

Theo Newbold featured in a 2022 careers article about sizeism in science which discussed some accommodations that could make a difference in the workplace. Some follow-up comments on the discussion platform Reddit questioned whether Newbold and other interviewees in the article were suited to a career in academia. Newbold, a PhD student in plant pathology and diversity, equity and inclusion advocate at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, says the feedback made her feel “as someone who doesn’t want to be perceived as the complaining fat person.” They are joined by Katharine Hubert, who was diagnosed by Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, shortly after starting a PhD at the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2019. The two researchers discuss some of the workplace accommodations and attitudinal changes that could make academia a more welcoming environment. This is the third episode of Off Limits, a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the…

In May 2024, Uli Beisel signed what she thought was a fairly innocuous petition. But it led to her face being printed in a national tabloid. This was after student demonstrators at the Free University of Berlin had occupied a lecture theatre in protest at the ongoing Israel assault on Gaza. The university called the police to clear the space. The open letter that Beisel and others signed didn’t take a position on the conflict, but instead called on university leadership to defend free speech and the right to peaceful process. But Uli — alongside several other of the 1000- plus signatories — was named and pictured in the Bild newspaper. There, she and others were labelled a “university perpetrator” complicit in “Israel hate”. Beisel, a human geography researcher at the institution, says the tone of some of the reporting made her fear for her safety on campus. She also worried about how colleagues and students would react. The university responded by offering legal advice and issued a statement that they…

In 1997 Shannon Bros came out as a transgender woman to students and colleagues. “When I transitioned, everything stopped,” says Bros of her research career. “I had a huge friend base by that time. I was confident, you know, what I was doing. Everything collapsed overnight.” Bros, an emeritus ecologist at San Jose State University in California, describes the personal pressures that led to the decision and the reservations she had at the time. "I had a perfect life. I had a fabulous marriage. I had kids. I have always been respected in my department. The last thing I wanted to do was transition.” She describes the support she received, from female colleagues in particular, as she rebuilt relationships. “I spent a lot of energy saying, 'Don’t worry about pronouns, just get to know me again. I’m pretty much the same person.'” As a result, she adds, “I became the best teacher I’ve ever been. I became a fabulous advisor.” Bros is joined by K Wilson, a computational physics PhD student at the University of…

In June this year developmental biologist Ottoline Leyser stepped down as chief executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the country’s national research funding agency. In the final episode of a six-part Working Scientist podcast series about career planning, Leyser tells Julie Gould how the opportunity to lead UKRI came about, and how, for her, good career planning starts with reflecting on who you are what your values are. Leyser also finds the notion of work-life balance problematic, arguing that you cannot easily segregate the two from each other. “You’re not your job. You are who you are,” she says. “And you can build a really fulfilling career by following who you are, and keeping your eyes on the full range of opportunities available to you to be who you are. And it’s not going to be one thing. “In research careers, people get locked into this idea that there’s really only one pathway, and that’s the only way you can make use of your research skills and your research interests. And it’s so…

In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series about career planning in science, Julie Gould discusses some of the setbacks faced by junior researchers, including political upheaval, financial crises and a change in supervisor. Shortly after embarking on a PhD at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, Katja Loos’ supervisor relocated to the University of Bayreuth, taking his team with him. But weeks later he died of an aggressive cancer. Loos, who is now a polymer chemistry researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, describes how she worked through the various choices and challenges she faced as a result of her supervisor’s sudden death, and why she abandoned plans for an industry career. Funding struggles in Argentina led to paleontologist Mariana Viglino relocating to Germany. But before moving she describes how a very prescribed career path denied her the opportunity to think about her long-term plans. Tomasz Glowacki says abandoning a rigid career plan helped him to…

In the fourth episode of a six-part podcast series about science career planning, Julie Gould investigates "planned happenstance," a theory which encourages workers to embrace chance opportunities during their working lives. Holly Prescott, a careers guidance practitioner at the University of Birmingham, UK, suggests a slightly alternative approach, whereby a professional reflects on their experiences to decide what they would like more or less of in their current or future role. Listing the things you want to keep, lose or add in a job description, she argues, enables researchers to have happier working lives. In her view, the technique is preferable to devising a plan at the early career stage and then slavishly following it. This course of action, she says, does not account for new skills, technologies and life events that can open up fresh opportunities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the third episode of this six-part Working Scientist podcast series about career planning, Sam Smith, a behavioral oncologist at the University of Leeds, UK, reflects on his plan as an early career researcher to relocate to the United States and become a professor. Did thing work out as planned? Instead of chasing job titles at defined points in his career to help him achieve his goal, Smith says he focused on winning specific grants that enabled him to do “cool science and solve problems” along the way. But becoming a parent and needing to earn a higher salary led to a rethink. Milicia Radisic, a cell and tissue engineer at the University of Toronto, Canada, left Serbia during the Yugoslav War in the 1990s, motivated in part by problems accessing scientific journals to develop her career expertise. Radisic tells Gould that she now encourages her students to work on both high and low risk projects simultaneously. Having this kind of contingency plan protects them if, say, a high-impact paper in Science or…

Uschi Symmons says that attending a workshop about individual development plans (IDPs) during her molecular biology postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia blew her mind. Going away and crafting her own IDP helped her to identify technical skills she lacked, and consider alternative career options beyond academia. But one limitation of IDPs is that they don’t always take personal lives and values into account, says Symmons, who is now a programme manager at the European Innovation Council, the EU funding agency for breakthrough innovation, based in Brussels. In her case she needed to accommodate family priorities also, alongside her own career ambitions. In the second episode of a six-part Working Scientist podcast series on career planning, Julie Gould assesses how IDPs compare to more formal coaching sessions with careers guidance professionals, who either work on a one-to-one basis or in small groups to help researchers plan their careers. “I act as a kind of mirror,” says careers coach…

Many junior researchers see career planning as a luxury item, feeling unable to spare time in their busy personal and professional lives to plan their next move or work out longer-term goals. In the first episode of a six-part Working Scientist podcast series about career planning in science, Fatimah Williams, founder of Professional Pathways, a training and coaching company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says: “People get lost because they’re either just kind of getting head down, getting the work done. They’re not popping up every so often to say: 'Am I where I want to be? Do I have the skills to get where I want to go? Do I have the relationships to get where I want to go next?' ” Williams is joined by careers consultant Sarah Blackford. Blackford, whose clients include European universities and research institutes, describes some of the career planning frameworks that can help identify longer-term goals, including her own PhD Career Choice Indicator. Cynthia Fuhrmann, who leads the Professional…

Women are woefully under-represented in Nepalese science, says Babita Paudel. She blames a combination of gender stereotyping, a paucity of female role models and mentors, poor networking opportunities, institutional discrimination, and a societal pressure that pushes them towards other professions. To tackle the challenge, Paudel developed the Women in STEM Network Database, a resource aimed at building a strong mentoring community of female scientists across the Himalayan kingdom. Paudel also runs workshops, training sessions and seminars to help equip women with technical skills, research methodologies and leadership training. Her advice to female colleagues? “If you face barriers, also break them, not just for yourself, but for the next generation of women in STEM. Your journey can inspire change that that also you need to think. And most importantly, enjoy the process. Science is about curiosity, discovery and innovation. So stay passionate, keep learning and trust that you are making a difference.”…

JoAnn Trejo co-leads the Faculty Mentor Training Program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) medical school, where, thanks to her efforts, the number of tenure-track faculty members from under-represented groups shot up by 38% from 2017 to 2022. Trejo, a pharmacologist whose research helps to develop drugs to treat vascular diseases, says her mentor colleagues understand that their mission and responsibility is training the next generation of scientists and providing opportunities for them. She describes the people who supported her at the early career stage, and the impact they had. “When I reflect on my life and I think about how a poor Mexican American farm worker kid from an impoverished background, became a scientist professor, it’s actually extraordinary,” she says. Trejo is the seventh researcher to feature in this eight-part Changemakers podcast series. It accompanies an ongoing Nature Q&A series that highlights scientists who fight racism in science and champion inclusion at work.…

Joslynn Lee seeks to bring Indigenous values and heritage into her chemistry and biochemistry teaching at Fort Lewis College. The institution in Durango, Colorado, is a Native American-serving non-tribal institution where 30% of its student population identifies as Indigenous, Native American or Alaska Native. Lee’s efforts to bridge the Native American worldview with Western science stem from childhood walks with her nálí (paternal grandmother), who pointed out the medicinal properties of plants, and an undergraduate professor who was interested in Lee's background and how Indigenous values and culture could be applied to organic chemistry. Lee, an associate professor whose research focus includes the microbial makeup of acid mine drainage in the mountains and rivers surrounding Durango, is the sixth researcher to feature in this eight-part Changemakers podcast series. It accompanies an ongoing Nature Q&A series that highlights scientists who fight racism in science and champion inclusion at work. Hosted on…

Arezoo Khodayari and Laurie Barge started a mentoring collaboration more than a decade ago, providing students at California State University Los Angeles (Cal State LA) with paid research opportunities at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in nearly Pasadena, where Barge is based. Khodayari, an environmental scientist at Cal State LA, a minority-serving institution where more than 75% of students identify as Hispanic, says their partnership came about when they co-hosted a student intern who was seeking to turn her summer research project at JPL into a master's thesis. Barge's JPL lab explores the potential for the emergence of life on other worlds, more than a decade ago. The pair realized they could create more projects that are focused at the intersection of astrobiology and environmental science. ​​​​​​ Khodayari, a first generation college student who grew up in Iran before moving to the US aged 24 for a PhD at the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, describes her passion for teaching and…

Vukosi Marivate helps to build scientific communities and networks for African researchers in machine learning and artificial intelligence. These include Deep Learning Indaba, an events and awards programme inspired by the isiZulu word for gathering. Marivate, a computer scientist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, says Indaba came about to “bring together the African community to strengthen machine learning, so that we can contribute, shape and ultimately be our own owners of these coming technologies.” Marivate also co-founded the startup Lelapa AI, inspired this time by the Setswana word for home. An early project for the company, which aims to be a home for the top AI talent and researchers in Africa, was to build natural language processing systems for Africa languages. There are more than 2000 of them, he says. The computer scientist, based at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, is the fourth researcher to feature in this eight-part Changemakers podcast series. It accompanies an…

A paper co-authored by Tatsuya Amano was rejected recently without review because its level of English did not meet the journal’s required standard. His research suggests that 38% of researchers who are not fluent in English have experienced similar rejections. Amano, whose first language is Japanese, describes how dismantling language barriers will result in improved knowledge sharing, and in the long run, better research. Journals, he argues, can help by taking steps to distinguish the quality of science from the quality of language when assessing manuscripts. And conference organizers can adopt a range of measures to support presenters and attendees whose first language is not English. The biodiversity researcher is one of eleven scientists leading TranslatE, a project which strives to make environmental science more accessible to non-fluent English speakers. AI and translation tools can bring huge benefits to researchers like him, he says, but they won’t all have been trained on many of the world’s…

Rana Dajani studies epigenetics of trauma in vulnerable communities around the world. A molecular biologist based at the Hashemite University in Zarqa, Jordan, her research explores what genes are turned on and off through trauma and if they are transferred to future generations. In the second episode of an eight-part podcast series to accompany Nature's Changemakers in science Q&A series, collection, Dajani, a daughter of refugees, talks about some formative influences and how she now collaborates with Jordan’s Circassian and Chechen populations, who were violently evicted from their homelands almost two hundred years ago. “I had a treasure trove in my backyard to discover novel gene risk factors for disease that nobody else had discovered, because of their very unique gene pool,” she says. Changemakers launched last year as a follow-up to the journal's Racism in Science special issue. Listen to launch editor Kendall Powell discuss the series' aims and objectives with Deborah Daley, global chair of Springer…

In her role as director of Bioprotection Aotearoa, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence, Amanda Black works with local communities to protect the country’s natural and food-producing ecosystems. Black says the Indigenous values that she applies in her role include te pono, which stands for truth, honesty and integrity, te aroha, encompassing respect and reciprocity, and te tika, a term that means doing what is right, in the right way, for the right reasons. The soil chemist is the first of eight scientists to feature in a podcast series to accompany Nature's Changemakers in science Q&A series, which launched last year as a follow-up to the journal's Racism in Science special issue. Listen to launch editor Kendall Powell discuss the series' aims and objectives with Deborah Daley, global chair of Springer Nature's Black Employee Network. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nature's 2022 special issue on racism in science spawned a follow-up Q&A series with researchers who champion inclusion in their workplace or community. Now eight of the 21 Changemakers who have appeared in the series so far revisit their stories in a podcast series that also explores their career journeys and the impage of their research. Kendall Powell, the senior careers editor who launched the article series in May last year, explains how and why it came about, and the criteria for choosing a Changemaker. “The inclusive practices that these researchers follow result in richer collaborations and ultimately better science,” Powell tells Deborah Daley, who is global chair of Springer Nature's Black Employee Network, and the series host. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the final episode of this six-part podcast series about hiring in science, Julie Gould asks what it takes to be the perfect candidate for a science job vacancy. Lauren Celano, a careers coach who co-founded Propel Careers, based in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2009, defines a high-calibre candidate as someone who hits up to 70% of the technical things being asked for in a job spec, plus being a strong team player with good communication skills. David Perlmutter, a communications researcher at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, says recruiters today are seeking what he terms Renaisance people who are able to demonstrate eight or nine qualities and qualifications. Thirty years ago, there might have been just two requirements listed on a job ad. “We’re asking too much of them, so of course they’re coming up short,” he says. Julie Gould tests Perlmutter’s hypothesis by comparing a 1995 job ad in Nature for a postdoctoral researcher with one posted this year, at the same organisation. The results are revealing.…

In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series about hiring and getting hired in science, Julie Gould investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) is being used by recruiters to draft job ads, process applications and shortlist candidates. She also asks how recruiters feel about jobseekers using it in their applications, and whether or not they can even tell. Jen Heemstra, a chemistry researcher and lab leader at Washington University in St. Louis, warns of a mismatch when a candidate submits a thoughtful and reflective application, but these qualities aren’t evident at interview. Fatimah Williams, an executive careers coach at Professional Pathways, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recommends using it as a “thinking partner” by giving it appropriate prompts to help with documentation and identify career goals. Holly Prescott, a careers transition specialist based in Birmingham, UK, suggests that candidates who are looking to move, say, from academia to industry, could use AI to explain jargon…

Three researchers and a career coach discuss if there as much scope to negotiate salaries in academia as there is in industry. In either setting, they say, negotiation should not be a battleground. Hiring managers should not take advantage of a beloved future colleague who may have zero experience of negotiating anything, says David Perlmutter, a communications researcher at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, who writes about hiring and salary negotiations. Nor is it like a car sale, adds Jen Heemstra, a chemistry researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, after which the two sides part company forever. “In an academic negotiation if there’s a winner and a loser, then you’ve really both lost,” she says. Perlmutter advises early career researchers to build confidence by practicing salary negotiation with a colleague before doing it for real. “No matter what’s going on, try to be respectful, friendly and positive,” he says. Margot Smit, a plant molecular biologist at Tübingen University, Germany, and…

Should you tailor your job interview style based on the age, gender and cultural background of the person asking the questions? Margot Smit and Dietmar Hutmacher compare their approaches to hiring and how generational influences might shape how they respond to candidates. Smit, a plant molecular biologist who became a group leader at Tübingen University Germany, in late 2023, and Hutmacher, a regenerative medicine researcher at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, list what they look for at interview. Coming from different generations, one with a background in industry, do they differ? This is the third episode in a six-part podcast series about hiring in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julie Gould compares hiring practices across industry and academia by seeking perspectives from Tina Persson, an organic chemist-turned-careers coach based in Malmö, Sweden, and Lauren Celano, a recruitment consultant who founded Propel Careers, based in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2009. Persson, whose coaching business is called passage2pro, tells Gould why it typically takes longer to hire scientists in academia. Margot Smit, a plant molecular biologist who now recruits scientists for her lab at Tübingen University in Germany, reflects on her own experiences as an academic jobseeker in 2022. It involved panel interviews, lab tours, team dinners, and, in one case, a symposium where all candidates gave a talk. Now, as someone who recruits scientists to her lab, she involves junior colleagues in hiring decisions. Jen Heemstra tells a similar tale. Her search for a department chair position in 2022 meant moving not only herself but also her entire chemistry research group to Washington University in St. Louis.…

Successful job candidates aren’t necessarily the smartest or most confident people in the room, Ilana Wisby tells Julie Gould in the first episode of a six-part weekly podcast series about hiring in science. Wisby, a physicist and former chief executive of Oxford Quantum Circuits, which builds quantum computers from its base in Reading, UK, says recruiters use interviews to gauge a candidate’s values, their emotional intelligence, and their growth potential. Asking someone how they received difficult feedback, she adds, is a test of their humility and willingness to admit mistakes, and what they learned from them. The episode begins with Linda Nordling, a freelance science writer who led coverage of Nature’s 2024 global hiring in science survey, talking about some of the surprising things that caught her eye in the data. Future episodes include insights from a careers coach about industry hiring trends, and how an academic research institute based in London is centralizing its postdoc hiring process. Hosted…

Academia’s focus on individual achievement can be a breeding ground for poor mental health, says astrophysicist Kelly Korreck. Korreck, who experienced pandemic-related burnout while working on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, describes a competitive and ultimately damaging ‘lone wolf’ culture. She is joined by psychologist Desiree Dickerson to discuss how a stronger focus on group success can better protect researchers. Dickerson also calls for improved onboarding processes for early career researchers. They should involve clear conversations about looming challenges, including first person accounts from people who faced work-related stress, anger, anxiety and depression, she argues. “If we only value papers and funding, then of course, we protect those who have great papers and bring in lots of funding. We don’t look after the well-being of the people who actually need to be looked after,” she says. Social and clinical psychologist Ciro De Vincenzo reflects on the positive emotions he felt and witnessed during a…

A relentless pursuit of perfection in science can mean that researchers are in perpetual and self-critical ‘survival mode,’ forever questioning their behaviours and actions in the workplace, says clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson. “We are not very good at taking the spotlight off ourselves, a pressure that can lead to burnout other mental health problems, adds Dickerson, who is based in Valencia, Spain. To boost workplace well-being, Ellen Wehrens describes the impact of a happiness programme that was introduced in 2019 to her lab at the Princess Máxima paediatric oncology centre in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The programme includes both a buddying system and a colour-coded index that enables individuals to signal to colleagues how they are feeling. “So green, you are doing great, yellow, not so much, and red, you are not doing well,” explains Wehrens. Ana Pineda, an ecologist who now runs I focus and write, an education and coaching business, says she began practicing yoga and meditation after feeling…

Three researchers with personal experience of anxiety and depression triggered by studying the environmental destruction caused by a changing climate describe the steps they take to protect their mental health. Ruth Cerezo-Mota, a climate scientist based at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, found herself grieving for the state of the planet through her work for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Experiencing a panic attack at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by a fear of checking emails and a sense of disengagement from work, led to her seeking professional help. “I was in a really dark place,” she tells Adam Levy. Retreating to a “happy place” that combines home, books, yoga, running, cats and wine is a key copying strategy when things get tough, she says. Similar experiences are recounted by Dave Reay, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh UK, and Daniel Gilford, a meteorologist who works at Climate Central, a science-led…

Krutika Kuppalli, a physician researcher who studies emerging infectious diseases, joined the World Health Organization in 2021, where she worked to combat the COVID-19 on a global level. She had previously been targeted by threats and harassment as a result of media and US congressional appearances to inform the public about the emerging pathogen. These were often focused on her race and gender. Concerned for her safety, Kuppalli went to the police twice. She was told to get a weapon. She tells Adam Levy how employers can support colleagues who face harassment, and the measures she took to protect herself. Kuppalli is joined by Atom Lesiak, a transgender non-binary genome sciences researcher based in Houston, Texas. Lesiak now runs Atomic Brains, a science tutoring and coaching organisation. Being open about their gender as a PhD student and beyond brought profound challenges. It forced them to question their decision to pursue a career in academia. This episode is the fifth in Mind Matters, an eight-part…

Kelly Korreck tells Adam Levy how a once-loved career in science gradually left her feeling exhausted, upset, and chronically stressed, with accompanying feelings of imposter syndrome. In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic deprived Korreck, an astrophysicist then working on NASA's Parker Solar Probe, of the favourite parts of her job. These included face-to-face mentoring, public engagement and conference travel. ”It really took a toll,” she says. ”There was none of the joy that I experienced previously. I thought it was my fault, that I was an imposter. I had gotten to this level, and I just wasn't good enough.” Desiree Dickerson, a clinical psychologist based in Valencia, Spain, outlines the different stages of burnout, and how the academic culture often encourages researchers to present a ”shiny façade” to the world. Dickerson, who works with academic institutions to develop healthier and more sustainable approaches to research, outlines three different stages of burnout, and how and when to seek help. This…

Hilal Lashuel and Dave Reay join Michelle Kimple to talk about faculty mental health and why it is often overlooked. A heart attack in 2016 forced Lashuel, a neurogenerative diseases researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, to question success in science and how it is defined. The pressure to be an excellent researcher, manager, accountant and mentor can exact a heavy mental toll, he says. Since his heart attack Lashuel has taken steps to reduce his workload and spend more time with his family, but also to lobby for systemic change in academia to better support faculty colleagues who are struggling. Climate scientist Dave Reay describes the mental health problems he experienced as a PhD student and the suicidal thoughts it triggered. Now, as a faculty member at the University of Edinburgh, UK, he is protective of family time, talks openly about the struggles he faced, and champions kindness at work and in his pastoral role as a supervisor. Finally, Michelle Kimple, an…

Charlotte Roughton says she developed a deep-rooted shame and resentment towards her autism diagnosis, causing her to mask the condition during her biosciences degree at the University of Durham, UK. But socially camouflaging and striving to appear as neurotypical to others led to burnout and poor mental health, she tells Adam Levy. The COVID-19 pandemic, which straddled her Masters and PhD programmes, was a turning point. She cultivated a community via social media, becoming an advocate for neurodiversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Being neurodivergent brings benefits to her role as a biological teaching technician at the University of Newcastle, UK, she says. She offers advice and how and when to disclose an autism diagnosis at work, based on her own experience, and how institutions and lab mates can support neurodivergent colleagues. Endocrinology researcher Michelle Kimple tells a similar story, recounting the relief she felt on receiving a bipolar and attention deficit…

Why do so many academics struggle to ‘power down’ at the end of a long working day, and what are the longer-term health effects of failing to switch off at evenings and weekends? Desiree Dickerson is a clinical psychologist based in Valencia, Spain, who works with academic institutions to develop healthier and more sustainable approaches to research. She joins Simone Lackner to discuss why poor mental health is often so prevalent in academia, and often described as reaching crisis proportions. Lackner is a multidisciplinary researcher and ambassador for the Researcher Mental Health Observatory (REmO), an international network focussed on wellbeing and mental health within academia. In 2022 she founded The Empathic Scientist, a consultancy which focuses on wellbeing and inclusion in academia. This episode is the first of an eight-part series on mental health and wellbeing in academia. Over the next few weeks Adam Levy will be speaking with a wide range of people who share their own experiences and expertise,…