Working Scientist

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.”  ...

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 int...

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...

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 metaboli...

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...

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.​​​​​​​”...

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 ...

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, h...

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 ma...

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 thr...

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, s...

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 wo...

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.&n...

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 t...

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 support...

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, ...

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 sci...

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 incl...

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 ta...

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,&nbsp...

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 o...

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 tea...

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 experie...

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...

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 per...