Working Scientist

In 2016 the University of Melbourne, Australia, asked for female-only applicants when it advertised three vacancies in its School of Mathematics and Statistics. It repeated the exercise in 2018 and 2019 to fill similar vacancies in physics, chemistry, and engineering and information technology. Elaine Wong and Georgina Such tell the  How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals  podcast why certain...

As a child Solomon King Benge loved Eric Laithwaite’s 1974 book The Engineer in Wonderland , based on the mechanical engineer’s 1966 Royal Institution Christmas lectures. After reading it he asked his physics teacher if he and his classmates might try some of Laithwaite’s practical experiments, but was told: “Don’t waste your time with this. This is not important, because it’s not in the curr...

A drive to reduce suicide mortality rates is a key indicator of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Psychiatrist Shekhar Saxena, who led the World Health Organization’s mental health and substance abuse program after working in clinical practice for more than two decades, says that although progress is being made, a worryingly high number of young people are choosing to end thei...

As a nutrition and planetary health researcher, Christopher Golden takes a keen interest in the second of 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and its aim to end hunger. But Golden’s research also focuses on “hidden hunger,” a term he uses to describe the impact of dietary deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, fatty acids, and vitamins A and B12. Hidden hunger, he argues in...

Poverty is about more than just meeting basic material needs, says Catherine Thomas. Its corrosive effects are also social and psychological, causing people to feel marginalized and helpless. Thomas’s research into anti-poverty programs has focused on the effects of one aimed at women in the West African country of Niger, which aims to support subsistence farmers whose livelihoods are impacted by...

In August the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft touched down, making India only the fourth to have successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon. In this special episode of the Working Scientist podcast, Somak Raychaudhuryan astrophysicist and vice-chancellor at Ashoka University, tells Jack Leeming about India’s history of space research, the significance of the lunar landing, and how it might help to stem...

For a three-year period as a postdoctoral researcher, molecular biologist and visual artist Daniel Jay was given both a lab and a sudio to work in. In the final episode of this six-part Working Scientist about art and science, Julie Gould asks why, decades later, Jay’s experience is still unusual. Why do scientists with expertise in, say, music, sculpture, pottery or creative writing have to...

Data form the backbone of the scientific method, but it can be impenetrable. In the penultimate episode of this six-part  Working Scientist  podcast series about art-science collaborations, Julie Gould talks to artists and data visualisation specialists about how they interpret and present data in art forms ranging from music to basket weaving. Keep things simple wherever possible, agree...

GUI/GOOEY is an international online exhibition that explores digital and technological representations of the biological world. In the fourth episode of this six-part  Working Scientist  podcast series about art and science, Julie Gould talks to some of the artists and scientist whose collaborations created exhibits for the event, which ran from March to June 2023. Its curator Laura Spl...

In the third episode of this six-part  Working Scientist  podcast series about art and science, artists and illustrators describe examples where accuracy is key, but also ones where they can exert some artistic licence in science-based drawings, sculptures, music and installations. For Lucy Smith, a botanical artist at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, measurement and accuracy is impo...

Artist and illustrator Lucy Smith helps botanists to identify new species. Usually they request a set of drawings, she says, with a detailed set of requirements. But Smith, who joined London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, more than 20 years ago, says: “We also feed back to the scientists and say, 'I’ve seen what you’ve asked me to see. But do you know what, I’ve also seen this? Did you know that th...

In the first episode of this six-part Working Scientist podcast series, Julie Gould explores the history of science and art and asks researchers and artists to define what the two terms mean to them. Like science, art is a way of asking questions about the world, says Jessica Bradford, head of collections and principal curator at the Science Museum in London. But unlike art, science about interrog...

Narrative CVs are increasingly being used by funders to capture how a successful grant application will positively impact society and promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Crucially, the narrative format also acknowledges contributions from citizen scientists, local communities and administrator colleagues. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the largest public funder of UK science, is one...

In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series about team science, Richard Holliman describes a project involving indigenous researchers in Guyana who wanted to limit insecticide spraying without jeopardising the South American country’s efforts to tackle malaria. The early warning system they developed with Andrea Beradi, an environmental systems researcher and a colleague of Holliman...

Elaine Fitzcharles, a senior lab manager at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), says the role is sometimes wrongly perceived as someone who “couldn’t cut it as a scientist.”  Fitzcharles and her team oversee five BAS research stations, its main facility in Cambridge, UK, and the research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough. Their responsibilities include advising on health and safety, import li...

Before launching his own consultancy in 2021, Simon Kerridge worked as a research manager in UK academia. “We’re the oil in the cogs,” he says of the role, adding: “Obviously, it’s a service profession, but we have to be careful not to be subservient.” But how empowered do research managers and administrators based in other countries feel, particularly those working in nations with rigid hierarchi...

The UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) collects research outputs from UK universities and is used by the the country’s government to distribute around £2 billion in research funding. But its focus on publications to measure outputs has drawn criticism.  The Hidden REF, set up in 2020, looks at alternative measures. Simon Hettrick, its chair and director of the Software Susaintabili...

In the first episode of a six-part podcast series about research culture and team science, research managers Lorna Wilson and Hilary Noone describe how their skills and expertise can help deliver better research outputs, particularly when their contributions are better understood and valued by academic colleagues. Noone, research and innovation culture lead at the funding agency UK Research and In...

In November 2021, Maria Leptin became president of the European Research Council. After a long career in biological research, Leptin admits that starting the process of closing her lab at the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) before taking up her new role, was difficult. “You win some you lose some,” she tells  Nature  careers editor Jack Leeming of this new career step. “It...

In late 2021 a BuzzFeed investigation revealed a catalogue of sexual misconduct incidents at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Ecologist Sarah Batterman, one of more than a dozen women to speak out about their experiences, describes what happened to her and the impact it has had on her career. Batterman, who filed a formal complaint to the institute in 2020 after bei...

Morteza Mahmoudi witnessed bullying behaviours during a series of lab visits following his PhD in 2009, and now studies the topic alongside his role as a nanoscience and regenerative medicine researcher at Michigan State University in East Lansing. In 2019 he co-founded the Academic Parity Movement, a non-profit which aims to end academic discrimination, violence and bullying across the secto...

As a child of the Space Age, Jeffrey Gordon dreamed of becoming an astronaut and discovering life on Mars. Instead he found fascinating life forms and interactions closer to home, inside the gastrointestinal tract. The microbiome researcher, winner of the 2023 Global Grants for Gut Health Research Group Prize, tells Julie Gould about his research focus and the workplace culture in his lab at Washi...

A professor invites colleagues and their partners to a Christmas party but reacts negatively when a young gay researcher asks to bring his future husband along. A Black carnivore researcher conceals their bisexuality and pronoun preferences when doing fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa. These two experiences are among those recounted in this  Working Scientist  podcast about the challenges...

Atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe realised she was the only climate researcher in West Texas when she joined Texas Tech University in Lubbock, 15 years ago. Within a few months she was being asked to address community groups about climate change, but also a growing number of posts from social media trolls who disagreed with her, many of them misogynistic in tone. The situation has worsened si...

Hassoni Alodaini hoped to complete a PhD when war broke out in his native Yemen in 2015. But as research funding dried up as a result of the hostilities, Alodaini fled to Egypt. His arrival there marked the start of a three-year journey to reach the Netherlands, much of it on foot, via Greece, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, the Czech Republic, and Germany. In the fourth episode of a seven-part podcast s...