Working Scientist

Many mentoring relationships were disrupted by the pandemic, particularly ones that relied on regular face-to-face contact. How did these established mentoring relationships survive the switch to virtual meetings? In the third episode of this seven-part Working Scientist podcast series, Julie Gould also explores the challenges of being a mentor beyond those presented by the pandemic. Alongside the...

Science has become more international in the past few decades. This means that you might encounter a variety of people from different geographical and cultural backgrounds in your lab. So how does this affect your mentoring relationships? In the second episode of this seven-part Working Scientist podcast series, researchers share some of their cross-cultural mentoring encounters. These range from...

How can science better support and reward academics who, alongside running labs, writing grants, authoring papers and teaching students, also devote precious hours of their working week to mentoring colleagues? In the first episode of this seven-part Working Scientist podcast series, three winners of the 2020 Nature Research Awards for Mentoring in Science describe why this part of their role is s...

This week,  Nature  has a special issue on collaborations, looking at the benefits to science and society that working together can bring. In this collaboration-themed episode (produced jointly with the Nature Podcast and Working Scientist podcast teams), we discuss the issue, and the state of research collaborations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pr...

How does graduate school and academia prepare you for entrepreneurship and a commercial career? J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham, a social scientist who swapped a faculty position to launch a craft beer consultancy, says: “I’ve been in the position of acting as a department chair, and like most of us in who’ve done kind of full time, faculty appointments, have to navigate colleagues, navigate administrati...

The road to commercializing research is strewn with challenges, but how can science start-ups prepare for developments that are harder to predict, such as a global pandemic? Daniel Batten, an investor and business coach in Auckland, New Zealand, describes strategies to prepare for unexpected events as well as more common crises, such as failed funding rounds or supplier problems. Barbara Domayne-H...

In their early stages, science start-ups require solid commitment, with founders and their teams clocking up long hours with little financial reward. Despite the uncertainty, company leaders also need to think about business growth. This includes transferring knowledge and skills to junior colleagues, planning organizational structure, product development and quality control, and considering custo...

Meet the people who advise researcher entrepreneurs on patents, licensing, business plans and commercial partnerships. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How does registering a patent compare to other scientific career milestones? For science entrepreneurs, is it akin to publishing a first paper, landing tenure or securing a grant? Three scientists who successfully commercialized their research tell Adam Levy about the process, and its significance to them and their fledgling businesses. Patent lawyer Tamsen Valoir describes different types of pate...

If you want your product idea to succeed, one of the first steps is to interest potential investors. This can be hard for academic researchers, whose previous focus will have been on getting published, winning grants and teaching classes, says Javier Garcia-Martinez, a chemist at the University of Alicante in Spain, and founder of Rive Technology This episode is part of Business of science, a six-...

Two researchers with disabilities describe an ‘ableist’ culture in academia, a system designed for fully fit and healthy people that does little to account for those who fall outside those parameters.  This culture can sideline scientists with disabilities, chronic illnesses, neurological or mental health problems. As a result many choose not to disclose their conditi...

In 2020 Antentor Hinton led an online initiative via the  Cell Mentor  platform to mark the achievements of  1000 Black scientists . The list includes the cell biologist and diversity champion Sandra Murray. “If it wasn’t for her, putting up with certain institutional challenges....I wouldn’t be able to have a postdoc at Iowa, nor be able to be mentored by an African American male”,...

In the past, many institutions produced similar types of scientists: researchers with a shared educational history who go straight from school to university then do a PhD and postdoctoral research. But not everyone follows this path. We meet two researchers who forged research careers later in life, and took very different routes to get there. How valuable has their previous life experience been i...

Two LGBTQ+ scientists describe how sexual and gender identities can help to drive research by offering perspectives that others in a lab group or collaboration might not have considered. What role, for example, did gay scientists have in developing the direction of research into HIV and AIDS in the early 1980s, when the condition was erroneously seen as something that only...

For all sorts of reasons, women remain under-represented in senior-level jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. To overcome these blocks, what can male allies do to challenge discriminatory practices and unconscious bias, and to recognize their own privilege and the career advantages it has delivered? Two male scientists saw how female colleagues were ignored or talked over in m...

Different countries have varying working cultures — what works in China will not necessarily work in, say, Mexico. But what if you brought these cultural perspectives together in one place. How might that change research output? The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, an island university off the coast of Japan, has developed a research facility with an ethos based on international divers...

Imagine a world where science is still the sole preserve of the white, the male, the privileged. What research interests would be prevalent? And what research would get funded as a result?  Then imagine a very different world where different groups engage, bringing fresh ideas and perspectives. Because of their diverse backgrounds, these scientists study subject areas previously neglected or...

Many postdoctoral researchers can trace their career journey back to childhood experiences. In Pearl Ryder’s case it was spending lots of time outdoors in the rural area where she grew up, combined with the experience of having a sibling who experienced poor health. Ryder, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts, and founder of the Future PI Slack g...

Postdocs and other career researchers need better trained lab leaders, not just nicer ones, Julie Gould discovers. Calls to change the research culture have grown louder in 2020 as COVID-19 lockdowns led to extended grant application and publication deadlines. As the world emerges from the pandemic, will researchers adopt more respectful ways of communicating, collaborating and publishing? Anne Ma...

Experience as a postdoctoral researcher might not fast-track your career outside academia, Julie Gould discovers. Nessa Carey, a UK entrepreneur and technology-transfer professional whose career has straddled academia and industry, including a senior role at Pfizer, shares insider knowledge on how industry employers often view postdoctoral candidates. She also offers advice on CVs and preparing fo...

Closed labs and rescinded job offers have snatched away opportunities. How can science bounce back? Earlier this year, Michael Moore was due to start a permanent faculty position in Michigan, a move to his “dream job” that would have brought him and his family of five children closer to where their grandparents live. Moore, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, contacte...

Julie Gould investigates how brain drains and demographic time bombs are forcing some countries to rethink the postdoc. The problems facing postdocs who are more than ready for life as an independent researcher are well documented. A lack of faculty positions forces many to spend years moving from one temporary contract to another, often internationally. But moving abroad can rob many countries of...

What is a postdoc and why undertake one? Julie Gould gets some metaphorical answers to a complicated question. “A postdoc is a scientist with training wheels,” says Jessica Esquivel, a postdoctoral researcher at Fermilab, the particle physics and accelerator laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. “It is a space where we can fumble, really start to flex our muscles in building innovative experiments and...

Ditch jargon, keep sentences short, stay topical. Pakinam Amer shares the secrets of good science writing for books and magazines. In the final episode of this six-part series about science communication, three experts describe how they learned to craft stories about research for newspaper, magazine and book readers. David Kaiser, a physicist and science historian at Massachusetts Institute of Tec...

Funding agencies and societies love novel approaches to science communication. Here is some expert advice on how to grab their attention. In the penultimate episode of this six-part series about science communication, dermatologist and immunologist Muzlifah Haniffa tells Pakinam Amer how art and poetry inspired her 2016 exhibition  Inside Skin  following a meeting with Linda Anderson, a...