Working Scientist

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/privacy for more information.

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 administration. We simultaneously do a lot, and a lot of things of consequence, prepping courses, building a curriculum, maintaining our research programs.“The complexities of navigating those spaces provided me with a great head start to doing client work. To be honest, client work is a lot easier in comparison to navigating personalities in academia.”Javier Garcia Martinez, who founded Rive Technology and now combines a business role with an academic position at the University of Alicante, Spain, adds: “Our education as scientists in terms of rigour, looking at data, connecting the dots, makes us very well equipped to launch a startup.“Any group leader is also an entrepreneur. You need to raise money from industry or from government, you need to deliver papers on time, present in conferences, you need to hire, you need to inspire your team, you need a vision, you need to develop new technologies.”“I know when my students come to my class I can share with them not only what's in the textbooks, but also my own personal experience on why a patent is important, and how to create a team.”This is the final episode in our six-part Business of science series. Previous episodes looked at investor pitches, registering patents, technology transfer teams, scaling up and learning from setbacks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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-Hayman, entrepreneur in residence at the Francis Crick Institute in London, says the path to commercialization seldom runs smoothly, which is why it is important to have a ‘plan B’, together with a network of trusted mentors.“Things never go exactly as you expect, even when things are going well. There’s usually some bumps along the road. Resilience is the single most important thing that you need to have,” she says.“You have to be the one that actually continues to keep the faith. You just have to keep picking yourself up and carry on.”This episode is part of Business of science, a six-part podcast series exploring how to commercialize your research and launch a spin-off.The series looks at investor pitches, patents, technology transfer and how to survive the inevitable setbacks along the way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 customers and competitors.Charles Christy leads contract development and manufacturing at Ibex Dedicate, part of Lonza, a Swiss pharmaceutical and biotechnology company headquartered in Basle. He describes how science entrepreneurs should approach this crucial stage. Christy is joined by investor Daniel Batten and science entrepreneurs Javier Garcia Martinez, Wei Wu and Patrick Anquetil, who discuss their experiences of scaling up.“In an early-stage company, people can’t be half-hearted about things. They really have to commit,” says Barbara Domayne-Hayman, entrepreneur in residence at the Francis Crick Institute in London.This episode is part of Business of science, a six-part podcast series exploring how to commercialize your research and launch a spin-off.The series looks at investor pitches, patents, and how to survive the inevitable setbacks along the way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 patents, the typical costs of registering one and how having a patent can reassure potential investors.She also outlines some common misconceptions around patents, including the extent to which they do or don't apply in other countries.This episode is part of Business of science, a six-part podcast series exploring how to commercialize your research and launch a spin-off.The series looks at investor pitches, patents, technology transfer, scaling up and how to survive the inevitable setbacks along the way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 TechnologyThis episode is part of Business of science, a six-part podcast series exploring how to commercialize your research and launch a spin-off. The series looks at investor pitches, patents, technology transfer, scaling up and how to survive the inevitable setbacks along the way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 conditions for fear of being stigmatised. This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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”, says Hinton, an assistant professor who studies mitochondrial dynamics regulation during aging at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.Carla Faria, a Brazilian laser physicist whose research group at University College London studies strong-field and attosecond-science, offers advice to scientists from under-represented groups on when to volunteer for workplace diversity initiatives. “You really have to ensure that time and the effort that you're putting there is effective”, she says. “ And what is going to happen is that your white male counterparts are going to publish another paper while you are spending your time doing this”.This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series which explores how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 in their current career? What skills did they learn along the way? And how did they overcome the obstacles they faced?This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world.Each episode in this series concludes with a sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) about how it is exploring diversity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 affected homosexual men? And how are transgender researchers helping to shape investigations into the physiology of transitioning women undergoing oestrogen therapy to underpin fairness in sport?This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 privilegeand the career advantages it has delivered?Two male scientists saw how female colleagues were ignored or talked over in meetings and treated more harshly than male candidates in job interviews.They discuss the need to take supportive action, including a range of measures that include a boycott of ‘manels’ — all-male panels.This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world.Each episode in this series concludes with a sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) about how it is exploring diversity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 diversity. Currently, 83% of its PhD students come from abroad.Researchers there describe the challenges and opportunities of working in a university with no departments, and where the campus layout encourages interdisciplinary collaboration.This episode is part of Science Diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more-diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world.Each episode in this series concludes with a follow-up sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) about how it is exploring diversity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 simply unthought-of. In this podcast series, Science Diversified, we explore how a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world.Many young children have little or no exposure to working scientists and the types of jobs that they do. So the idea of pursuing a career in science is not on their radar. But that can change when you invite scientists to spend time with a class of lively pupils from a socially and ethnically diverse community. They plant a seed, in which the idea of pursuing a career in science can take root. This is what the education outreach programme team of London’s Francis Crick Institute aims to do. The team hopes that building ‘science capital’ in those crucial early years will lead to a more diverse scientific workforce.Each episode in this series concludes with a follow-up sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) about how it is exploring diversity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 group, says: “It made me realize how important health is, and that there’s so little that we understand about the world.”But is science, like some other professions a calling? Yes, says Christopher Hayter, who specializes in entrepreneurship, technology policy, higher education and science at Arizona State University in Phoenix. “There are professions that are a little bit different from your day-to-day job, something people gravitate towards, something bigger than themselves,” he says.“It is often referred to as a calling. I think we could say that about a lot of scientists. It’s how they define themselves: ‘I’m a scientist.’ ‘I’m going to cure cancer.’ ‘I’m going to discover the next planet.’ When students transition from doctoral students to postdoc they are really doubling down on that identity.”Michael Moore, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, adds: “Being a scientist is overcoming a series of hurdles, and you need to see yourself as a scientist to get that internal motivation to keep going. You have to publish so much, get so many grants, teach so many courses. Having that identity and that motivation is really key to moving forward.”Gould’s guests discuss how to maintain that motivation despite the setbacks, and how a scientist’s professional identity and career path is underpinned by the networks, mentors and transferable skills acquired during a postdoc. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Marie Coriat, head of the UK and Europe research landscape at the funder Wellcome, tells Julie Gould about the organisation's 2019 survey of more than 4,000 researchers. The results were published in January this year.She adds: "We know that not everything is completely kind, constructive, and conducive to encouraging and enabling people to be at their best. "We tend to count success as things that are easy to record. And so inadvertently, I think funders have contributed to hyper competition, to the status of the cult hero of an individual being, you know, the leader who gets all the accolades."But what else is needed, beyond a kinder culture? In June 2020 Jessica Malisch, an assistant professor of physiology at St. Mary's College of Maryland, co-authored an opinion article calling for new solutions to ensure gender equity in the wake of COVID-19. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/27/15378 She says "We can't rely on kindness and good intentions to correct the systemic inequity in academia.Katie Wheat, head of engagement and policy at the researcher development non-profit Vitae, tells Gould that researchers who feel that they're their manager or their supervisor is supportive and available for them during the pandemic have better indicators of wellbeing than those who are not getting that support. "A PI might also be in a relatively precarious situation, reliant on grant income for their own salary, and for their team's salary. "You can be in a scenario where the individualistic markers of success put everybody in a competitive situation against everybody else, rather than a more collaborative and collegial situation where, where one person's success is everybody's success." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 for interviews.“It is very tempting sometimes for people to keep on postdoc-ing, especially if they have a lab head who has a lot of rolling budget and who likes having the same postdocs there, because they're productive and they know them,” she says. “That’s great for the lab head. It’s typically very, very bad for the individual postdoc,” she adds.Carey is joined by Shulamit Kahn, an economist at Boston University in Massachusetts, who co-authored a 2017 paper about the impact of postdoctoral training on early careers in biomedicine1.According to the paper, published in Nature Biotechnology, employers did not financially value the training or skills obtained during postdoc training. “Based on these findings, the majority of PhDs would be financially better off if they skipped the postdoc entirely,” it concludes.Malcolm Skingle, academic liaison at GlaxoSmithKline, adds: “You really will get people who have done their PhD, they’ve done a two-year postdoc, they think they’re pretty much going to run the world and single-handedly develop a drug.“They have got no idea how difficult drug discovery is, and their place in that very big jigsaw.”“And why don’t postdocs get great salaries straightaway? Well, actually, they haven’t proven themselves in our environment, where, if they’re any good, then their salaries will go up quite quickly.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, contacted his prospective employer after hearing that job offers were being put on hold at many places as a result of the pandemic. He was later told that, as a result of continued funding uncertainty, all new hires were cancelled.Pearl Ryder, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts, and founder of the Future PI Slack channel, tells Gould that Moore's situation is sadly not unusual. She adds: “The group that has been most harmed by this pandemic are the youngest members of our profession, the graduate students who were hoping to move on to a postdoc … and the postdocs who were hoping to move on to new positions, but those new positions no longer exist.”Can any positives be drawn from the pandemic? A kinder and more open research culture, perhaps? Shirley Tilghman, president emerita of Princeton University, New Jersey, thinks so. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 talented researchers, particularly if they leave for good, says Melody Mentz-Coetzee, a senior researcher at the University of Pretoria’s centre for the advancement of scholarship in South Africa.Her country faces exactly this problem — a situation she dates back to the late 1970s and early 1990s. “At this point, we started to see a lot of talented researchers being trained abroad, and many of those never returned home: the so-called brain drain in Africa,” Mentz-Coetzee tells Gould.“Many institutions face a severe shortage of highly qualified staff, many of whom are older, close to retirement. So you do have this kind of a ‘missing middle’.”Mentz-Coetzee describes an initiative across ten Carnegie-funded postdoc fellowship programmes on the African continent to help tackle the problem.Shambhavi Naik, a former postdoc who turned to journalism and is now a research fellow at the Takshashila Institution’s technology and policy programme in Bengaluru, explores why talented graduate students who opted to develop their careers in India, rather than move abroad, are overlooked for faculty positions. Their motivation to stay at home is a wake-up call for science in India, she argues.And Shirley Tilghman, emeritus professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey, says the problem is a cultural one, and could be addressed by the development of staff-scientist roles to oversee technological change in the scientific enterprise.“It’s about changing the mindset of each individual principal investigator, who kind of wants to circle the wagons and say, ‘Don't mess with my stuff’. And that’s the culture we have to change,” she says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 learn skills that we didn't necessarily get to beef up while we were in graduate school.”In the first episode of a six-part podcast series, Julie Gould seeks to define this key career stage by asking postdocs past and present why it attracts so many different job titles (37, at the last count), and how many years one should ideally devote to postdoctoral research before moving on. Also, what should come next, given the paucity of permanent posts in academia? Should you do a postdoc if you are planning a career in another sector?“The only thing that you absolutely need a postdoc for is to go onto a tenured track faculty position,” says Bill Mahoney, associate dean for student and postdoctoral affairs at the University of Washington Graduate School in Seattle.Shirley Tilghman, emeritus professor of molecular biology and public affairs at Princeton University in New Jersey, returns to a metaphor coined before COVID-19 lockdowns changed New York’s heavily congested LaGuardia Airport. “Passengers were always finding themselves flying over LaGuardia, over and over and over round in circles.”“Postdocs were experiencing essentially the same phenomenon, which is that they were longer and longer and longer in postdoctoral positions waiting for their turn to finally have a chance to land.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Technology and author of the 2012 book How the Hippies Saved Physics, tells Amer how he first transitioned from academic writing to journalism. “This kind of writing is different from the kinds of communication I had been practising as a graduate student and young faculty member.“It took other sets of eyes and skilled editors to very patiently and generously work with me, saying 'These paragraphs are long, the sentences are long, you've buried the lede.' It was quite a process, quite a transition. It took a lot of practice to work on new habits.”David Berreby runs an annual science writing workshop at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He adds: “One of the hardest things for scientists to do is to tell a story as they would to a friend on campus. If you run into someone in the hall you say 'Hey, the most surprising thing happened....'“Generally your instinct for how you would tell someome informally is a good guide. This is hard for scientists as it's been trained out of them. They have been trained to formalise and jargonise."Beth Daley, editor of the The Conservation US, an online non-profit that publishes news and comment from academic researchers and syndicates them to different national and regional news outlets, describes how she and her colleagues commission articles.After a daily 9am meeting, they issue an 'expert call out' seeking comment on that day's news stories.Her team also receives direct pitches from academics. “The question I always ask scientists is 'What is it about your work that can be relevant for people today?” she says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 professor of English and American literature at Newcastle University, UK.Carla Ross, who leads the public engagement team at UK funder Wellcome, describes its 25 Trailblazers initiative to showcase excellence in science communication.Trailblazer finalist Raphaela Kaisler tells Amer how she and colleagues crowdsourced potential research questions around child mental health in Austria.And Gail Cardew, director of science and education at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, offers advice on how to set up public engagement programmes.Finally, Joshua Chu-Tan recounts how he distilled his PhD research into 180 seconds as part of the Three Minute Thesis programme, and raised funds for his lab by running blindfold to highlight age-related macular degeneration, his research focus at the Australian National University in Canberra, where he is now a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the fourth episiode of this six-part Working Scientist series about science communication, Pakinam Amer examines how festivals, film, comedy clubs and virtual space camps can be ideal vehicles to explain your research to young people.In 2018, propulsion development engineer Diana Alsindy launched Arabian Stargazer, a bilingual Instagram page that promotes rocket science and STEM careers to young people in Arabic-speaking countries.Alsindy, who moved to the US from Iraq aged 14, tells Amer she developed the platform after realising that online resources in Arabic for young people seeking information about space science were thin on the ground.“I'm passionate about science and I want to make other people passionate about it," she says. "My vision and my dream is to create space clubs, but virtually, engaging young people in techical conversations, using games, riddles, and Q&As with astronauts.”Typically Alsindy runs one-hour presentations in both Arabic and English. “I’ve done it for five-year-olds and high school students. All I need is a latop and a screen, a Skype call or Google Hangout. If we want to open space science to everyone don’t open it for only English speaking populations.”Helen Pilcher transitioned from UK stem cell researcher to writing and stand-up comedy, and is now science advisor at The Beano a children’s comic. A gig at one of the first Cheltenham Science Festivals with scientist friend Timandra Harkness marked a turning point.“We called ourselves The Comedy Research Project and the aim was to prove scientifically that science can be funny.”Alexis Gambis, assistant professor of biology at New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, founded labocine.com, a science film platform and magazine. “Whenever I talk about my films I always say in some ways I consider it to be research. I don’t consider it to be science communication. I’m really interested in how to bring microscopy into film for a general audience.”Urmila Chadayammuri, a pre-doctoral fellow and a PhD student Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, worked with three colleagues she met at a two-day hackathon in 2019 to launch Cosmos VR, an app that offers a simulation including colliding galaxies, black holes and exploding stars. She tells Amer how the science communication project came about. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the third episode of this six-part series about the skills needed to explain your research to a general audience, Pakinam Amer talks to scientists who left the lab to work as full-time science communicators in print, online and broadcast journalism.Often the biggest challenge some of them faced was telling family they were swapping the well-trodden career path of academic research for the more precarious field of science communication.Gareth Mitchell, a technology reporter and science communications lecturer who presents the BBC programme Digital Planet, tells Amer:“I was fine with the transfer and the lack of money and the insecurity and the randomness that came when I transferred from a reasonably safe and hard fought-for career in engineering into something much more uncertain and media-related, but my parents freaked out.“Maybe that's putting it a bit strongly, but they questioned me quite forensically about why on earth their wonderful bright engineering son would possibly want to get his hands dirty with a Masters course in communication and then busk it in the land of radio.”Buzzfeed science editor Azeen Ghorayshi was a fruit fly researcher until 2012, and recalls breaking news of her career switch to her parents, who fled to the US from Iran following the 1979 Revolution.“Journalism plays a very different role there. There’s state media, for example. It’s not a job that they thought of as being easy, or safe, or secure or prestigious. My dad wanted me to become a doctor. That’s a very common thing with immigrant parents.”How do you break into the field, either in a staff or freelance role? Do you need to complete an expensive graduate programme? Mitchell tells Amer: “Ask yourself why you want to do it, why it matters to you, and it’s OK to say because it’s cool and will make me happy.“But maybe you have a deeper reason. Perhaps you think your particular subject area or discipline is insufficiently represented in the wider media? Or maybe it’s over-represented, or misrepresented? Then tell yourself that you can do it, and then think about the mode.Are you the kind of person who might be better going round schools giving talks, or doing stand-up comedy in a science festival? Do you want to be a podcaster, a blogger, a vlogger, a YouTuber?”Finally, Ferris Jabr tells Amer about his work as a science writer and author, and his forthcoming book about the co-evolution of earth and life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do researchers and frontline clinicians have a moral obligation to communicate science around the coronavirus?In the second episode of this six-part Working Scientist podcast series about science communication, Pakinam Amer explores crisis communication and asks how well researchers have explained the underlying uncertainties to the public.Epidemiologist Sandro Galea, dean of Boston University's school of public health, says academic researchers have three roles, to generate scholarship and science, to teach that science to students, and to clearly translate it for a general audience.“Our job is to help the world see how we can bridge the science to the very real practical decisions that the world has to make to create a healthier world,” he says.But how is science communication evolving during the pandemic? “We are entering a new era. We need a new playbook for communicating science in a time of uncertainty, and how policy can be informed by uncertain science. We have not done that well,” he tells her.“There has been this mismatch between what we do not know and our capacity to communicate what we do not know, and to inform policy that needs to be made anyway. Those have been glaring gaps in my assessment.”Ron Daniels, a critical care consultant at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, sees a role for scientists to plug knowledge gaps alongside the understandably “cautious and risk-averse" messages that often emanate from government and professional bodies.Daniels produced a short video in response to calls to explain why COVID-19 patients are ventilated on their stomachs, using a simple drawing on a white paper board to explain the underlying physiology.“People want to make sensible informed decisions. With a very filtered and controlled flow of information coming from government, which is designed to avoid panic and instil calm, making informed decisions can be challenging.“This is not about profile, this is not about gaining followers or scoring points. Usually this should not be about academic argument. This should be around 'I've appraised the evidence, I have a level of expertise, here are my opinions and this is what I think you as a member of the public should do with that information.'”What about journalists reporting on the pandemic and busting myths and misinformation? How does their communication role differ from scientists and clinicians on the frontline?US science journalist Roxanne Khamsi says: “I feel some kind of personal obligation to try to disseminate what I know, which is a fraction of what virologists know. I don't want to oblige anyone to do anything. If folks have the time there has never been a more urgent time to communicate your science.”US photojournalist and science writer Tara Haelle adds: “I think journalists and scientists in general have done a reasonably good job of trying to focus on the good information and counter the bad information. It is a hard job to do. The entire base of science is uncertainty. It is a quest for knowledge. If you had the knowledge you would not be seeking it.”Anica Butler, editor of the Boston Globe Ideas section, tells Amer how she works with scientist contributors who submit expert opinion pieces to the newspaper. “I think of myself as standing in for the public. I am going to ask stupid questions.“The editor is trying to help your work be understood by the average everyday person. In a crisis like this, that is the ultimate goal. Think about you explaining to your next door neighbour 'Here is what is happening.'” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a world currently facing an unparalleled health crisis, the need for clear science communication has never been greater. Explaining complex ideas in a concise manner does not come naturally to everyone, but there are some simple rules you can follow.In the opening episode of this six-part series about science communication, Pakinam Amer discusses the craft of clear storytelling and science writing with seasoned communicators and journalists.Siri Carpenter, editor of The Craft of Science Writing, a selection of resouces from science writing platform The Open Notebook, explains how science journalism and science communication differ, but share important characteristics, including “a search for some kind of truth, driven by curiosity and sometimes the desire to right some wrong.”But how do you structure a story so readers are hooked from the start, explain complicated ideas, avoid jargon, check facts? “There are so many skills that go into good science writing,” Carpenter says. “It takes time and practice to get better, learning from mistakes, and from feedback.”Islam Hussein, a virologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tells Amer why he took to the video platform YouTube in 2014 to tackle pseudoscience after a hand-held device was wrongly touted as a tool to detect viral infections in his native Egypt.“There was a lot of interaction between me and the public. Some of it was good. Some of it was not, in the form of insults and threats," he says.With the help of his son, he rigged up a home studio in his basement to create more multimedia content, using his wife and colleagues to get feedback before getting it live. “When I hit record I want to make sure I am saying something useful and accurate,” he says.Hussein now regularly appears on the TV to explain the emerging science behind COVID-19. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam Levy delves into the article of the future, examining the rise of lay summaries, the pros and cons of preprint servers, and how peer review is being crowd-sourced and opened up.Manuscripts are mutating. These changes range from different approaches to peer-review, to reformatting the structure of the paper itself.Pippa Whitehouse, an Antarctica researcher at Durham University, UK, commends small changes to the paper's summary over the last few years, telling Adam Levy: “Often now there's a short layman's review of the work. I find those really useful in subjects slightly outside my field.“I see a title that looks useful and don't quite understand the language in the technical abstract, but sometimes the lay abstract can give me just enough insight into the study.”Sarvenaz Sarabipour, a systems biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, praised preprint servers from an early career researcher perspective in a February 2019 article published in PloS Biology.She tells Levy: “It's very beneficial for researchers to deposit their work immediately, because journals are not able to do that. Preprinting is decoupling dissemination from the peer-review process. It's wonderful to have it published earlier.“The peer review process is inhibitory to dissemination but of course has added value.“As a very early career researcher you don't have many papers, so it's wonderful to have something out quicker and be able to discuss that with colleagues and more senior researchers."Researchers can notice each others' work quicker. They contact each other if they have something similar and they may start collaborating.”But catalyst researcher Ben List, managing director at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Mülheim, Germany, sounds a note of caution about preprints."In my field of chemical synthesis it's a bit risky,” he tells Levy. "It's a different thing in physics or biology where experiments take a long time. In chemistry you see something and within a few days you can actually reproduce this work. I'm not 100% sure if this is the future of publishing, in chemistry at least."List is editor-in-chief of organic chemistry journal Synlett. Its approach to peer-review involves e-mailing a paper to a panel of up to 70 reviewers. This "crowd-reviewing" system is both quicker and more collaborative, he argues, and the size of the panel reduces the risk of bias. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Your paper has been accepted, reviewed and published. Now you need to get it talked about by journalists, the public, your peers and funders.Pippa Whitehouse recalls seeking advice and media training from colleagues in her university press office when her first paper was published.“I recorded some soundbites and listened back to them and reflected on how to communicate information very clearly. It gave me a lot of confidence,” says Whitehouse, an Antarctica researcher at the University of Durham, UK.”All of the interaction I've had with the press has been really positive,” she adds. “It can seem a little bit daunting to begin with, but if you give it a go I think you'll find the media are very interested in finding out about science.”In the third episode of this four-part podcast series about getting published, Jane Hughes describes her role as director of communications and public engagement at The Francis Crick Institute in London.She and her team help 1,500 researchers communicate their science to the press, public, policymakers and funders. Hughes recommends reaching out to press-office colleagues as soon as possible to discuss a paper's potential for attracting newspaper, broadcast or online media coverage.Researchers can take other steps themselves to get a paper talked about, she tells Levy. ”One thing that can make a difference is an image, a video or something alongside the paper that you can share on social media,” says Hughes.She also warns against over-hyping a paper's findings. ”Try not to sensationalize or over-simplify. You can work with your press office to make sure the message gets across properly.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's important not to take reviewers' comments personally, even if you feel they have misunderstood the science, Adam Levy discovers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Getting published for the first time is a crucial career milestone, but how does a set of experiments evolve into a scientific paper?In the first episode of this four-part podcast series about writing a paper, Adam Levy delves into the all-important first stage of the process, preparing a manuscript for submission to a journal.He also finds out about the importance of titles, abstracts, figures and results, why good storytelling counts, and the particular challenges faced by researchers whose first language is not English.Pamela Yeh, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, shares some personal pet peeves when she reads a paper: “I can’t stand those papers that have really long sentences with a ton of commas and a lot of jargon. I don’t think the writer is thinking about the reader,” she says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

PhD programmes in "the rainbow nation" mostly lead to academic careers, but reform is needed to boost collaboration and integration, higher education experts tell Julie Gould.It's 25 years since since South Africa's first free elections swept Nelson Mandela to power as president.But higher education in the "rainbow nation" (a term coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe the post-apartheid era), could do more to encourage integration and collaboration between black, white and international students.Jonathan Jansen, a professor in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University, tells Julie Gould that despite seismic political change in 1994, education, research, and economics have not kept pace with the country's democratic transformation.Liezel Frick, director of the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University, says that around 60% of students are part-time, with many having staff positions at universities.Doctoral education still clings to a research-focused "Oxbridge model," she adds, and unlike programmes in North America does not offer credits for coursework and elective classes. "What is different is that we do not have an over-production of PhDs. A lot of PhDs still get absorbed into the academic sphere," she says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The thesis is a central element of how graduate students are assessed. But is it time for an overhaul? Julie Gould finds out.How do you decide whether or not somebody is a fully trained researcher? Janet Metcalfe, head of Vitae, a non-profit that supports the professional development of researchers, tells Julie Gould that it's time to be "really brave" and look at how doctoral degrees are examined.But what role should the thesis play in that assessment? Does it need overhauling, updating, or even scrapping?Inger Mewburn, who leads research training at the Australian National University in Canberra and who founded of The Thesis Whisperer blog in 2010, suggests science could learn from architecture. Student architects are required to produce a portfolio, creating a "look book" for assessors or potential employers to examine as part as part of a candidate's career narrative. For graduate students in science, this could include papers, journals, articles, presentations, certificates, or even video files."The PhD is meant to turn out individual, beautifully crafted, entirely bespoke and unique knowledge creators," she tells Gould. "And we need people like that. We need creative people with really different sorts of talents. We don't want to turn out 'cookie cutter' researchers."David Bogle, who leads early career researcher development at University College London, tells Gould that UCL's three-pronged mission statement includes impact."We want our research to make an impact, and in order to support and reinforce that it is now mandatory to include a one page impact statement at the front saying 'this is the difference it will make in the world,'" he tells Gould. "Any impact — curriculum, society, business, anything. It might not end up making that difference, but we want people to think about it."What about the pressure to publish? In October 2019 Anne-Marie Coriat, Head of UK and EU Research Landscape at the Wellcome Trust in London, argued in a World View article published in Nature Human Behaviour that PhD merit needs to be defined by more than publications.She tells Gould that the experience of getting published is a good thing, but making it mandatory is not. "Learning writing skills is a hugely important part of PhD training. Should it be a requirement that all students publish in peer reviewed journals in order to pass the PhD? My answer is absolutely and emphatically no." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scientific research is not the endeavour of a single person. It requires a team of people. How can this be better reflected in graduate student training, asks Julie Gould.Is science ready for "Team PhD", whereby a group of students work more collaboratively, delivering a multi-authored thesis at their end of their programme? Jeanette Woolard, who recently secured a £4.5m Wellcome Trust grant to fund a four-year collaborative doctoral training programme in her lab at the University of Nottingham, UK, believes it could happen one day."The team driven PhD is not distant dream. It's soon-to-be a fulfilled reality," Woolard, professor of cardiovascular physiology and pharmacology, tells Julie Gould. "If you give it enough of an incentive and wave the flag hard enough for team science, it will come."Woolard's Wellcome grant allows four graduate students to have their own research focus but to work collaboratively. "Each of the individual candidates are still pursuing an individual PhD and they will each write up an individual thesis at the end of their four year period of study," she says, arguing that the scientific community and students themselves aren't yet ready for programmes that culminate in a team focused thesis. "I think individual students still either like the idea or deserve the opportunity to defend their own piece of work at the end of their studies."The new programme at Nottingham, she says, provides them with "the most collaborative environment possible, where they have the opportunity to work together as much as they can, to utilise as many skills as are available, and to really experience a dynamic, collaborative team-driven environment. "Ultimately that's what there are going to experience especially if they go into industry or pursue excellence in academia. Our best outputs now are judged as being multidisciplinary," Woolard adds.A team thesis may be some way off in science, but what about other disciplines? Jill Perry is Executive Director at the Carnegie Project. She tells Gould how the project is helping to redefine the education doctorate in the US. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julie Gould asks six higher education experts if it's now time to go back to the drawing board and redesign graduate programmes from scratch.Suzanne Ortega, president of the US Council of Graduate Schools, says programmes now include elements to accommodate some of the skills now being demanded by employers, including project and data management expertise. "We can't expect to prepare doctoral researchers in a timely fashion by simply adding more and more separate activities," she tells Gould. "We need to redesign the curricula and the capstone project," referring to the PhD as a long-term investigative project that culminates in a final product.Jonathan Jansen, professor of education at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, calls for more flexible and modular programmes and describes as an example how MBA programmes have evolved from a full-time one year course to include part-time online only programmes and a "blended" combination of the two approaches. "It's about trying to figure out in terms of your own lifestyle what kind of progarmme design works for you," he says. "One size does not fit all."But Jansen's colleague Liezel Frick, director of the university's centre for higher and adult education, says it's important to remember the ultimate goal of a PhD. She tells Gould: "I get the point around flexibility but it's still a research focused degree. You still have to make an original contribution to your field of knowledge. Otherwise it becomes a continuing professional development programme where you can do odds and ends but never get to the core of it, which is a substantive research contribution."David Bogle, a doctoral school pro-vice-provost at UCL, London, says it's important to remember that graduate students are part of a cohort and community who should be respected and rewarded, not looked down on and treated as second class citizens. "At the moment there's a certain amount of 'I'm the supervisor. You should be looking to me as the primary source of inspiration,' when in fact the inspiration comes from peers, professional communities, training and cross disciplinary activities."This is the second episode in a five-part series timed to coincide with Nature's 2019 PhD survey. Many of the 6,300 graduate students who responded call for more one-to-one support and better career guidance from PhD supervisors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Students need to be clear about their reasons for pursuing a PhD and the career options open to them, Julie Gould discovers.In 2015, labour economist Paula Stephan told an audience of early career researchers in the US that the supply of PhD students was outstripping demand. “Since 1977, we've been recommending that graduate departments partake in birth control, but no one has been listening."We are definitely producing many more PhDs than there is demand for them in research positions,” she said.In this first episode of this five-part series about the future of the PhD and how it might change, Julie Gould asks Stephan, who is based at Georgia State University, if her view has altered.Anne-Marie Coriat, head of UK and EU research landscape at the Wellcome Trust in London, says students need to be clear about why they want to pursue a PhD. "Look at what you're getting into, try and understand that, and then network," she says.Forty per cent of respondents to Nature's 2019 PhD survey, published this week, said that their programme didn’t meet their original expectations, and only 10% said that it exceeded their expectations — a sharp drop from 2017, when 23% of respondents said that their PhD programme exceeded their expectations.Despite a global shortage of jobs at universities and colleges, 56% of respondents said that academia is their first choice for a career. Just under 30% chose industry as their preferred destination. The rest named research positions in government, medicine or non-profit organizations. In 2017, 52% of respondents chose academia and 22% chose industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam Levy talks to 2019 John Maddox Prize winner Bambang Hero Saharjo and Olivier Bernard, the Canadian pharmacist whose campaign against vitamin C injections for cancer patients earned him the early career stage prize.The John Maddox Prize recognises the work of individuals who promote science and evidence, advancing the public discussion around difficult topics despite challenges or hostility.Bambang Hero Saharjo, winner of the 2019 prize, is a lead expert witness on illegal peatland fires in Indonesia. He has presented evidence on nearly 500 environmental cases for the Indonesian government, often facing threats and harassment.Saharjo, a professor in the forestry faculty at Bogor Agricultual University, was nominated by Jacob Phelps, a lecturer in tropical environmental change and policy at Lancaster University, UK, who says: "His work serves not only to bring justice in individual cases, but has inspired a vision of what is possible in Indonesia—a future in which courts are true centres of evidence-based justice, even in the face of entrenched interests; where academics are genuine public servants, and in which science has a prominent role inthe public discourse."In 2012 pharmacist and broadcaster Olivier Bernard created Le Pharmachien, a comic website to help the public separate myths from facts about healthcare. An English version, The Pharmafist, is also available. More recently Bernard has spoken out against high-dose vitamin C injections for cancer patients. This intervention is not supported by the current body of scientific evidence and Olivier's campaign led to him facing intimidation and cyberbullying. Bernard is winner of the John Maddox Prize early career stage award.The prize is a joint initiative between Nature and the charity Sense about Science, which challenges the misrepresentation of science and evidence in public life. It is named in honour of Sir John Maddox, who edited Nature for a total of 22 years between 1966 and 1995. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom Baden's work into the neuroscience of vision has earned him the inaugural Nature Research Award for Driving Global Impact.Tom Baden, professor of neuroscience at the University of Sussex, UK, is the first winner of an award to recognise early career researchers whose work has made, or has the potential to make, a positive impact on society.Baden's research on zebrafish and mice showed that eyes have vastly greater computational powers than people previously thought, rather than being faithful recorders of the real world.The judges of the award, run in partnership with Chinese technology company Tencent, said Baden's research could have a significant impact on both diagnostic and therapeutic ophthalmology research.In addition to his research, Baden tells Julie Gould about his interest in open hardware and 3D printing and its potential to make well equipped labs more affordable for developing countries.Baden is also cofounder of Teaching and Research in Neuroscience for Development (TReND) in Africa. This nonprofit, which launched in 2010, runs research courses in sub-Saharan Africa and helps to place scientists who’d like to teach there into the region’s universities.The group also collects unused lab equipment from facilities in the United States and Europe and redistributes it to laboratories across Africa. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two projects aimed at boosting female representation in STEM have won the second Nature Research Awards for Inspiring Science and Innovating Science, in partnership with The Estée Lauder Companies.Jean Fan spent a year volunteering at a science club for high school students during her PhD programme at Harvard University and was struck by how many of them dismissed the idea of becoming scientists themselves."A lot of my students would make remarks like 'I'm not quite a maths person,' or would not see themselves as future scientists," she tells Julie Gould."I really wanted to leave them with some type of gift to encourage them to continue developing their interest in science."As a result Fan, who was the sole female graduate student in her PhD bioinformatics programme, launched cuSTEMized, a non-profit that uses personalised educational storybooks (which she writes and illustrates) to inspire girls about scientific careers.This week, at a ceremony in London, she won the 2019 Inspiring Science Award, one of two offered by Nature Research and the Estée Lauder Companies.The second award, Innovation in Science, goes to Doreen Anene, a PhD student at the University of Nottingham, UK.In 2017 Anene launched The STEM Belle, a non-profile based in Nigeria, her home country. The STEM Belle also works in Ghana and Pakistan. As its website says, The STEM Belle is "focused on levelling up the female representation in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics fields by attracting, retaining and advancing more girls and young women to STEM subjects and fields." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the final episode of this six-part podcast series about physics careers, Gaia Donati draws on her contact with fellow physicists in her role as a manuscript editor at Nature, where she oversees research papers in several areas, including quantum information and computing, high-energy physics and plasma physics.She also reflects on her own career experience and how academia in her native Italy compares to the UK, where she gained her PhD in 2015. "Start looking for jobs before you finish your PhD," Donati advises. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Moving to a new branch of science is scary, but learning new skills and collaborating with different colleagues can be exhilarating, Julie Gould discovers.In the penultimate episode of this six-part series about physics careers, Julie Gould talks to Stuart Higgins, a research associate at Imperial College London, who switched from solid state physics to bioengineering, and Anna Lappala, who moved from biochemistry to physics.How easy were these transitions, and what is their advice to others planning similar moves?Higgins says: "It's important to ask yourself why you want to make the transition. Do you want to apply the same skills or to learn new ones? Give yourself time to understand your motivation."Overall, the transition was "liberating," he adds, allowing him to ask "basic, silly questions" of colleagues, who were very supportive of his situation and the learning curve he faced.Lappala, a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, describes how she was initially terrified of people discovering she was not a "real physicist" and worked hard to learn about general physics, quantum field theory, and soft matter, among other things. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Media interest in particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider boosted Jon Butterworth's interest in public engagement, reports Julie Gould.Jon Butterworth developed a taste for public engagement after repeated media appearances related to his work on the ATLAS experiment, one of two Large Hadron Collider detectors at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics lab.Butterworth, a physics professor at University College London, describes life at CERN, and how it felt to be one of 5154 authors listed in the 2015 paper that produced the most precise estimate yet of the mass of the Higgs boson.As part of his public engagement activities, Butterworth was persuaded to auction an after-dinner lecture or school talk about the Higgs. The auction "lot" was part of a fundraising effort for his children's primary school in north London."Someone else at the school was Lady Gaga's designer and they brought along a pair of her boots," he tells Julie Gould. "My talk went for more than Lady Gaga's boots. I'm still doing it now. Interest hasn't died away."The key thing is you have to be genuinely excited about your project. We've lowered the bar so more physics stories get into the news."If you tell your mum and dad now that you're doing physics, you get kudos for it in the way you wouldn't have done before," he says.Tom Weller taught physics for eight years at a west London school following his second postdoc at Harvard University, a career change triggered in part by the enjoyment he derived from organising children's science parties. "They made me recognize how much I enjoyed explaining stuff that was fun and engaging," he says in the fourth episode of this six-part podcast series about physics careers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Industry has long courted physicists for their data science expertise, but will this change as more undergraduates acquire these skills?In 2013, Kim Nilsson co-founded Pivigo, a training company to prepare researchers for data science careers. She tells Julie Gould how and why she moved into business.Nilsson's Pivigo colleague Deepak Mahtani quit academia after completing a PhD in astronomy. What is his advice to someone looking to move into data science? "There are three main things you should do. Learn about the programming languages Python or R, read up about machine learning, and understand a bit about SQL," he says.Lewis Armitage's PhD at Queen Mary Unversity London took him to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. But he craved a better work-life balance and a move which played to his data science skills. Now he is a data analyst for consumer behaviour consultancy Tsquared Insights, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elizabeth Tasker's career has taken her from Europe to Japan via North America, including a Florida campus where alligators lurked in drainage ditches.If your career looks set to include geographical transitions, and the cultural, workplace and linguistic challenges that they can pose, listen to Elizabeth's advice in this second episode of a six-part podcast series about careers and physics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Earlier this year Eindhoven University of Technology faced a social media backlash after announcing that from July 2019, all academic staff vacancies will be open to female applicants only for the first six months. Many people questioned the legality of the move.In this first episode of a six-part series about careers in physics, Cornelis Storm, who leads the theory of polymers and soft matters group at the Dutch university, tells Julie Gould why the "radical step," was sorely needed. He also describes why the physics department, and the discipline more generally, will benefit from being more diverse."For whatever reason there is a large group of people that are not considering a carer in physics." he says. "There's not a single piece of research that suggests men are better at this job than women."Astrophysicist Elizabeth Tasker, an associate professor at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, was hired through a similar policy, and tells Gould about her experience. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the final episode of this six-part podcast series about workplace technology, Lee Cronin talks about the "chemputer," a device he and his team developed as a "chemical Google to search for the origin of life."In November 2018 Cronin and colleagues at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, unveiled this new method of producing drug molecules, using downloadable blueprints to synthesise organic chemicals via a modular chemical-robot system.He tells Julie Gould: "I imagined this Lego kit of chemical reactors I could slot together. We are literally building the Large Hadron Collider for the origin of life in the lab."Cronin, regius chair of chemistry at Glasgow, tells Gould the chemputer is the latest technology development in his 20-year research career, and how academic chemistry is ripe for a revolution."There's always been this arms race between technology and fundamental research. For almost 200 years the chemistry lab has been a manual labour place, " he says. "Everybody has been doing everything by hand. I realised by building the chemputer there are things you never want to do by hand anymore. Shouldn't we train people how to use robots, even at the undergraduate level?" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ben Britton's experimental micromechanics lab at Imperial College London currently includes four postdoctoral researchers, 11 PhD students, and four Masters students.Alongside computational analysis tools used to detect how materials perform (including Matlab as the group's main programming environment, chosen for its speed, global user base and visual interaction), Britton and his team use the online collaboration and communication tool Slack. He also uses the Slack bot Howdey to check in with colleagues each week.But why Slack? "There's not enough time in the day to micro-manage every individual person," he tells Julie Gould. "Part of being in an academic environment is about developing people, trying to encourage a working environment where people are free to share ideas, to fail, and also to have very open communication. Slack doesn't replace the in-person interaction but it supplements and enhances it." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Machine learning and data management skills can raise your scientific profile and open up career opportunities, Julie Gould discovers.As a biomedical science student, Jake Schofield felt frustrated at the length of time it took to repeat experiments, record results and manage protocols, with most of the work paper-based.In 2016 he and Jan Domanski, a biochemist with programming skills, launched Labstep, an online platform to help scientists record and reproduce experiments.Schofield, now Labstep's CEO, tells Julie Gould how launching a start-up and seeking investor funding has honed his business skills."Every step we've taken has been a huge learning experience," he says. "I wish there were more opportunities for scientists to try entreprenurial pursits. Scientific analytical problem-based thinking has so many parallels in the start-up world."Brian MacNamee, a computer scientist at University College Dublin, outlines the high value of data and its potential to solve science's reproducibility crisis, citing large sky-scanning telescope projects as an example."These projects are generating colossal amounts of data scanning large portions of the sky and that data needs to be categorised," he says. "Astrophysicists want to go to large data collections and look for the bits they are interested in. It's impossible to do that by hand. You need to put machine learning systems into those pipelines to categorise and compare data."Other researchers are not reading a paper and trying to figure out where the gremlins are inside a data set. They can open the dataset up and find it themselves." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mona Nemer tells Julie Gould about her role as Canada's chief scientific adviser and how she aims to strengthen science in the country."We're bordered by three oceans," says Mona Nemer of Canada, where she has been chief scientific adviser since September 2017. "On one side we are close to Europe, on the other we are close to Asia. It's a great country to study the Arctic, climate research, oceanography, but also astrophysics, information technology and health."Nemer describes her role as " convener of the dialogue between the broader science community and government," providing scientific advice to current prime minister Justin Trudeau and his ministerial team, and making recommendations on how to improve Canadian science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Simon Hettrick tells Julie Gould about the role of research software engineers, what they do and how you can become one.In the third episode of our six-part podcast series on workplace technology, we learn more about the importance of coding for scientists followed by an introduction to the work of research software engineers.Simon Hettrick, deputy director of the UK Software Sustainability Institute, tells Julie Gould about the typical career path of a research software engineer, and how their skills can support researchers with limited coding skills.Harriet Alexander starts the programme by telling Nature technology editor Jeff Perkel about her role as an instructor for Software Carpentry, a global non-profit organisation which teaches research computing skills to scientists. Who typically attends a Carpentry course and what do they learn during a workshop?Alexander, a postdoctoral fellow in oceanography bioinformatics at the University of California, Davis, also tells us about the recent course she ran in Antarctica. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Learning how to coding brings career benefits and helps science by aiding reproducibility, Julie Gould discovers.Jessica Hedge tells Julie Gould about how she learned to code as a PhD student, and the freedom and flexibility it provides to manage large datasets."I never saw myself as a coder and it took me a long time to realise I had to pick up the skills myself," she tells Julie Gould in the second episode of this six-part series about technology and scientific careers. "A colleague was using Python and R and I saw the potential." What is her advice to other early career researchers who are keen to develop coding expertise?Also, Brian MacNamee, an assistant professor in the school of computer science at University College Dublin, talks about the college's data science course and how it can benefit both humanities and science students.Finally, Nature technology editor Jeffrey Perkel describes how coding can help with computational reproducibility. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.