Working Scientist

Three researchers and a career coach discuss if there as much scope to negotiate salaries in academia as there is in industry.

In either setting, they say, negotiation should not be a battleground. Hiring managers should not take advantage of a beloved future colleague who may have zero experience of negotiating anything, says David Perlmutter, a communications researcher at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, who writes about hir...

Should you tailor your job interview style based on the age, gender and cultural background of the person asking the questions?

Margot Smit and Dietmar Hutmacher compare their approaches to hiring and how generational influences might shape how they respond to candidates.

Smit, a plant molecular biologist who became a group leader at Tübingen University Germany, in late 2023, and Hutmacher, a regenerative medicine researcher at Q...

Julie Gould compares hiring practices across industry and academia by seeking perspectives from Tina Persson, an organic chemist-turned-careers coach based in Malmö, Sweden, and Lauren Celano, a recruitment consultant who founded Propel Careers, based in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2009.

Persson, whose coaching business is called passage2pro, tells Gould why it typically takes longer to hire scientists in academia. Margot Smit, a ...

Successful job candidates aren’t necessarily the smartest or most confident people in the room, Ilana Wisby tells Julie Gould in the first episode of a six-part weekly podcast series about hiring in science.

Wisby, a physicist and former chief executive of Oxford Quantum Circuits, which builds quantum computers from its base in Reading, UK, says recruiters use interviews to gauge a candidate’s values, their emotional intelligenc...

Academia’s focus on individual achievement can be a breeding ground for poor mental health, says astrophysicist Kelly Korreck.

Korreck, who experienced pandemic-related burnout while working on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, describes a competitive and ultimately damaging ‘lone wolf’ culture. She is joined by psychologist Desiree Dickerson to discuss how a stronger focus on group success can better protect researchers.

Dickerson also...

A relentless pursuit of perfection in science can mean that researchers are in perpetual and self-critical ‘survival mode,’ forever questioning their behaviours and actions in the workplace, says clinical psychologist Desiree Dickerson.

“We are not very good at taking the spotlight off ourselves, a pressure that can lead to burnout other mental health problems, adds Dickerson, who is based in Valencia, Spain.

To boost workpla...

Three researchers with personal experience of anxiety and depression triggered by studying the environmental destruction caused by a changing climate describe the steps they take to protect their mental health.

Ruth Cerezo-Mota, a climate scientist based at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, found herself grieving for the state of the

planet through her work for the United Nations Intergovernmental Pane...

Krutika Kuppalli, a physician researcher who studies emerging infectious diseases, joined the World Health Organization in 2021, where she worked to combat the COVID-19 on a global level.

She had previously been targeted by threats and harassment as a result of media and US congressional appearances to inform the public about the emerging pathogen. These were often focused on her race and gender. Concerned for her safety, Kuppalli w...

Kelly Korreck tells Adam Levy how a once-loved career in science gradually left her feeling exhausted, upset, and chronically stressed, with accompanying feelings of imposter syndrome.

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic deprived Korreck, an astrophysicist then working on NASA's Parker Solar Probe, of the favourite parts of her job. These included face-to-face mentoring, public engagement and conference travel. ”It really took a toll,...

Hilal Lashuel and Dave Reay join Michelle Kimple to talk about faculty mental health and why it is often overlooked.

A heart attack in 2016 forced Lashuel, a neurogenerative diseases researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, to question success in science and how it is defined.

The pressure to be an excellent researcher, manager, accountant and mentor can exact a heavy mental toll, he says.

Since his...

Charlotte Roughton says she developed a deep-rooted shame and resentment towards her autism diagnosis, causing her to mask the condition during her biosciences degree at the University of Durham, UK.

But socially camouflaging and striving to appear as neurotypical to others led to burnout and poor mental health, she tells Adam Levy.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which straddled her Masters and PhD programmes, was a turning point. Sh...

Why do so many academics struggle to ‘power down’ at the end of a long working day, and what are the longer-term health effects of failing to switch off at evenings and weekends?

Desiree Dickerson is a clinical psychologist based in Valencia, Spain, who works with academic institutions to develop healthier and more sustainable approaches to research. She joins Simone Lackner to discuss why poor mental health is often so prevalen...

Graphic designer Jakob Trollbäck remembers a 2014 meeting with film director Richard Curtis and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, then very much a work in progress, coming up in conversation.

Curtis, whose movies include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually and the Bridget Jones series, is also a UN Advocate for the SDGs. The meeting in Trollbäck’s New York studio sudd...

When Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, sought to change the country’s food systems in 2020, it started by looking at school meals and funding several projects around menus, procurement, and how cafeterias were organised.

Breaking down a big goal into smaller component parts and bringing together different interested parties, as Vinnova did, is key to delivering the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), says Ka...

Growing up in the last years of the Cold War motivated Gabriele Jacobs to enter academia and play her part in building peaceful societies. 

Jacobs works at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where she researches the role artificial intelligence (AI) can play in public safety and the ethical debate surrounding this.

She describes how experiments are being conducted on beach...

Sigit Sasmito describes how his research at James Cook University in Brisbane, Australia, is helping to protect both peatlands and mangroves across southeast Asia, as part of a drive to meet Sustainable Development Goal 15.

The goal, one of 17 agreed by the United Nations in 2015. aims to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems. This includes sustainable forest management, combating desertification...

Watching documentaries about the Titanic inspired deep-sea microbiologist Beth Orcutt to study life at the bottom of the ocean - a world of ‘towering chimneys, weird shrimp and octopus nurseries’ that she has visited 35 times.

But Orcutt says there is so much we still don't know about the deep sea, which is a problem for the sustainable development of this environment. Orcutt works at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boo...

Analytical chemist Jane Kilcoyne was working in her biotoxin monitoring lab one day in 2018 when she noticed a bin overflowing with plastic waste. The observation prompted her to join forces with like-minded colleagues and develop a package of measures aimed at reducing their lab’s carbon footprint. Their efforts include reducing energy consumption, composting shellfish waste, polystyrene recycling, and digitizing documentation.&nb...

In the sixth and final episode of The Last few miles: planning for the late stage career in science, Julie Gould unpicks some of the generational tensions that can arise in academia when a colleague approaches retirement.

Inger Mewburn, who leads research and development training at the Australian National University in Canberra, tells her: “There’s a fine line between being around and being valued, to being around and...