Contributor Monya Baker, assistant editor of Nature Careers

To kick off 2015, Nature’s Careers section asked a dozen highly recognized young scientists—all 40 or under— about their plans for the year ahead and their wishes for the future of science. Several respond below; see Nature’s 1 January issue for the rest and for New Year’s thoughts from global scientific leaders.

Please leave a comment below, or tweet your own plans and hopes for 2015 for science at #scihopes15.

Seek a scientific optimum

Fyodor Kondrashov

Fyodor Kondrashov, 35, at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, nabbed an inaugural International Early Career Scientist award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States. He wants to know why a genetic polymorphism that causes harm in one individual is neutral or even beneficial in another.

Science is becoming more of a corporate endeavour rather than an academic and intellectual one. We have to be good managers, sell ourselves, and be in constant competition for resources. The pressure to achieve in the short term limits the types of questions my lab can ask.

European graduate students have a very specific time frame in which they must finish their PhD that doesn’t allow them time to explore or to make mistakes; they have to pursue projects that will get them the papers that they need. It’s a feedback loop of us willingly participating in this competition and the system encouraging us to compete.

There must be an optimum, and I am not so certain that we are there – not in Europe, not in the United States. There has to be some sort of systematic solution.  My hope is that we at least start looking. Continue reading →