Tag Archives: Europe

Why I marched for science – a transatlantic perspective

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The March for Science turned a spotlight on the importance of research. But it won’t have a lasting effect unless we improve science communication, says Judith Reichel.

On Saturday, April 22nd, myself and an estimated 11,000 other science supporters marched in Berlin. The event was part of the global “March for Science” that took place in over 600 cities worldwide. While the March here and everywhere else was a great success in putting a spotlight on the importance of research and the danger of building on false facts, I’m worried it won’t have a lasting effect on the public perception of science if we don’t improve our science communication.

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The March for Science passes the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, Germany

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Employment rights in post-Brexit Britain

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As the UK prepares to trigger Article 50, signalling its departure from the EU, opponents of Brexit worry that that employment rights will be eroded and the UK will become a less welcoming place, particularly for LGBT people.

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A placard waved at the anti-Brexit demonstration, held in London on March 25 2017.

“Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, First we’ll kick the Poles out, Then we’ll get the gays.”

Liberal democrat peer Liz Barker reminded a business summit on LGBT rights last week that the above chant was heard in London the day after the EU referendum in June 2016, and that in the three months following there was a 147% increase in reported homophobic crimes.

“Among the very many half-truths bandied about during the [referendum] campaign, the idea that the EU played very little or no parts in gaining rights in this country was most egregious,” she told The Economist’s Pride and Prejudice event, held in London, Hong Kong and New York on 23 March. Continue reading →

Science communication: A solution to the upcoming Brexit funding gap?

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Effective science communication could be key to making science part of the identity of the UK, says Naturejobs journalism competition winner Helen Robertson.

Post-Brexit furor is hard to avoid in the UK media at the moment. Endless speculation surrounds what looks to be a socioeconomic experiment on a national scale, and it goes without saying that the implications will be far-reaching across all UK industries.

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Leaving the EU has been projected to cost British science one billion rapidly-falling pounds a year

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Lindau: Return to Nerd Heaven: Physics is like the Godfather and this is good

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Alaina G. Levine is live from the Lindau Conference

As I mentioned yesterday, even after I switched my major to mathematics from physics and astronomy, I couldn’t quite turn my back on this field. I’ve come to realise that there is a specific reason for this, and I think you’ll agree: Physics is like The Godfather – once you’re in, you can’t get out. Our knowledge of the universe, from the yotta to atto, is all tied to physics. Our entire existence is described by physics. You can’t get more powerful than that. So clearly, it’s is an entrancing field, and like the Godfather, there is literally no way to escape – you’ll die a member of La Famiglia de Fisica.

Lindau Island. Credit: CC-BY Edda Praefcke

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Mobility: Moving within Europe

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EURAXESS representatives shared online resources and funding opportunities for those seeking to do science abroad

Contributor Ada Yee

If you’re a student seeking experiences abroad, a newly-minted PhD wanting work in industry-leading countries, or an academic looking to settle in Europe, start by typing “EURAXESS” into your Web browser.  During the Naturejobs Career Expo 2015 in Boston, Massachusetts, we heard from representatives of EURAXESS, a European Commission[https://ec.europa.eu/index_en.htm] initiative designed to encourage researcher mobility and facilitate European research careers. The workshop showcased a range of funding opportunities and resources for researchers of all training levels and—although most attendees were European—all nationalities.

EURAXESS online resource community

For those just starting with their European job search, or for those navigating an overseas transition (including visa paperwork and finding a school for your kids), the session gave a guided tour of EURAXESS’s free-to-use online resource community.

Through the jobs section of the site, job seekers can access an online job portal and upload CVs for organizations’ perusal. So far, the site has collected more than 8,500 job ads, and about 8,000 organizations—including research institutions, universities, and companies—have registered to view CVs, noted Stephanie Jannin, one of EURAXESS’s North America regional representatives.

EURAXESS services also include centers dedicated to helping researchers and their families with the logistics of moving to Europe. Jannin described “a network of over 500 professionals working in over 200 offices across Europe.” Contact information for the centers is found in the services portion of EURAXESS’s site. Continue reading →

Funding: Opportunities in Turkey

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The Turkish government is heavily investing in its science and research, partnering with international groups to create funding opportunities for scientists.

Contributor Diana Cai

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The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) is on a mission to recruit talented scientists around the world and reverse the “brain drain,” or the emigration of well-educated people to other countries. Since the mid-1960s, after Turkey experienced its first military coup d’état in 1960, talented researchers have fled the country in search for more security and better opportunities. Over the past decade, the Turkish government has become vigilant of the trend, increasing research funds to help address the problem.

According to a press release issued by the Turkish Statistical Institute in November 2014, research and development expenditures grew from 0.48% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2003 to 0.95% in 2013. In 2013, the GDP of Turkey was $822.1 billion, with an average annual inflation-adjusted growth rate of 4.9% from 2003-2013. As a result, Turkey hopes to position itself as an attractive option for both Turkish nationals and foreign citizens wishing to conduct cutting-edge research. Continue reading →

Would you return to your home country to set up a lab?

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Last week EMBO announced the recipients of its 2011 Installation Grants – a round of funding that supports scientists who want to relocate to a country that is currently building its fundamental research capacity. The 2011 grants, which comprise an annual award of 50,000 euros for three to five years, will enable seven scientists to set up laboratories in the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia and Turkey.

One of the recipients, Nurhan Özlü, has returned to her home country of Turkey after spending ten years in the United States. In an EMBO podcast, she says that for a junior group leader, establishing a lab in a country that’s growing its scientific capacity has several benefits, but she also has to adapt to a developing research infrastructure. “[In the United States] all the facilities, resources and services were available and if I purchased something it arrived the next day,” she says. “[In Turkey] experiments take a lot more effort and time.”

In a Nature Careers article on the topic from 2009, the head of a lab in the Czech Republic said that while the research infrastructure was comparable to Germany and the United States, it was necessary to assemble attractive salaries from several sources of funding.

Would you trade a scientific powerhouse such as the United States for a country with a less-developed research infrastructure if it meant you could set up your own lab? Have you already done so and thrived on the opportunity? Let us know your thoughts and experiences. The next application deadline for EMBO Installation Grants is 15 April 2012.

Sustainability is a fast-growing field, says study

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The number of scientists publishing research relating to sustainability is doubling every eight years, according to research from Los Alamos National Laboratory and Indiana University in the United States.

Research into sustainability has become a field of science in its own right, say the study authors, and is growing exponentially despite the economic downturn of the late 2000s.

sustainability-kaur.jpgThe field has a wide geographic spread and is prominent in locations with political and economic power. “The world’s leading city in terms of publications in the field is Washington DC, outpacing the productivity of Boston or the Bay Area,” explains study co-author Jasleen Kaur (right), a PhD student in Indiana University Bloomington’s School of Informatics and Computing.

Bob Peoples, director of the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute, based in Washington DC, was surprised that the city was top when it came to productivity, but said the high concentration of government bodies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) could be a factor.

In Europe, productive cities include London, Stockholm and Wageningen. Other regional centres that produce a high number of papers include Nairobi, Cape Town, Beijing, Melbourne and Tokyo. Smaller universities and laboratories are strong in the field as well as national research centres.

But is the growth of the field in itself sustainable? Peoples believes so – and says it will translate into new job opportunities. The green chemistry industry, for example, “is forecast to grow to $100 billion by 2020,” he says. “That’s a 48% annual growth rate. This will certainly correlate with jobs since it requires different skill sets and training.”

Scientists interested in moving into sustainability research should build a multidisciplinary set of knowledge, contacts and tools, he advises. For green chemistry in particular, topics that researchers need an awareness of include mechanistic toxicology and life-cycle analysis as well as chemistry.

The productivity findings, published later this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from an analysis of more than 20,000 academic papers published between 1974 and 2010.

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Ten tips on getting recruited abroad

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At the recent Naturejobs Career Expo in London, Michael Schneider from Imperial College London spoke about how to maximise your chances of getting recruited overseas. Schneider, currently director of Imperial’s British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence, studied at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Duke, followed by research training at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). In our final follow-up to the Expo we present a summary of his advice – if you have any tips to share, please add them below.

  1. If you’re at an early stage of your science career, be aware that a strong academic record is not enough to secure a position abroad. “Posts go to those with something more [than excellent qualifications],” says Schneider.
  2. Early research experience is the key discriminator – and it should be sustained or unusually intensive.
  3. If you’re still studying, find high-impact summer and winter research opportunities – examples that Schneider highlighted include the Erasmus student exchange programme in Europe and the Cold Spring Harbor Undergraduate Research Program (URP) in the United States.
  4. You’ll need to make personal contacts with overseas scientists – and email is generally the best way to make initial speculative enquiries with overseas labs.
  5. Don’t focus exclusively on the usual suspects – in the United States for example, Schneider says there are at least a dozen universities where mentors are as good as at prestigious institutes such as Harvard, MIT, University of California and Stanford – but there is less competition because they are less well-known.
  6. Try to have complete research ‘stories’ – and be aware that for this reason completing a three-year PhD can put you at a disadvantage against those whose PhDs typically last longer, such as in the United States.
  7. Fund yourself if possible.
  8. Carefully check the eligibility criteria of funding opportunities – for example the US NIH only offers postdoc fellowships to US citizens, with one exception, says Schneider – the Pathway to Independence Award (K99-R00) is open to overseas applicants.
  9. When considering a career move, vertical promotion – where you move up within the same institution – can be counter-productive, says Schneider: “Research funders typically prefer to see relocation as proof of independence.”
  10. When considering who to apply to, make sure you check where your potential superior publishes, and also where their trainees have gone afterwards.

Major survey of PhD students in Europe sheds light on working life

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A survey of more than 7,500 PhD students from 12 European countries has highlighted the variety of doctoral experiences found across the continent.

There is significant variation in whether or not students receive a salary or scholarship while working on their PhD, with almost all respondents from Norway receiving funding compared with just over half of those in Austria.

The Eurodoc survey, published on 30 September, also reveals striking data related to gender issues and family life. Men were more likely than women to believe their gender would be a disadvantage in their academic career, while students in several supposedly ‘family-friendly’ countries reported strong pressure to delay having children, or to avoid taking parental leave if they do.

We’ve outlined some of the key findings below — have a read and let us know what you think.

The 12 countries featured in the survey were Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, and the majority of respondents were aged between 26 and 35.

Funding

The proportion of PhD students receiving a salary or scholarship varied significantly: 54% received funding in Austria, compared with 76% in Germany and 82% in France. Norway scored highest, with 98% of female students and 96% of male students receiving an income. When asked whether the level of funding met living costs, over 40% of students in the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden said it did to a very high extent, compared with fewer than 10% in Croatia, Portugal and Spain.

Family life

PhD students in Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands are more likely to be single or not living with their partner: one-third or more compared with around one-fifth in the other countries. In most countries, fewer than one-quarter of students have children — the exceptions were Norway, where 40% have children, Sweden (31%) and Finland (30%).

Awareness of the right to parental leave varied hugely across the countries surveyed — just 1% of female PhD students in Croatia said they didn’t know whether they had the right to maternity leave (99% said they did have the right), compared with 32% in Austria and 31% in Germany.

Surprisingly, some of the countries with reputations for being particularly ‘family-friendly’ did not score well on family-related issues. More than 50% of respondents in Sweden, Norway and Finland said they are strongly discouraged from taking parental leave, compared with 18% in Spain, 30% in Germany and 34% in France. The pressure to delay having children in the first place also seems to be particularly high in the Nordic countries polled: over 70% of men and 50% of women in Sweden, Norway and Finland said they felt a great deal of pressure to postpone having children, compared with 28% of men and 16% of women in Spain and 44% of men and 32% of women in Germany.

Impact of gender on career prospects

According to the survey, male students were more likely than female students to feel that their gender will hold them back in academia. The proportion of men who said they were very disadvantaged in their academic career because of their gender ranged from 77% to 91% across the countries surveyed, compared with 36% to 61% of women.

Work experience and employment status

The highest number of PhD students who said they had no contract was in Austria (25%), compared with 17% in Germany, 12% in France and just 1% in Norway.

Students also reported differing levels of work experience between their previous degree and the beginning of their doctoral research. Around 68% of PhD students in France have none, compared with just 25% in Norway.

Productivity

In Germany, 33% of respondents said they had published at least one peer-reviewed article in an international journal so far, compared with 64% in Croatia. In the latter country, 15% of respondents said they had published five or more articles, compared with 4% in France and 2% in Germany.

Although over 40% of respondents in all countries bar Slovenia said they spend more than 21 hours a week on research related to their thesis or dissertation, around one-quarter said they don’t spend any time actually writing it. Students in France reported the highest administrative burden, with almost half saying they spend more than 21 hours a week on admin, compared with 33% in Norway and 23% in Slovenia.

Students in Finland were most likely to have been involved in writing grant proposals, with 75% reporting they had contributed compared with 32% in the Netherlands and 35% in France.

Mobility

In the majority of countries surveyed, less than half of respondents had studied abroad before starting their doctorate. Researchers in Spain and France were most likely to continue their career abroad after finishing their doctorate, and the most common reason given for wanting to work abroad was improved career prospects.

Have your say

What do you think about these findings? How do they compare to your experience? Let us know your thoughts below.