There’s a few reasons why scientists may be discouraged from science communication. Here, I’m hoping to break down some of those barriers, and introduce channels and platforms where scientists can practise. First, here are some of the reasons stopping more scientists from practising science communication, as well as my rebuttals.
The ‘Away from home‘ blogging series features Indian scientists working in foreign labs recounting their experience of working there, the triumphs and challenges, the cultural differences and what they miss about India. They also offer useful tips for other scientists headed abroad. You can join in the online conversation using the #postdochat hashtag.
Here’s the account of a scientist couple, looking at opportunities to come back to India. Naresh Bal, a PhD from Jawarharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a postdoc from the Ohio State University, USA is currently wanting to start an independent research group of his own. He is busy writing grants overtime given the “current grant situation in the USA”. Naresh urges the Indian government and institutions to think of schemes to recruit scientist-couples to work as a team. Read on and leave your comments — have you had a similar experience, do you know someone who has or are your bracing up for this now?
The scientist couple: Naresh Bal and Nivedita Jena
Naturejobs journalism competition winner Rachel Harris reports.
It can become easy to believe that skills developed during a PhD are suited only to academia, so it’s always refreshing to learn about the value of doctoral training in other settings. I went to the Naturejobs Career Expo London 2016 to see what else I could use my skills for.
Rachel Harris
It’s been seven years, two months, 19 days, five hours and 37 minutes since I left the bench. I keep counting the hours and desperately try to hang on to my memories. Some days it feels like yesterday that I left PCR reactions, agarose gels, and my beloved mouse embryos behind.
Christina Morgenstern
But a lot of things have happened since then. After my PhD at University College, London, and four years at Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute, I boarded a plane back home to Austria. All these years my husband worked in our home country, and commuted back and forth between Austria and London every other weekend. I decided that now it was time for me to return to Austria to be with him permanently. I knew my region of Austria — Carinthia — doesn’t have research infrastructure and so I was already planning on shifting from research to science communication. Continue reading
The collection of features and opinion articles, along with an accompanying podcast, acknowledged that in his tragically short life, Turing — whilst working on a machine that would crack Nazi codes and become the modern day computer — shaped many of the hottest fields in science today, including artificial intelligence, biological pattern formation, and computation in physics.
Turing’s suicide came in 1954, two years after his prosecution for gross indecency related to his homosexuality, which was then illegal in England. Turing had divulged to police investigating a burglary at his home that he was in a same sex relationship, and after pleading guilty was given a 12-month course of diethylstilbestrol injections, a synthetic oestrogen which rendered him impotent and caused gynaecomastia. The alternative, prison, would have meant he could no longer work on his ground-breaking mathematical theories. He was posthumously pardoned in 2013.
In today’s competitive world, it’s become increasingly common for scientists to question where their skills and knowledge will fit outside the lab. Academic research is a harsh place, littered with the victims of funding decisions and research projects that didn’t quite go to plan. The idea, even amongst scientists, that we are highly specialised professionals with no role outside the lab has become a persistent limitation in this search. So, what is the need for a scientist in any other capacity?
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Graduate students who work as teaching or research assistants at private universities won the right on Tuesday to join unions, overturning an opposing decision by the NLRB in 2004.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAm57KsWQBs
In 2012, I flew across the pond from the deserts of Arizona to the shores of Lake Constance on the German/Austrian/Swiss border. I wasn’t on holiday per se, but I might as well have been. When I arrived in the tiny hamlet of Lindau, Germany, I was met with two very sweet offerings: spaghetti ice cream and hundreds of nerds swarming the island town. I couldn’t have been happier.
