A paper co-authored by Tatsuya Amano was rejected recently without review because its level of English did not meet the journal’s required standard. His research suggests that 38% of researchers who are not fluent in English have experienced similar rejections. Amano, whose first language is Japanese, describes how dismantling language barriers will result in improved knowledge sharing, and in the long run, better research. Journals, he argues, can help by taking steps to distinguish the quality...
Jul 22, 2025•16 min
Rana Dajani studies epigenetics of trauma in vulnerable communities around the world. A molecular biologist based at the Hashemite University in Zarqa, Jordan, her research explores what genes are turned on and off through trauma and if they are transferred to future generations. In the second episode of an eight-part podcast series to accompany Nature's Changemakers in science Q&A series, collection, Dajani, a daughter of refugees, talks about some formative influences and how she now colla...
Jul 14, 2025•18 min
In her role as director of Bioprotection Aotearoa, a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence, Amanda Black works with local communities to protect the country’s natural and food-producing ecosystems. Black says the Indigenous values that she applies in her role include te pono, which stands for truth, honesty and integrity, te aroha, encompassing respect and reciprocity, and te tika, a term that means doing what is right, in the right way, for the right reasons. The soil chemist is the first o...
Jul 07, 2025•23 min
Nature's 2022 special issue on racism in science spawned a follow-up Q&A series with researchers who champion inclusion in their workplace or community. Now eight of the 21 Changemakers who have appeared in the series so far revisit their stories in a podcast series that also explores their career journeys and the impage of their research. Kendall Powell, the senior careers editor who launched the article series in May last year, explains how and why it came about, and the criteria for choos...
Jul 04, 2025•5 min
In the final episode of this six-part podcast series about hiring in science, Julie Gould asks what it takes to be the perfect candidate for a science job vacancy. Lauren Celano, a careers coach who co-founded Propel Careers, based in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2009, defines a high-calibre candidate as someone who hits up to 70% of the technical things being asked for in a job spec, plus being a strong team player with good communication skills. David Perlmutter, a communications researcher at Te...
Jun 13, 2025•17 min
In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series about hiring and getting hired in science, Julie Gould investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) is being used by recruiters to draft job ads, process applications and shortlist candidates. She also asks how recruiters feel about jobseekers using it in their applications, and whether or not they can even tell. Jen Heemstra, a chemistry researcher and lab leader at Washington University in St. Louis, warns of a mismatch when a candida...
Jun 07, 2025•14 min
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 hiring and salary negotiations. Nor is it like a car sale, adds Jen Hee...
May 30, 2025•19 min
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 Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, list wha...
May 23, 2025•36 min
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 plant molecular biologist who now recruits scientists for her lab at...
May 15, 2025•19 min
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 intelligence, and their growth potential. Asking someone how they received diff...
May 08, 2025•16 min
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 calls for improved onboarding processes for early career researche...
Feb 28, 2025•30 min
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 workplace well-being, Ellen Wehrens describes the impact of a happiness progra...
Feb 21, 2025•27 min
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 Panel on Climate Change. Experiencing a panic attack at the start of the...
Feb 14, 2025•25 min
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 went to the police twice. She was told to get a weapon. She tells...
Feb 07, 2025•34 min
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,” she says. ”There was none of the joy that I experienced previously...
Jan 31, 2025•27 min
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 heart attack Lashuel has taken steps to reduce his workload and spend...
Jan 24, 2025•37 min
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. She cultivated a community via social media, becoming an advocate for neu...
Jan 17, 2025•29 min
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 prevalent in academia, and often described as reaching crisis proportions. L...
Jan 10, 2025•20 min
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 suddenly turned to the 17 goals, with Curtis telling him: “I think this may be our last shot of ...
Oct 17, 2024•39 min
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 Kate Roll, a political scientist based at the Institute for Innovation...
Oct 10, 2024•36 min
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 beaches in the Netherlands to see if AI can be used to predict human behaviour. These experiments also test the ethic...
Oct 03, 2024•31 min
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, and halting biodiversity loss. Indonesia, where Samito grew up, ai...
Sep 26, 2024•25 min
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 Boothbay, Maine, where her research helps to understand how deep-sea mi...
Sep 19, 2024•31 min
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. Labs are estimated to use 10 times more energy and five times more ...
Sep 12, 2024•24 min
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 kind of being a pain in the ass and no one will tell you to go away.” Gould a...
Jul 26, 2024•19 min
In the fifth episode of this six-part podcast series about the late career stage, physicist María Teresa Dova outlines how she is preparing colleagues years in advance to ensure a smooth handover of her lab at the University of La Plata, in Argentina. But in the United States, when the principal investigator leaves it is likely the lab itself will close down, Gould discovers. For microbiologist Roberto Kolter, emeritus professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, this meant grad...
Jul 22, 2024•23 min
The list of things to organize as retirement from academia approaches can feel daunting. In the fourth episode of The last few miles , a six-part podcast series about the late career stage in science, researchers talk about health, housing and financial planning. Carol Shoshkes Reiss, an immunologist at New York University, explains how her institution assigns individual wealth managers to advise on retirement investments and budgeting. Inger Mewburn, who leads researcher training at the Austral...
Jul 12, 2024•23 min
Because many scientists see their career as a calling, when retirement arrives it can bring with it feelings of insecurity and worry about what this means for them. Microbiologist Roberto Kolter, emeritus professor at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, is keen to show others that retirement is a joyous time and a chance to broaden one’s scientific area of interest. It can also bring with it new speaking and travel opportunities. Experimental physicist Athene Donald is soon to complete a 10-y...
Jul 05, 2024•19 min
The idea that retirement marks the end of employment and the beginning of a life of leisure is one that many academics feel is outdated. Roger Baldwin, a retired researcher of higher education at Michigan State University in East Lansing and chair of the US Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE), a membership organization based in Los Angeles, California, describes it instead as “an open ended period after one’s main professional employment that has almost infinite p...
Jul 01, 2024•20 min
What are the signs that you’re transitioning from the middle to the late stage of a career in science? Is this transition something you can plan in advance, and if so, what does this look like? Working backwards from your planned retirement date can help you to re-evaluate your priorities and predict the challenges the next few years might bring. But in many countries there is no set retirement age, so it can be difficult to know when to start preparing. Scientists from across the globe talk to ...
Jun 21, 2024•11 min
