How do research careers compare across countries? New global database has some answers

From ScienceMag:

In which countries do scientists earn the most? Does having a doctorate degree provide greater job security than having a master’s degree? What sectors and jobs do Ph.D.-holders in different parts of the world end up in?

These questions and more are now easier to answer, thanks to a new database that provides a one-stop shop for detailed information covering 53 countries across the world. The publicly available interactive platform, launched earlier this month by the Research and Innovation Careers Observatory (ReICO), aims to guide policymakers’ decisions to improve training and working conditions for researchers—and help scientists make informed career choices.  

Having a single go-to source for reliable careers data across countries is “incredibly useful,” says Nicola Dengo, vice president of the grassroots early-career researcher organization Eurodoc. But unless each country fully embraces the initiative, he warns, “the observatory is not going to grow to its full potential.”

As the number of researchers has risen across the world in recent decades, so have concerns about the working conditions and sustainability of research careers—but national data remained patchy and inconsistent. “Without robust and comparable data, countries cannot benchmark their systems, identify structural challenges, or assess the effectiveness of policy reforms,” says Neda Bebiroglu, who coordinates an effort from the French-speaking community of Belgium to collect career data about researchers there and contributed national data to the new project. “And for individual researchers, these blind spots can limit progress toward more sustainable and inclusive research careers.”

ReICO is a response to these issues. Cofunded by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission, the project has so far been able to gather data from 53 countries, spanning Europe, Asia, Oceania, South Africa, and the Americas. In addition to collecting data that were already publicly available, ReICO has created a network of 45 countries that pledged to participate, with 31 of them providing so-far unpublished data.

Visitors to the ReICO website can use interactive dashboards to explore this data in detail. For example, the platform reveals that across the 19 countries that supplied comparable income information, Ph.D.-holders in the United States are compensated best, adjusting for purchasing power (approximately $126,300 annually), closely followed by those in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Norway. When it comes to the gender pay gap, Colombia leads the way with near pay equality, whereas employed women Ph.D.-holders in Italy earn just 62% of what their male colleagues make. Luxembourg shows the greatest apparent brain gain, with a net increase of 4.62% of researchers in 2023, according to an analysis of the affiliations noted in scientists’ publications; South Africa experienced the largest brain drain, with a net 1.88% of research authors leaving the country.

Having begun development of the observatory just 1 year ago, both the OECD and the European Commission stress that this is a work in progress. The platform is still in its beta version, and users are encouraged to experiment with the platform and provide feedback. The observatory plans to release updated data annually; in the future, it hopes to include data on the roles and skills in demand in industry, where researchers are increasingly employed.

To paint a clearer picture of the global research landscape, individual countries will need to invest more into providing transparent and high-quality data, says Verity Elston, co-director of the Graduate Campus at the University of Lausanne. That could prove challenging in certain areas: for instance, little is currently known about postdocs, she says. Bebiroglu agrees that information about postdocs is critical. “We often lack even basic data—like the average length of their contracts. This makes it difficult to assess the scale of the problem or to design effective policy responses.”

The shape and terminology of research careers also vary considerably across countries, so figuring out some sort of standardization is key to allowing meaningful analysis. “If countries collect data, but … the underlying definitions are inconsistent, that data becomes difficult—or even misleading—to compare,” Bebiroglu says. Now that ReICO has set up a sound methodological process for international data collection, the next big challenge for the observatory will be to go further into establishing a “common language.”

Despite the limitations, Dengo sees ReICO as a step in the right direction. “We really need something like this to work,” he says. “It’s fundamental to solv[ing] the issues of research careers.”

Read More

What an aquarium pest taught me about professional adaptability

From ScienceMag:

I stared at my home aquarium, weary and uncertain about my professional future. Some years after returning home to Ecuador to lead a research group, I was battling the challenges of doing science in a resource-limited environment. The mesmerizing coral structures offered some comfort, until something unpleasant caught my attention: a single Aiptasia, the tiny, persistent anemone that aquarists regard as a pest. No matter how often you scrape them off, they grow back stronger. Then, I smiled. These humble-looking anemones, often dismissed, stood for something deeper: regeneration, resilience, and adaptation, all themes of my own professional journey.

My first scientific love was embryonic development—itself a form of reinvention. During my undergraduate studies I encountered Gastrotheca riobambae, a frog endemic to the Ecuadorian Andes that carries its eggs in a pouch on its back. How these bunches of cells self-organize to form a complex organism was a real marvel, and I thought I would study frogs for the rest of my life.

But Ecuador had no doctoral programs. To continue my training, I needed to look abroad. I was excited to get a spot in a program in Belgium—though none of the labs offered the opportunity to continue my frog work. So, I made my first pivot and joined a zebrafish lab, studying how fish embryos develop.

It didn’t go as I hoped. Disoriented by the new culture, language, and research environment, I wrestled with whether I should try to stick it out and push through, or pivot yet again. After much reflection and several discussions with the program director, I came to understand that the lab environment simply wasn’t a good fit for me—and that changing course wasn’t failure, it was adaptability.

I still wanted to study embryonic development, but the opportunities were limited; the closest fit was in a mouse lab studying blood vessel development. I wasn’t immediately inspired by the topic. But the more I learned, the more invested I became. It was a reassuring reminder that reinvention was also evolution. For my postdoc, I took another turn and returned to studying how tissues rebuild themselves, this time in the mouse liver. The science was exciting, and I felt professionally anchored. But once again, life pulled me in another direction.

My partner and I separated, and she returned to Ecuador with our children. I followed, though leaving my thriving postdoc behind and returning to a country where high-impact research felt almost impossible seemed like walking away from the future I had worked so hard for. I spent 2 years traveling back and forth between my native country and my postdoc lab, until a university in Ecuador trusted in the potential of my work and offered me a position as a lab head, allowing me to be home full time.

I was thrilled to be able to spend more time with my children. Professionally, though, it was a tough transition. Funding was scarce, infrastructure was limited, and I had to build everything from scratch. Lacking the specialized facilities and readily available reagents I once took for granted, I had to rely on resourcefulness and improvisation. Mouse models had to be adapted from a local zoo and validated for research. Mouse food had to be prepared by hand mixing supermarket ingredients. I had to convince government authorities that the antibodies and other basic reagents I wanted to work with were not public health threats. Meanwhile, the pressure to publish kept mounting. Could I truly make a difference here?

That’s when I found myself staring at the Aiptasia—a cheap and accessible model organism that I suddenly saw as a fresh way to ask impactful questions about regeneration, resilience, and stress. That was 9 months ago. Since then, I’ve reinvented my research again, using Aiptasia to study how environmental stress and pollutants affect reef organisms.

My future is still uncertain; that’s the nature of doing science in Ecuador. I’m counting on reinvention to re-emerge in moments of need. For many of us building research careers in the Global South, it is how we survive, grow, and keep moving forward. I no longer see reinvention as a deviation from a plan. It has become the most transformative force shaping my path.

Do you have an interesting career story? Send it to SciCareerEditor@aaas.org. Read the general guidelines here.

Read More

Prestigious NSF graduate fellowship tilts toward AI and quantum

From ScienceMag:

Roughly one in five recipients of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) prestigious Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP) typically works in the life sciences. However, there’s nary an ecologist, neuroscientist, or molecular biologist in the latest batch of 500 fellows announced earlier this month. At the same time, computer scientists captured a much larger share of awards, which provide an annual stipend of $37,000 for 3 years, than they have done in previous rounds.

NSF isn’t saying why this cohort looks so different by field of study than the 1000 fellows announced 2 months earlier. But the new distribution appears to align with President Donald Trump’s push to prioritize artificial intelligence and quantum information science. Some scientists worry it may also reflect Trump’s opposition to any federal investments that broaden participation in science, as most of the students in the latest cohort work in fields that are disproportionately male, white, and Asian.

The program is open to students in any field that NSF funds and has supported 50 Nobel laureates since its debut in 1952. But many scientists saw the size of the initial 2025 class—at less than half previous annual levels—as a retreat from NSF’s historical mission to train the next generation of U.S. scientists and engineers. Their fears grew last month when NSF’s oversight body spoke of its desire to see the private sector sponsor a significant number of future fellows.

NSF’s 13 June announcement of a second round—selected from 3000 applicants awarded “honorable mentions” in the first round—was seen as evidence that the agency hadn’t abandoned the program. However, the striking difference by discipline between the new cohort and the first round (see graphic, below), as well as from previous annual classes, has revived concerns about the program’s future.

An analysis by two former GRFP directors has found that life scientists, for example, were shut out in the second round. Some 214 students in those fields were named fellows in April, and another 962 were designated as honorable mentions, according to data shared with Science by Giselle Muller-Parker and Susan Brennan. Not one of those 962 runners-up was selected for an award in the second round.

Similarly, only seven of the 187 honorable mentions in psychology were named fellows this month, as were only eight of the 114 honorable mentions in the social sciences. Students in the geosciences also fared poorly in the second round, with only 25 of the 242 honorable mentions winning a fellowship.

In contrast, well over half of the 203 honorable mentions in computer science—125—were named fellows this month. Some 101 of the 260 honorable mention students in physics and astronomy won the prize. And 123 of the 594 engineering students initially named as honorable mentions got scholarships.

Congress has tweaked NSF’s mandate for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce training over the decades, most recently in 2022 when it told the agency to address demand “in critical STEM fields.” But the definition of those fields encompasses every area NSF has traditionally supported, from designing more advanced semiconductor chips to understanding how humans respond to climate change. Muller-Parker and Brennan say they don’t understand why NSF would suddenly change direction without a clear legislative mandate.

“In the absence of evidence for why one STEM discipline should be prioritized over another … we find this trend to be ill-considered,” Muller-Parker and Brennan write in a joint email to Science. Continuing in that direction, they add, poses “substantial risk” for training the U.S. STEM workforce.

A skewed distribution

The National Science Foundation (NSF) tilted heavily toward computer science—and ignored the life sciences—in selecting its latest round of 500 graduate research fellows from a pool of 3000 students given honorable mention status in the first round.

chart of NSF graduate research fellows by area
(Graphic) M. Hersher/Science; (DATA) Giselle Muller-Parker and Susan Brennan

Former fellow Alexandra Harmon-Threatt, a pollinator ecologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, agrees. “Not investing across the board is extremely shortsighted and undermines America’s scientific future,” she says. “These students won’t be making major contributions for 5, 10, or 15 years, and it’s hard to know where we will have major gaps that need to be filled at that time.”

An NSF spokesperson declined to comment on its criteria for selection or give a reason for the skewed distribution.

The demographic differences between the fields being favored and shunned add to the challenges already facing students from minority groups, says former fellow Christian Cazares, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Diego. “Students like to think the process is merit based,” says Cazares, who was born in Mexico and was the first in his family to attend college. “And GRFP is one of the most important fellowships for early-career scientists. If it’s now simply another way to carry out the administration’s priorities, that sends a message to these students that maybe they aren’t welcome in science.”

Kelsey Lucas, an aquatic biologist at the University of Calgary and former fellow, sees the skewed distribution as a sign that NSF is emphasizing more applied research. “Science is about pushing into the unknown to tackle big problems,” she says. “By cutting GRFP and steering awards toward a privileged few, we are leaving behind perspectives and ways of knowing that could lead to innovative solutions to the problems we face today.”

Read More

I felt guilty moving away from my parents—but finding the right lab helped me thrive

From ScienceMag:

One sunny spring afternoon, I was sitting on a bench outside work, crying on the phone to my parents after yet another panic attack. The happiness I once took from academia had disappeared, and all that remained was an overwhelming sense of guilt. I had left home to chase a dream overseas while my mum was dealing with a debilitating illness, but staying away for a job I did not enjoy was starting to feel unbearable. Then my parents asked me a question I had already begun to ask myself: “Do you think this career is still right for you?”

Leaving the United Kingdom to pursue a scientific career abroad was never part of my plan. But in 2019, I was offered an incredible opportunity to do a Ph.D. in Paris. I was elated—but very unsure about moving. My mum had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) several years previously, and daily life was becoming very challenging for her. I wasn’t sure I should leave, but with my parents’ encouragement, I took the plunge.

In France, I found a home away from home. I built friendships, learned a new language and grew in ways I never imagined. I genuinely loved my Ph.D.—even the tedious, mundane tasks that researchers often complain about. Most of all, I felt lucky to be part of an incredibly supportive group where people shared knowledge, celebrated everyone’s wins, and checked in on one another. I often felt sad about not being home, especially during difficult times, but the environment kept me steady. As long as I was doing well, I felt I was making my parents proud.

Things changed after I graduated. I naïvely thought my passion for research would sustain me anywhere. But when I started a postdoc at a new institute, I felt isolated. The lab culture was difficult to integrate into, and lab members barely communicated with me. There was no one I could talk to openly, and more than ever I felt the strain of being torn between two places.

quotation mark
As long as I was doing well, I felt I was making my parents proud.
  • Georgina Kirby
  • Georg August University of Göttingen

During this time, my mum’s MS had also gotten a lot worse. Each visit home felt like a lottery; I never knew how her health would be. Every time I left to return to France I was wracked with guilt. Why was I staying in a job where I felt invisible, when I could be home, helping out and being present? I started having daily panic attacks. My motivation evaporated, and my work suffered.

The call home with my parents that spring afternoon was a turning point. I realized I needed to focus on my mental health and figure out what I really wanted from my career. Luckily I could afford to take a break from academia and get some professional help. I was able to spend quality time with my parents to do chores, cook, talk, and enjoy their company. The break also helped me see that I did still want a scientific career—I missed the excitement of being in the lab. I just needed to find an environment in which I could thrive, not just survive.

I’m now working as a postdoc in Germany, where I’ve started to rebuild the same kind of supportive community I enjoyed during my Ph.D. I’ve made an effort to connect with others, whether over lunch or a quick coffee, or just by checking in. In doing so, I’ve rediscovered my passion for lab life. Working together is so much more fulfilling when colleagues look out for one another. You just never know what people are going through in their own lives.

It’s still hard being far away from home and my mum. I often wish I could be more physically present so I could ease my parents’ day-to-day burdens. But we’re all finding new ways to manage the distance. Knowing they are still cheering me on, from a distance, gives me comfort. I still carry the guilt. But I have purpose again, too, and that’s what keeps me going.

Do you have an interesting career story? Send it to SciCareerEditor@aaas.org. Read the general guidelines here.

Read More

For the first time, women scientists win $1 million climate research prize

From ScienceMag:

The crowd gathered in an auditorium in the Swiss village of Villars on Tuesday applauded as, one by one, three scientists—two women and a man—stepped onto the stage to accept a plaque and their prize of 1 million Swiss francs ($1.1 million) for research into solutions for the ongoing climate crisis. It marked the first time in the Frontiers Planet Prize’s (FPP’s) 3-year history that a woman, let alone two, has won.

Gerard Rocher-Ros, a 2024 finalist and ecologist at Umeå University, was an outspoken critic of the lack of women winners in previous years. This year’s lineup—Arunima Malik, a University of Sydney sustainability researcher; Zahra Kalantari, an environmental and geosciences engineer at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology; and Zia Mehrabi, a climate and agriculture data scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder—“was very comforting to see,” he says.

The women winners also view the award as an important step for highlighting women’s contributions to science. “I see this award as a recognition that we are also among the men, that we are [also] working hard to come up with solutions … to address the social challenges that we are facing,” says Kalantari, whose work focuses on reducing the carbon footprint of cities. And Malik’s winning paper, about the sustainability of supply chains and global trade routes, was written with multiple women as co-authors, she points out.

In the first 2 years the prize was awarded, all seven winners were men, a trend that led a group of women finalists to pen an open letter last year to FPP Director Jean-Claude Burgelman and others, criticizing the committee’s process for disadvantaging and failing to reward women scientists. (Science was unable to reach the authors of last year’s letter for comment.)

Prize administrators say there was no intentional change in the award process, chalking up the difference in this year’s results to “pure coincidence.” The FPP jury does not consider the gender of the lead scientist while deliberating, says jury chair Johan Rockström.

Despite the positive change this year, systemic inequities in scientific research awards can persist because the prize rules require that research institutions nominate a single representative from the team behind a published paper. These representatives are part of a pool to be the sole national champion representing their country and finalists for the FPP. The structure effectively means these solo winners are also the sole recipients of the prize money; a strategic choice meant to facilitate investment into the winning project and optimize real-world impact, organizers say.

But with this winner-take-all system, nominating bodies may be likelier to elevate more established, senior researchers—who are predominantly men—to increase their chances of winning the money. The FPP website urges nominating bodies to actively confront unconscious biases. Still, more than half of this year’s 19 finalists were men or from countries in the Global North.

Prizes that award single researchers can also reinforce “the great man myth”—the idea that scientific knowledge is built on the discoveries of solitary genius scientists, rather than the collaborative efforts of many, says Cassidy Sugimoto, who studies gender disparities in science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Mehrabi’s winning paper, for example, about diversifying crops and animals on individual farms to improve biodiversity and costs, had 60 co-authors, involved hundreds of other researchers, and partnered with thousands of farmers. A solo-winner prize “pushes people towards a certain hierarchical division of labor, a certain competitiveness within teams, that doesn’t necessarily create the most robust systems of science,” she says. “We have to think about giving prizes to scientific teams rather than to the individual.” For his part, Mehrabi plans to use the prize money to expand this coalition to implement his paper’s climate solutions across the world.

Despite some of the criticism, Burgelman emphasizes that the current process is the best way to invest in climate science and planetary boundaries research. Previous winning projects have gone on to save 15 million hectares of the Amazonian forest, he notes, and have saved hundreds of thousands of lives from parasitic disease in Senegal. “What I am really looking forward to seeing, as the prize enters its fourth year, is the impact of the research that we have funded.”

Read More

I study burnout. I didn’t think it could happen to me

From ScienceMag:

When I started my Ph.D., I believed I had found my true purpose. My research focused on how digital tools could help prevent burnout among clinicians—something I’m passionate about. I spent my days immersed in research about workload, stress, fatigue, and the fragile tipping points that push people beyond their limits. As my workload grew, I started to feel the pressure. But even as I worked later and later into the night, I kept reassuring myself: I was only studying burnout. It wasn’t something that could happen to me.

Unlike many in my cohort, I settled on my dissertation topic early in the first semester, thanks to my prior research experience and a quick alignment with my adviser’s interests. I hit the ground running, and at first, the work energized me. I loved feeling I was part of a broader research community and knowing my work could one day help people on the front lines of health care. But the challenge of balancing my research with teaching responsibilities and the required coursework was intense, and before I knew it, my preliminary exam—a big hurdle to continuing my studies—was right around the corner.

At the time, I didn’t notice how I was letting work take over my life, bit by bit. Skipping lunch to finish “just one more” section of a manuscript. Working weekends because “I’m already behind.” Feeling my chest tighten when I opened my email each morning, dreading any new additions to my growing to-do list. At first, I called it normal stress. Then, a rough patch. Eventually, I stopped calling it anything at all.

One evening near the end of my second year, desperate for reassurance, I took a burnout “self-test.” To my surprise, I scored high on several classic symptoms. Emotional exhaustion? Check. Feeling numb and disconnected from my work? Check. Losing the sense of personal accomplishment? Check. I stared at the results, feeling exposed.

Still, I resisted the idea for weeks until I finally reached a breaking point. It arrived quietly one evening as I was staring at a paragraph I had rewritten 10 times. No matter how much I worked, the gap between what I wanted to write and what I could deliver only seemed to widen. I closed my laptop and thought, for the first time, “Maybe I can’t do this anymore.”

The next day, I had my regular meeting with my adviser. As we wrapped up our discussion, he paused, looking at me for a moment longer than usual. “Xames, you should take a break!” he said lightly, but with real concern. He had sensed what I hadn’t yet fully admitted to myself.

That comment unlocked something inside me. For the first time, I allowed myself to admit that I was not OK. From my research on burnout, I knew the risk factors—long hours, poor boundaries, chronic stress. But I had completely ignored them creeping into my own life.

In the weeks that followed, I did something that felt both terrifying and necessary. I scaled back. I started to set real boundaries—no more writing emails after dinner, no more glorifying 60-hour workweeks. I went back to hobbies that had nothing to do with my dissertation. These are the kinds of restorative activities the research recommends.

It wasn’t an instant fix. Some days, the old voices still whispered: You should be working harder. You’re falling behind. But slowly, I learned to answer them differently: I am a person first, and a researcher second.

Ironically, or maybe inevitably, my work improved. Ideas came more freely when I wasn’t drowning in anxiety. Writing felt less like extracting teeth and more like creating something real again. I was no longer studying burnout from the safe distance of an observer—I had lived it. It was a reminder that behind the abstract models and metrics are real people.

Today, my research remains centered on burnout, but my focus has shifted to also include recovery, sustainability, and compassion. The work feels deeper, messier, and more honest—and it no longer consumes my life. Most of all, what my experience taught me is that even when work feels urgent and important, so is your well-being. That lesson didn’t come from a study. It came from the long, slow, humbling process of realizing that I am human—and that’s not a flaw.

Do you have an interesting career story? Send it to SciCareerEditor@aaas.org. Read the general guidelines here.

Read More

I had to fight to stay in science. Perseverance should be valued

From ScienceMag:

When I interviewed for my current tenure-track job, I had a stellar training background and solid publications over my 20-year career. But I was unemployed. I didn’t mention that fact, but my CV had other gaps shaped by events beyond my control: shifting politics, economic crises, a mentor relationship that turned bad, and COVID-19. I had stayed on the academic path—if only barely—through sheer determination. The interviewers were friendly and I felt good about my performance, but I wasn’t expecting the offer I received a month later. To my surprise, I later learned the committee had valued a factor rarely considered in an academic world obsessed with publications and impact factors: my resilience.

Growing up in Puerto Rico prepared me well for life’s challenges. I witnessed my parents working hard to provide for our family, despite the ongoing economic turmoil that plagued the island. My mother, an elementary school teacher, taught me to believe in myself and offered unwavering support. The rigors of graduate school and the responsibility of becoming a father at a young age also helped build my resilience—which has turned out to be the defining feature of my career.

The first test came in 2004, when I was a graduate student in a well-funded lab, conducting research I was passionate about—until suddenly, Congress slashed the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) budget. Our lab had to scale back, and I needed to put in a lot more hours to graduate before my adviser’s grant dried up. Some days, I didn’t see my 4-year-old daughter at all because I got home long after her bedtime.

My wife at the time was in school as well, and my income supported our family. But as I looked for a postdoctoral position in the midst of the NIH budget crunch, most labs told me they had no funds to take on a new trainee. With persistence, I secured a postdoc at the Neurosciences Institute, a place fueled primarily by private donations. For a while, things looked stable.

Then came the 2008 recession. The private donations dried up. Staff were laid off, and several prominent investigators left. Morale plummeted. The writing was on the wall: I had to leave.

Job hunting in 2008 was brutal. I sent out applications, knowing my family depended on me, but opportunities were scarce. Finally, a last-minute interview at a conference led to an offer for a lab in France. It meant uprooting my family and stepping away from the research path I had carefully built, but it was the only way forward. So, we packed up our lives and moved. For a while, things were good, but several years into my project, my relationship with my adviser soured, and I had to leave.

I eventually got a job as a staff scientist at the University of Chicago. I had to prioritize my new lab’s research focus and could only work on my own research in spare moments, but by the end of 2018 my career was gaining traction once again. But the stress took a huge toll on my personal life, and my wife and I split up. Then COVID-19 hit. Labs shut down, slowing research and my own project. When I submitted a grant for review, it was rejected for what the reviewers said was a lack of relevant publications. I found myself once again facing unemployment.

When I finally landed my current position in 2021 it was a huge relief. A couple years later, I learned that one of the committee members had followed a path similar to mine and saw my commitment and perseverance as key factors in my favor.

But not everyone will have such an advocate. I believe we should be asking candidates for academic jobs what challenges they’ve overcome and how they have persevered. Applicants with CVs featuring high-profile labs and prestigious publications tend to be the ones who get jobs. But others of us have taken a slower, bumpier path, and I believe we deserve a closer look. We’re the ones with the resilience to get through tough times.

Right now, I’m anxious about our nation and the future of biomedical research in the United States, but I’m not worrying for myself. If my career has taught me anything, it’s that resilience alone doesn’t guarantee survival. But sometimes, it gives you just enough time to catch the next opportunity before the door closes.

Do you have an interesting career story? Send it to SciCareerEditor@aaas.org. Read the general guidelines here.

Read More

As a Ph.D. student with bipolar disorder, I’ve found strength in a perceived weakness

From ScienceMag:

I remember the moment my mentor in medical school told me she wouldn’t be writing me a letter of recommendation for my Ph.D. application—my planned next step. “You’re too sensitive,” she said. As if something at the core of who I was—something I couldn’t change—disqualified me from the future I had worked so hard for. At the time, I was devastated. Honestly, 4 years later, I still am. It felt like a punch to the gut, delivered by someone I respected and trusted. That moment planted a doubt I’ve carried ever since. But it also ignited a spark that led me to realize what others see as a weakness is ultimately a strength, albeit one that comes with daily challenges.

After six intense years of medical school, my mental health had slowly deteriorated without anyone, including myself, noticing. Right after graduating, I jumped into a Ph.D. program abroad, intending to pursue a career that would combine medicine and research, satisfying both my altruistic side and my fascination with human physiology and disease. That period was full of firsts: first time on a plane, first time living away from my family and boyfriend, first time stepping into the unknown of academic research.

Things quickly unraveled. I was anxious, constantly distracted, and overwhelmed by tasks others seemed to do with ease—such as pipetting, or handling animals during experiments. I’d wake up in the middle of the night convinced I’d left the cell incubator open, even though I’d checked it several times. The stress built up until I reached a breaking point. I switched labs, effectively starting over, and finally began to take my mental health seriously. In the second year of my Ph.D., I saw a psychiatrist and received a diagnosis: bipolar II disorder.

Living with bipolar disorder as a Ph.D. student means sensitivity isn’t optional—it’s part of how I move through the world. Science is meant to be thrilling, but for me, every new experiment brought waves of stress and doubt. I’d dive deep into the research, trying to eliminate every unknown—sometimes so much that I’d miss deadlines. People saw this as procrastination, and I kept hearing the same message: “Toughen up.” So, I learned to hide my struggles, even if it meant pretending I was fine when I wasn’t. But once I began treatment, I began to feel I was finding some stability for the first time.

Then, in October 2023, conflict came to Israel, where I was studying. With air raid sirens and drones overhead, I made the hard decision to return home to Serbia. But coming back brought its own pain. As a queer person, I didn’t feel safe or seen in my home country. My newfound stability began to unravel, and I knew I couldn’t stay. I left again, this time for Denmark—to start my Ph.D. anew in a place where I could live more freely.

Since arriving here, I’ve figured out ways to make this journey more sustainable, through trial and error. At the suggestion of a friend, I take pictures and record videos of my experiments, so I don’t have to stress about taking perfect notes. I’ve learned to accept criticism without interpreting it as a personal attack. I take my medication and reach out when I need help. Most of all, I speak up for myself, letting my supervisors know which situations will likely be a challenge for me.

My mentor’s comment about sensitivity still echoes in my mind when things get hard. Sometimes I wonder whether she was right. But with time I’ve come to see my sensitivity as something other than a weakness. It’s the source of the empathy that compelled me to become a physician in the first place, and it’s what pushes me to do research and learn more about the patients I will one day treat. My own experience with a chronic condition has convinced me that patients need doctors who can combine scientific precision with compassionate practice.

The rigid, high-pressure environment of academia isn’t easy for people like me. But I’m stronger for having learned how to protect my well-being while pursuing my passion. My mental health struggles have forced me to check in with myself, respect my limits, and make space for emotion in an environment that treats it as a liability.

Do you have an interesting career story? Send it to SciCareerEditor@aaas.org. Read the general guidelines here.

Read More

As a laid off postdoc, I turned to a side hustle—and found a new career

From ScienceMag:

We came to the end of our regular weekly lab meeting and were about to leave when our principal investigator (PI) announced he had something important to share. “I’m sorry team. We’ve run out of funds, and I have to let you all go.” Looking around the room I saw a mix of confusion and shock on the faces of the other lab members—another postdoc, a lab technician, and a handful of graduate students. As it began to dawn on me that I was being laid off from my postdoc position, I tried not to panic. I told myself that with my Ph.D. and two bachelor’s degrees, surely it wouldn’t be too difficult to find a job. My job search didn’t pan out the way I’d hoped. But luckily, I had an alternate income stream to fall back on—one I’d cultivated during my postdoc.

Three years earlier, I had finished my Ph.D. and moved with my family across the country to start a research position in the PI’s lab. Becoming a postdoc wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. But I was an international scholar on a visa who didn’t have many career choices open to me, and it felt like a safe choice that would help provide for my family. I also imagined it would help me with the goal I had at the time: to be a teaching professor.

Soon after arriving, though, I realized that although my postdoc salary was twice what I earned as a Ph.D. student, it wasn’t enough to cover rent, food, gas, and other basic expenses in pricey California. I thought I might need to take a second job in retail to keep up. But after searching for ideas online, I discovered freelance writing as an option, which I could do from home at night after my son went to bed.

I found my first gig while browsing Craigslist one day. A local web designer needed someone to write social media and blog content to help her advertise her business. Within a few months, I found other clients and grew this side hustle to about $1200 a month. I enjoyed the work, and it was a huge help with the household budget.

After my postdoc ended, I kept writing. But my goal was to secure a full-time position to support my family, and so I spent most of my time searching for and applying for jobs. I submitted applications for scores of positions I thought I was qualified for inside and outside academia. Most resulted in rejections or no response. About 6 months into the search, I began to feel defeated. Was this what I got for working so hard in grad school? To have nobody even acknowledge my applications? I felt like a complete failure—that with all this education, I was unable to secure an offer for a full-time position.

That’s when I decided to stop applying for jobs and focus on growing my writing business, an option that was open to me because, by then, I was a permanent resident and didn’t need a job to maintain my immigration status. My writing work up to that point was mostly focused on projects that didn’t leverage my scientific training—blog posts for finance websites, sales emails for dermatology practices, for instance. But I thought that perhaps I could find opportunities in science writing specifically.

So, I began to share my thoughts on subjects in the sciences and samples of my writing on LinkedIn. Shortly after I started doing this, health and science companies started to reach out, wanting to work with me. For the first time in more than a year, opportunities were coming to me, a welcome change from the fruitless searching I had been doing. I was able to build my portfolio and gain confidence in my new field, which eventually led me to dip my toes into the job application waters once again. I was ecstatic when, finally, I received an offer for a full-time science writer role at a life science marketing agency.

When I started my journey as a writer, I viewed it simply as a side gig. But it eventually grew into a career that brings me joy. It kept me afloat when I was coping with the grief and loss of purpose I felt as an unemployed Ph.D. graduate. It also showed me that there’s room to think creatively and build new opportunities for yourself. Sometimes good can come from a path redirected.

Do you have an interesting career story? Send it to SciCareerEditor@aaas.org. Read the general guidelines here.

Read More

I got sick during my Ph.D.—but couldn’t afford treatment. Grad students need better support

From ScienceMag:

I stepped out of the car, travel backpack in hand, returning from winter break rested and rejuvenated by seeing friends. I was feeling optimistic about my health, too. A recent appointment with an ear specialist had offered some hope that doctors would be able to diagnose the cause of the dizziness that had plagued me since nearly the beginning of my Ph.D. and finally treat it effectively. But what I found in my mailbox made my heart race: a stack of medical bills, the latest additions to the pile of unpaid invoices already sitting on my dresser.

When I first arrived in the United States from Brazil to pursue my Ph.D., I felt nothing could stand in my way. But a few months into my studies, a persistent dizziness crept in. Walking to campus, reading papers, and even grocery shopping left me unsteady. I rushed to the university clinic, where the doctor said I had vertigo and recommended rehab. But I had heard countless stories of graduate students paying thousands of dollars out of pocket for treatment of various ailments, and I was hesitant to rack up bills that would certainly outpace my meager stipend. Instead, I turned to YouTube, where I found at-home exercises. For weeks, every night before bed, I moved my head from side to side, then up and down. Eventually, the symptoms disappeared. I thought I was in the clear.

Two years later, the dizziness returned. This time, the exercises failed, and over-the-counter medications offered little relief. With my worsening symptoms making it difficult to keep up with my Ph.D. work, I didn’t see any alternative but to seek medical treatment despite my worries about the cost. I went back to the doctor, who referred me to an ear specialist. I called to book an appointment, only to be told the wait was 4 months. Far from my family, with no clear treatment plan, I felt helpless and frustrated.

Shortly afterward, I traveled out of state for winter break in a larger city, where I secured a last-minute appointment with an ear specialist. After being referred to one medical center, then another, I was given a steroid shot and orders for a brain MRI and more ear tests. No final diagnosis yet, but a clear message: The dizziness would likely return until I found the cause. Still, the steroids brought my first moment of relief in months.

Back home, after collecting the pile of medical bills from my mailbox, I contacted the university’s health insurance office for a cost estimate for the recommended tests. Even with my student insurance, the out-of-pocket amount was far beyond what I could afford. Then came another blow: The referrals from the out-of-state doctors weren’t valid locally. I would still need to wait for the in-state ear specialist appointment. There I was, facing the imminent return of my symptoms, medical bills piling up, and unable to schedule or afford the tests I needed. My stress levels soared.

In the weeks that followed, I began to experience heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and insomnia. After I wore a doctor-ordered heart monitor for 2 days, the diagnosis came back as sinus tachycardia—in other words, stress-induced anxiety. My body was sounding an alarm I could no longer ignore: This situation was unsustainable.

That was 3 months ago. Since then, I finally had my in-state appointment; with it came new referrals and, of course, more bills. This time, however, I have found a stopgap solution: I travel to Brazil yearly to conduct fieldwork, and during those trips I also attend medical checkups. This year, with multiple U.S. medical referrals in hand, I was able to schedule tests that will finally get me closer to a diagnosis. It’s unbelievable to think that, even with travel costs, care can be so much cheaper or even free through Brazil’s public and universal health care system. I know I’m lucky to have this option. Many other students face similar challenges without it.

Medical expenses can be overwhelming, especially for international students whose visas often restrict us from earning income beyond our stipends. No student should have to choose between financial survival and medical care. No student should lose valuable time and mental energy over something as fundamental as health care. Universities must step up and provide more comprehensive health coverage for their students so we can focus on our work.

Do you have an interesting career story? Send it to SciCareerEditor@aaas.org. Read the general guidelines here.

Read More