To increase diversity in STEM, a foot in the door isn’t enough. We need better support

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The question caught me off-guard. The video call was supposed to be a simple wrap-up with a program evaluator—one last meeting to close my year in the postbaccalaureate program. I thought it would just be a chance to say thank you, talk about next steps, and get a bit of advice. Instead, I was asked a critical question: “How has this program shaped your sense of belonging in STEM, and in neuroscience specifically?” I stared at the screen for a moment, blinking. I wanted to be honest, but I didn’t want to sound ungrateful. I knew how much the program had invested in my classmates and me. I also couldn’t ignore the weight of what I had experienced.

The program’s mission was to provide training to students from underrepresented backgrounds who had graduated from universities without many research opportunities. Coming from a small liberal arts college, I went into the program to gain the hands-on research experience I would need to be a competitive Ph.D. applicant.

It sounded like the gateway I was after. I wasn’t exactly sure what I needed to learn to become a competent researcher. But, I reasoned, surely the program would know.

It didn’t take long for those hopes to unravel. I soon learned that my cohort was the first. We were told we would be the “guinea pigs,” and that there would be growing pains.

We had weekly group meetings with the program directors, mostly focused on research updates and goals. But no one seemed to grasp how new we were to all of this. We didn’t just need feedback on our experiments. We needed someone to tell us what academia even was. How to navigate it. What questions to ask. We were hungry to learn, but the gaps were wide, and the silence around them made everything harder.

It’s hard to say why those involved didn’t understand what we needed. But it was clear that very few people on the medical campus where we were working looked like us. One day, as I was working on my laptop at a small coffee shop on campus, a woman in scrubs asked, “Do you have to be an employee, or can anyone just sit here?” My heart sank. I wasn’t bothering anyone. I belonged. And yet, somehow, others didn’t see it that way.

Meanwhile, I was struggling to get my experiments off the ground. Three months into the program, my mentor was put on administrative leave. I was unofficially placed under my mentor’s supervisor, someone senior in the department. He was genuinely invested in the program. But he wasn’t closely involved in my day to day. Without a direct mentor, I was left trying to piece things together on my own.

For months, I made almost no progress. When I asked questions of others in my lab, many of whom were stressed about their own future, they told me to “just look in the literature” and offered no further guidance. Once, a colleague said, almost casually, “Some people just aren’t cut out for this.”

Through my struggles, the program never checked in on me. It was a professor teaching one of my classes who ultimately filled that gap. After noticing I was obviously very unhappy, she invited me to switch to her lab.

I went on to work with her for the rest of the year. She gave me what I was missing: technical skills, insight into the unspoken norms of academia, and the red flags to watch out for. She helped me rebuild my confidence and gave me tools, language, and a way forward. “You’re a star,” she said once, so casually it felt like a fact.

In the end, I came out of the experience achieving what I set out to do. I applied to and was accepted into the graduate school of my choice. But it wasn’t because I was guided or nurtured by the program. I decided to be honest and tell the program evaluator the truth. The program showed me I was capable of doing neuroscience research, but it didn’t give me a feeling that I belonged.

Now as a first year Ph.D. student, I find myself fielding questions from students considering similar programs. I tell them to ask about the kind of support they’ll receive in and outside of the lab and what programs mean when they say “mentorship.” Who will be responsible for guiding you? What are their roles, and what are your options if things go off track? Talent and grit matter, but so do structure, transparency, and care.

The author is a Ph.D. student in the United States.
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USDA funding delays under Trump compromise agricultural research

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Georg Jander was delighted in May when a grant he’d submitted last year to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to study how maize responds to attacking insects received favorable reviews. But now, 4 months later, he still doesn’t know whether it will be funded. The same cloud of uncertainty hangs over the heads of many agricultural scientists, as USDA continues to postpone grant decisions and fails to announce many new funding opportunities. Jander, a Boyce Thompson Institute plant biologist, says he and “a lot of other people are just frustrated because we don’t know what to do next.”

USDA typically awards more than $1.7 billion in funding each year for a wide range of research on food, nutrition, and agriculture. But by the end of this fiscal year it will have awarded just over $1 billion, according to its public database. Some approved grants have yet to receive a single dollar for work that was expected to begin earlier this year. “We’ve missed an entire field season,” one agricultural researcher says.

It’s not unusual for new administrations to review funding programs. But after President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration went further. It ordered USDA to freeze funding of all awarded grants, a stoppage that lasted for much of the first half of the year. The aim was to identify grants that included work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, which were canceled wholesale. The agency also canceled grants to universities for research related to climate-smart agriculture. And it stopped awarding new grants.

Other funding agencies took similar steps. But USDA remains behind even as other agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, have ramped up grant funding in recent months. “It’s been very, very delayed,” says Julie McClure of the Torrey Advisory Group, which lobbies on behalf of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America. (USDA did not respond to a request for comment.)

Competitive grants, which fund research at universities and other organizations, have fared the worst. As of 16 September, with 2 weeks left before the end of this fiscal year, USDA’s center for extramural research funding, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), had awarded just 558 competitive grants, according to its public database. That’s 68% fewer than during the prior fiscal year—and $741 million less in competitively awarded research funds. In contrast, the $800 million of so-called capacity funds, which are largely distributed by formulas to certain universities, has all been committed.

One reason for the shortfall in competitive funding is that NIFA simply did not invite new grant applications for much of the year. The first funding opportunities were only posted in July—and with tight deadlines of just a few weeks. The long-standing Foundational and Applied Science Program, which awards $300 million per year, was posted on 1 August with deadlines as soon as 2 October. “A ridiculously short turnaround time,” says Crispin Taylor, executive director of the American Society of Plant Biology. The agency also appears to have a backlog of applications submitted last year that remain in limbo. The number could be in the thousands, a former USDA staff member says.

Morgan Carter, who studies plant pathogens at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, had hoped a graduate student in her lab could win a USDA fellowship to study new biocontrol approaches for fungi. But the agency has not posted a request for applications. “We don’t know the status of this program.”

Even for scientists who were awarded grants, the path hasn’t been smooth. According to USASpending. gov, a federal database, USDA turned the spigot back on for many suspended grants in August. But the delays complicated research plans. Many labs have delayed hiring postdocs or project managers or have had to scramble to find other support.

What’s causing the delays is unclear. Some observers suspect the White House Office of Management and Budget or the Department of Government Efficiency, formerly run by Elon Musk, have taken charge of funding and are responsible for the holdup. “The real question is who’s making the decisions?” says Elizabeth Stulberg, a lobbyist with Lewis-Burke Associates.

Stulberg adds that because the Senate has only confirmed some of the Trump administration’s nominees for USDA posts (four of 12), the agency also may not have the bandwidth to make swift funding decisions. Staffing has also dropped at NIFA. By March, 11% of its 488 employees had taken the Trump administration’s offer of deferred retirement and another 8% had left for other reasons.

Senate confirmation of entomologist Scott Hutchins as USDA’s undersecretary for research, education, and economics, which could happen as early as this month, could help break the logjam, McClure says. Observers say Hutchins knows agricultural research and USDA. New money Congress has put into agricultural research could also help. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes $1.25 billion over 9 years for agricultural research facilities, beginning with the next fiscal year.

But until the delays subside, many researchers remain on tenterhooks. For now, says one pretenure faculty member who has waited more than a year to learn whether a grant submitted to USDA will be funded, “We are all juggling.”

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Delays, uncertainty plague NSF fellowship for graduate students

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One of the premier U.S. graduate fellowships is mired in uncertainty as would-be applicants await overdue details about how to apply for the upcoming year’s awards. The National Science Foundation (NSF) usually releases the application guidelines for its flagship Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) in mid-July, giving applicants at least 90 days to prepare materials before an October deadline. But for weeks NSF’s website has read “solicitation coming soon,” leaving many frustrated and confused.

It’s not clear what’s caused the delay. An NSF spokesperson told Science on 26 August that the solicitation was in development. When asked for an update this week, they wrote, “I don’t have anything for you at the moment but will let you know as soon as that changes.”

The current limbo adds to other recent deviations from the status quo for the program. In April, NSF gave out fewer than 1000 GRFP awards—a far cry from the 2000 it doled out the year before. The agency later added 500 more fellowships to this year’s award tally. But the final list drew accusations it favored applicants in certain fields, such as computer science.

Some took it as good news last week when the agency updated its website to indicate that this year’s applications would be due in late October. Previously, some had feared this year’s program wouldn’t happen at all.

But with just over a month before the deadlines, many hopeful applicants are growing increasingly impatient to see this year’s instructions and learn whether NSF has any surprises in store—such as a shift to embracing industry partnerships. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they release the solicitation with completely different instructions,” wrote a Reddit user in a group devoted to discussing GRFP applications.

For many students submitting to the GRFP, it’s their first experience putting together a grant proposal, says Brian O’Meara, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who has been tracking updates to NSF’s website and sharing his thoughts about them online. So, “The more lead time the better,” he says, adding that “it will be important for potential applicants to know if they are even eligible before putting in the work to prepare to apply.”

NSF’s website states that any applicant submitting a fellowship or grant application to the agency will “have a minimum of 90 days from NSF’s announcement of a funding opportunity to prepare and submit a proposal.” Susan Brennan, a former GRFP director who now works at Stony Brook University, says that when she worked at NSF the 90-day cutoff was taken seriously. “If we were 1 day late with the solicitation, then we would have had to justify it, move the deadlines,” she says. “For some reason, we are now halfway along, and we are so very late that many students will not be able to apply this year, and it’s very concerning.”

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Meeting students where they are doesn’t mean lowering academic standards

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Experimental Error logo
Experimental Error is a column about the quirky, comical, and sometimes bizarre world of scientific training and careers, written by scientist and comedian Adam Ruben. Barmaleeva/Shutterstock, adapted by C. Aycock/Science

It’s back-to-everything orientation time. If you’re in any sort of teaching role, you’ve probably been told repeatedly to “meet students where they are.” (Do not take this advice literally; students are most likely at their homes, and meeting them there is creepy.)

It’s one of those platitudes that’s easy to ignore among all of the other introductory advice, like “foster critical thinking” or “don’t park in the space marked ‘Reserved for University President.’” It’s also advice that can be easily misconstrued as a call to lower academic standards, accepting that your students will arrive without the skills necessary to succeed—so make sure the classes you teach don’t require those skills, lest you anger the university president who’s already staring incredulously at your Corolla.

But maybe it’s time to rebrand the recommendation to “meet students where they are.” Instead of a maligned boogeyman or meaningless cliché, maybe it’s actually an important reminder of a teacher’s true role.

A few months ago, I attended a roundtable about student mental health. The speaker, Joe Sparenberg—a physical science instructor and adjunct professor at Howard Community College, Anne Arundel Community College, and the Community College of Baltimore County—described ways professors can help alleviate their students’ anxiety. Some students might come to a class with an official accommodation plan handed down from the university mental health office. But plenty of students with similar challenges have no diagnosis, simply because diagnosis is expensive, inconvenient, and not always broadly available. What can professors do to help all these students get as much as they can from the course—to meet them were they are?

Some might say it isn’t a professor’s job to alleviate their students’ anxiety; students need to toughen up and rise to the level of rigor of the field they’ve chosen to pursue. Maybe it is, Sparenberg would respond, and maybe it isn’t—but that doesn’t mean professors should consider themselves off the hook, especially when some of the techniques they can use are both sensible and simple.

In his experience, when students have opportunities to get support and assistance, they feel calmer and more capable. So, he figured, why not explicitly offer that support and assistance as directly as he can? Throughout the course, he polls his students and asks what they’d find helpful. He can’t satisfy every request, but if they ask for something reasonable, why wouldn’t he try to help?

For example, some students told him they found the pace of the course nerve-wracking. Some professors might tell the student that’s too bad, we have to get through the materials, so you just need to adapt. Sparenberg, on the other hand, asked what he could do to help. And when a student suggested they’d feel less anxious if they could find out what books are required before the semester begins, so they had a little more time to digest everything, that sounded to Sparenberg like a completely fair request.

Students wanted weekend office hours; Sparenberg didn’t mind. Students had questions about the course material but felt embarrassed to ask in class; Sparenberg set up an app called Padlet where students could ask questions anonymously, after class, or even during class. This helped him gauge his own pacing, making sure he hadn’t just skipped past a key concept. More importantly, it removed the stigma of asking the professor to slow down, when you’re sure everyone else in class is keeping up.

Sparenberg recalled his own training as he sought the support that would help him succeed. Some teachers pushed back, he said, insisting, “This is my class.” Sparenberg shrugged. “I’m like, ‘Cool, I’m your student.’”

I know a lot of professors who would bristle at that last sentence. It’s overly accommodating, student-as-consumer, all-about-me-me-me, they would say. But what Sparenberg describes isn’t coddling, it’s just using available tools in a practical way to help students succeed. Offering accommodations isn’t artificially removing the pressures of the real world, it’s giving the students the tools they need to deal with them. Actively seeking out what your students need to be successful is the difference between being a teacher and simply a content deliverer.

At the same time, accommodation has to be a two-way street. It’s sensible to expect students to show up with engagement, positive intention, and willingness to work hard and learn.

So maybe meeting students where they are is just half the solution: Students and professors should meet one another in the middle. You can maintain rigor as an instructor, Sparenberg reminds us, and not be a brick wall.

As we start our classes this semester, let’s remember that we have no idea what’s going on in our students’ lives. We see them for a few hours each week, and outside of that, they all lead complicated existences as humans. It’s their responsibility to meet our expectations, and it’s our responsibility to help them do that.

And if we don’t know what simple adjustments we can make to help our students, what do we do? We treat them the same way we address anything else in science, the same approach that was taught to us and that we hope to teach to them.

Ask.

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I thought science hinged on prestige. Moving abroad made me reassess my priorities

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I still remember the first morning I biked to university in Copenhagen, the February air reddening my cheeks. I was thrilled to be on an exchange semester overseas, but I saw it as just a detour from my imagined career path. I didn’t realize I was already pedaling toward a different life—one that would make me reassess how to achieve a fulfilling research career.

I grew up in the United States with a clear sense of what a “successful” science career should look like. I might not have admitted it openly, but I believed that the right pedigree—a well-known university, a prestigious Ph.D. program, a respected adviser—was what determined whether someone would be taken seriously as a scientist.

But everything changed during my time as an undergraduate in Denmark. Here, I fell in love. First with the country. The cobbled streets. The bike lanes. The quiet confidence of a society that seemed to trust its institutions. Later, with a man I met by chance—who will soon be my husband. A Fulbright grant allowed me to return to Denmark after my exchange. The official goal was to broaden my academic horizons and learn new scientific skills. But unofficially it was a chance to see whether this relationship might become something lasting.

As the months passed, the idea of returning to the U.S. to pursue a “big name” Ph.D. program felt less compelling. I began to seriously consider staying in Denmark for a doctoral position that would allow me to build a life with someone I loved.

I found myself fixating on how this choice might look on a CV. Would colleagues back home see a Danish Ph.D. as a step down? Would I be taken less seriously without North American training? Would I regret prioritizing my personal life over a more conventional path? In hindsight, these anxieties seem ludicrous. But at the time, they felt very real. In the end, I chose to stay.

The adjustment wasn’t always easy. It can be hard for a foreigner to live in Denmark, where many friendships are formed early in life and social circles can be slow to open. But I had my relationship to lean on, and gradually I built a community.

As I started my academic life here, Danish culture began to transform my mindset. Danish society is guided by Janteloven, an unwritten code that says you are no better than anyone else. Growing up, I would have said I believed in this ideal. But subconsciously I probably felt otherwise. In the U.S., an unspoken hierarchy is attached to certain professions. Scientists and doctors often enjoy a higher social standing than, say, electricians. In Denmark, this distinction is far less pronounced.

The same ideals pervade academia. There is no Danish university that is considered “better” than others, and prestige plays a smaller role in people’s decisions. Even within universities, there is very little hierarchy. Everyone addresses each other by first name, and talking to a senior professor feels like chatting with a colleague.

In Denmark, I also discovered a new type of work culture: one that insists on work-life balance, expects people to leave the office at a reasonable hour, and treats evenings and weekends as personal time. In the U.S., long hours are worn like badges of honor. But after my time in Denmark, that way of life no longer appeals to me. I feel fortunate to work in a place where I have more space for hobbies, relationships, and simply living.

Gradually, I have come to adopt the Danish perspective. I now see that the value of a scientific career isn’t measured only by the institution on your diploma, but by whether your work feels meaningful, whether you’re growing as a researcher, and whether you can sustain the curiosity that brought you into science in the first place. I now question why I ever felt a degree from Denmark would somehow be worth less than one from North America.

I still sometimes wonder how my life might have unfolded had I returned to the U.S. I might have gained more recognizable credentials. But I would have missed the chance to build a life here, to invest in a relationship with someone I love, and to discover a work culture that aligns with my values. For me, staying in Denmark has brought not just a different way to approach science, but also a sense of belonging I didn’t know I was missing.

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After my world started spinning, I recalibrated my approach to work

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I look at the beaver dam with trepidation. As an ecohydrologist who studies the engineering abilities of beavers, I’ve crossed hundreds of these structures with little hesitation. But now each step feels like braving a precipice. I move slowly, scanning the logs underfoot for stable ground, my students carrying the equipment I once shouldered. I’m conscious that at any moment the world can suddenly spin, leaving me reaching for the nearest willow branch just to stay upright. Vertigo has rewired how I move through wetlands, lecture halls, and life in general, making me hyperaware of balance—both physical and professional.

My vertigo roller coaster began with a strange incident 4 years ago. On my first day back on campus after the pandemic lockdowns, three masked men burst into my office as I met with a student on Zoom. It was straight out of a movie. The student kept talking, unaware of what was unfolding. After what seemed like an eternity, the man closest to me muttered “wrong person” and walked out. They didn’t physically hurt me, or—thankfully—the faculty member whom I later learned they intended to harm. But the intrusion unsettled me in ways I couldn’t shake.

I booked a massage to calm my frayed nerves. Instead, as my neck was being massaged, the room began to violently spin. As I later learned, the pressure dislodged tiny crystals in my inner ear that are crucial to balance. In a single moment, the ground shifted beneath me. And I didn’t know when—or whether—it would stop.

Afterward, days blurred into weeks as I stayed in bed, propped up to sleep upright, afraid to move my head lest I vomit uncontrollably. I abandoned all my duties except teaching, which I did on Zoom with my camera off, my mother-in-law advancing the slides and whispering occasional prompts as I spoke from memory. It was a dark time: harder than the pandemic, harder even than raising children. As the main income provider, I worried constantly about my family’s future if I didn’t recover.

Physiotherapy eventually helped stabilize my inner ear. Gradually the room steadied. But my journey wasn’t over. A year later, the vertigo returned, and then slowly faded over 10 months. Now, I live with the anxiety that at any moment, the floor might begin to shift again.

More than once, I’ve felt the spins come on midlecture, forcing me to grab the edge of the nearest table to steady myself. I’ve learned that vertigo demands constant mental energy just to keep upright. It’s work no one sees. And that’s part of what makes it hard to talk about.

I haven’t had any mishaps when I’ve been out in the field with my students studying beavers. But the fear is always there. So, too, is the shift in how I see myself as a scientist. Despite my love of fieldwork, I have had to accept that some seasons, I will do less of it. I’ve learned to build more flexibility into research plans, delegate in ways that help students grow, and focus on aspects of ecohydrology for which a steady gait isn’t crucial, like data analysis, writing, mentoring, and service.

My own vertigo has made me alert to signs of it in others. I notice the colleague who sits through standing ovations. The one who avoids certain terrain. The one who always takes the elevator. I see now that many of us are navigating invisible limitations while still showing up fully for our work.

These days I move with a kind of cautious attention I never needed before. But a slower pace has also opened up space for quiet gratitude. For months I couldn’t walk without assistance. I couldn’t look at a computer without vomiting. Now, I can be back in the field. I can travel. I can still do the work that makes me feel alive. My steps are slower, and the fear is still there—but so is the joy of taking them.

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As a Ph.D. student, I felt unprepared to mentor—but I’m glad I took the leap

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As I waited for the Teams meeting to begin, I started to question myself. “Wait, who am I to be mentoring someone?” I thought. I was just a first-year graduate student who still regularly sought guidance myself; what advice could I have to offer? Months earlier, I had applied to be a mentor through a program at my university that provides free support for potential Ph.D. applicants from groups that are historically underrepresented in science. I am passionate about helping students from backgrounds like mine, and I was eager to pay forward the guidance I had received earlier in my journey. But now that the moment was here, I was overcome with doubt.

As an undergraduate, I had no idea how to become a scientist. The process felt opaque and overwhelming, particularly to a first-generation college student. I always felt as though I was behind my peers, simply because I did not know how to access certain resources or get involved. Still, I pushed forward, learning the hard way through trial and error.

Things began to turn around at my first meeting with the professor who would become my lab supervisor. I was extremely nervous, but she was welcoming and understanding, genuinely interested in learning about me and my career goals. Throughout college, she provided support, professionally and personally, bolstering my confidence, helping me understand it is OK to take time away from lab for family, and more.

Being a mentor at my Ph.D. university seemed a great opportunity to do the same for others. I enthusiastically applied and was excited to be selected and matched with a mentee. But as our first meeting drew close, uncertainty crept in. There was no guidebook to follow. How should I structure our meetings? What if she asks a question that I have no idea how to answer? How could I be ready for this type of leadership role, when I still had so far to go myself?

That day of our first meeting, I was terrified. But once my mentee joined the call, seeming very enthusiastic about meeting me, and started to talk about herself, I had a flashback to my own college experience. I remembered struggling to navigate getting into a research lab and applying to summer internships and graduate school. The fellow first-generation student on the other side of the screen was probably going through something similar—feeling both uncertainty and a fierce determination to figure it out and achieve her professional goals.

What mattered, I realized, was not to be some imaginary perfect mentor with all the answers, but to get to know my mentee, including her hopes and ambitions, and offer whatever guidance and support I could based on my own experiences. We ended the meeting having set some practical goals for the year—including writing her personal statement and practicing research presentations—and just as important, laid the grounds for an authentic, personal relationship.

As our sessions continued, I still went into each one worried I would not be prepared to solve every problem my mentee encountered. But over time, I realized I could help in practical ways. I could equip her with the skills to tackle obstacles, such as answering difficult questions during interviews and research presentations. Just like my mentee, I had dreaded the “tell me about yourself” prompt; where do you start and how much should you tell? In my case, I had found a happy balance by explaining how being diagnosed with mixed connective tissue disease during college had driven me to pursue a Ph.D.—but I didn’t go into details that would have felt invasive and draining. I described my approach to my mentee, so she could adopt the parts that resonated with her.

When I did not know the answer to an issue she raised, I was honest about it and did my best to listen, provide feedback and guidance, and allow her to determine her best course of action. Sometimes I was there simply to provide a safe space to vent. I could help even when I did not have a solution.

A few months after submitting her graduate school applications, my mentee sent an email thanking me for my support and guidance, which she said helped increase her confidence. She probably doesn’t know that she helped increase my confidence, too.

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How an academic betrayal led me to change my authorship practices

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The day the paper was published should have been a moment of pride. Instead, it felt like a quiet erasure. There it was: the data set I had helped shape, the computer scripts I had debugged and refined, the analytical framework I had spent months developing—all neatly embedded in a peer-reviewed journal article. But my name was absent. The feeling of exclusion was painful enough—but what stung more was that I had seen it coming, yet had felt powerless to stop it.

In 2020, during my doctoral studies at a major European university, a more senior Ph.D. student asked for help coding the analysis for his thesis. We had several in-depth discussions about the work, and he promised me co-authorship if the results were published. He even suggested the outcomes might fit into a chapter of my own dissertation, and that he would inform my supervisors once the work matured. I believed him.

Over the next year, I invested hours of focused effort into writing, modifying, and validating the scripts that underpinned the analysis. But crucially, the collaboration remained informal. Most conversations happened over voice calls. Any emails I sent went unacknowledged. There was no official record of our agreement or the work’s scope. In hindsight, I now see that this lack of documentation was not an accident—it was deliberate.

A few years later, I learned the research was being prepared for publication. But my enthusiasm quickly turned to dismay when I realized the student I had helped—who was lead author on the paper—had no intention of including me as a co-author. When I spoke up, he claimed responsibility for coding the analysis, and said there was no written proof that I had worked on it.

One co-author acknowledged my contribution and attempted to intervene. My supervisor supported me, too. But the student still refused to include me. Eventually, I decided my efforts were better focused on my current work, and I gave up fighting.

My name was nowhere on the published paper—not even in the acknowledgments.

The betrayal had real consequences. Believing the work would lead to a joint publication, I had spent valuable time on it during my own thesis writing, delaying my Ph.D. by at least 6 months. Even worse was the emotional toll: frustration, helplessness, and a deep sense of injustice.

My story isn’t unique. Authorship discussions too often rely on informal agreements, and many early-career scientists are unaware of standard authorship criteria. Even when research groups do have formal guidelines about who should be a named author, they’re often not discussed until after a manuscript is already in draft, and students may be too hesitant to assert their rights in hierarchical lab cultures.

After my experience, my colleagues and I began to think about strategies to stop others being unjustly denied authorship. Eventually we came up with a set of procedures we now follow for every project in our lab to make sure all contributors receive fair recognition. We create a shared document outlining roles and authorship expectations right from the start, and agree on milestones when authorship will be further discussed, such as at key analysis phases or before manuscript drafting.

I also try to lead by example, discussing authorship openly with students and junior colleagues, and ensuring they receive the appropriate training in research ethics. I make sure they keep records of their contributions and read journals’ authorship guidelines, and that they are aware of institutional support they can turn to if they encounter problems, such as research integrity offices or ombuds.

We’ve been trialing this new approach for a few months now, and the feedback from other lab members has been really positive. I’d encourage everyone to consider doing something similar. Authorship is more than a line on a CV—it is an ethical necessity. Every cleaned data set, debugged script, and refined figure deserves acknowledgment. And every early-career researcher deserves the confidence that their work will not just be used—but respected.

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How a Ph.D. is like riding a bike

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I sat in my supervisor’s office, red-faced and anxious, words tumbling out faster than I could control. For half an hour, I vented everything I had been holding in for months: the stress, the doubt, the sense that I didn’t belong. I was in the third year of my Ph.D., and a creeping fear had taken root that I wasn’t cut out for academia. I expected some kind of judgment or disappointment. Instead, my supervisor listened patiently, then calmly offered a line I’ll never forget: “You are here to learn to ride a bicycle, not to invent a bicycle.” That one sentence landed softly, but it cracked something open.

As a first-generation university graduate, I had always felt the pressure to lead the way, to live up to expectations no one else in my family had ever faced. To get into grad school, I focused on presenting myself not as a trainee ready to learn, but as an already successful, accomplished researcher, fully formed and self-sufficient. I internalized this mindset, too.

But after starting my Ph.D., I was hit by wave after wave of academic challenges—not to mention the culture shock and financial stress of being an international student. I barely passed my first-year classes. I had a string of scholarship applications rejected in my second and third years. My research group was full of productive postdocs and graduate students steadily publishing papers, but my research stalled. My attempts to generate and pursue fresh, innovative ideas hit wall after wall. I felt I was running an endless race with a late start, trailing far behind everyone else.

Friends and family encouraged me, reminding me how far I’d come and how many challenges I had already overcome. A professional adviser at the university urged me to stop comparing myself with others and helped me see that just being a Ph.D. candidate was already a meaningful achievement. But the shadows of self-doubt always returned. I still felt I was falling short in fundamental ways.

My supervisor had supported me from the very beginning. Still, I hesitated to share my struggles with him. I didn’t want him to see me as a failure. But after 8 months of quietly carrying that weight, and repeated encouragement from my family, I finally spoke up.

My supervisor’s words redefined graduate school for me. I realized that my focus on chasing productivity and conceiving new, groundbreaking projects was misguided. The competitive environment of academia had distracted me from the real reason I was a Ph.D. candidate: to learn how to do research and how to thrive.

Embracing that mindset helped me realize I could—and should—lean more on my supervisor and senior colleagues. I began to run my ideas by them and seek feedback early on, which helped me make progress. I worried less about publishing and productivity, and every project, whether it failed or succeeded, became a meaningful step forward and a story worth sharing in my presentations. Two years after that pivotal meeting, I completed my Ph.D. with loads of hard-earned experience, a strong network of supportive colleagues, and a CV I was proud of.

I went on to do a postdoc where—to borrow my supervisor’s analogy—I mastered my riding skills while also gradually gathering the tools to ultimately invent my own bicycle. Instead of focusing solely on productivity, I worked closely with my postdoc adviser to develop and refine core skills such as lab techniques, grant writing, and leadership. Along the way, my research moved forward meaningfully, too. I made a discovery—the early framework of a new bicycle—that laid the foundation for the next generation of graduate students in the lab to improve their own riding.

Now, I’m about to establish my own research group. I feel ready to design and invent my own bicycle—or maybe even more than one. Just as important, I’ll make sure to remind my trainees that their job, first and foremost, is to learn how to ride.

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My autism diagnosis didn’t derail my Ph.D. It put me on the right track

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From ScienceMag:

My hands trembled as I held a lukewarm cup of coffee, scanning the packed conference room. It was the end of my first year as a Ph.D. student, and the biggest meeting I’d attended so far. I stood alone, watching the crowd. I longed to join in, but every attempt felt like hitting an invisible wall. Conversations moved too fast to follow. After a few awkward nods and half-finished sentences, I gave up and retreated to a corner in silence. That evening, in my hotel room, I wondered: “Why did something so simple feel so hard? Is there even a place for me in academia?” It was a familiar feeling. But only much later, after an unexpected diagnosis, did I understand why I felt so out of sync, and start to imagine a different way forward.

I’d worked hard to get here. As an undergraduate, I lived like a hermit, studying nonstop to earn the grades I needed. I enjoyed solving problems and working through data. The intellectual side of academia suited me. But I struggled with the social side—the conferences, meetings, hallway conversations. In grad school, the demands only intensified: Networking was no longer optional, group discussions required quick responses, and visibility mattered. Nonetheless, I pushed on. For a while, small successes kept me going: positive feedback, publications, and even a prestigious fellowship. I figured I needed more practice, more exposure, more effort. But beneath the surface, cracks were beginning to form.

By my third year, I hit a wall. Research still offered comfort, but the relentless social difficulties left me too depleted to focus. Success seemed to depend on skills I struggled to master. I spent hours frozen at my desk, overwhelmed with anxiety. Over time, exhaustion eroded my confidence and motivation, and I withdrew from colleagues, friends, even my research. I carried this weight alone, afraid that speaking up would confirm my worst fear: that I didn’t belong.

Eventually, the stress became unmanageable. I stepped away from my Ph.D. to seek professional help. That decision led to an 8-week hospitalization and a 6-month leave, a break in my academic journey that I could never have imagined. Initially, I saw it as a personal failure. But with time and space to reflect, my perspective began to shift and I realized how much energy I’d spent trying to navigate a world that didn’t quite fit me.

When a psychiatrist asked me whether I’d ever considered that I might be autistic, I was stunned. But as I started reading, it began to make sense: the social struggles, the sensory overload, the need for clear structure. A few months later, I received an official autism diagnosis. Finally, I had an explanation. Still, one question remained: Could I continue in academia? The thought of returning felt daunting. But I wasn’t ready to give up.

Instead, I began to make subtle yet meaningful adjustments. Many emerged through trial and error, guided by reading and learning from other neurodivergent researchers. I began to schedule recovery time after work and started to wear noise-canceling headphones to manage sensory input. To create structure and make progress tangible, I broke down larger tasks into smaller ones and tracked them visually with hand-drawn graphs. I abandoned behaviors, such as forcing myself to follow conventional work routines, that only increased my stress. Slowly, I discovered what helped, and built a rhythm that feels sustainable.

These adjustments haven’t solved everything. Now, in the fourth year of my Ph.D., I still leave some meetings feeling invisible, and old doubts occasionally resurface. However, I’ve learned to meet them with understanding rather than harsh self-judgment. My struggles aren’t signs of incompetence, they’re reminders that academia wasn’t designed for people wired like me.

The most significant change hasn’t been to my workload or environment, but to the connection with myself. The traits I once tried to suppress shape how I think, work, and move through the world. I’ve stopped believing I need to blend in to belong. Instead of trying to squeeze myself into a space, I’m gently reshaping it to fit me.

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

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