How I learned to speak up with confidence

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It was 4:45 p.m. and I was watching the clock as closely as the slides. Day care closed at 5:30. Our project meeting had already gone past the hard stop. We were circling around a disappointing set of results: The data did not fully support the conclusion we had hoped to make. One senior colleague wanted to run more experiments; another thought we should submit the manuscript with a more conservative conclusion. I didn’t feel experienced enough to cast my vote. But the tension was mounting, and we were no closer to a resolution. Meanwhile, my son was surely going to be the last child at day care. “Let’s make a decision before we leave today,” I blurted out. The room went quiet.

For years, I had assumed authority belonged to people who spoke quickly, answered without hesitation, and never appeared uncertain. I was none of these. In meetings with senior researchers and administrators I often had an observation that could have moved a discussion forward, but I held back because it did not sound polished enough. A few minutes later, someone would make a similar point with greater confidence and the conversation would move on without me.

Then, a senior leader told me, “You need more gravitas.”

At first, I thought gravitas meant sounding more certain than I felt. I overprepared for everything, from weekly check-ins to presentations for senior leaders, and rushed to answer questions before they had fully been asked, hoping speed would read as competence. During one presentation, a senior leader started to ask about the methodology I’d used to measure materialism in young children. I cut in with a polished response I had rehearsed because I expected to be challenged. I later learned I should have waited: The leader was trying to express support for my methodology. At other times, I said nothing because I did not have a perfect answer. Neither approach worked. Rushing kept me from listening; staying silent made me disappear.

Becoming a parent changed the stakes. I still cared about doing good work and earning the respect of accomplished researchers. Speaking up before my ideas were fully developed was still uncomfortable. But being late to collect my son from day care, or arriving home too depleted to be fully present with him, felt far worse.

In that meeting, I didn’t provide a brilliant answer to any of the questions on the table, or suddenly become the most persuasive person in the room. I merely named the issue we had been avoiding: Which risk were we more willing to accept—delay submission in pursuit of a stronger claim, or move faster with a more limited contribution? It was one of the first times I had spoken up in this way, and it felt really good.

I began to understand gravitas differently. It’s not about confidence, charisma, or having the most polished answer. It’s about clarifying a discussion and moving it forward. Over time, I came to think of gravitas as embodying five qualities and practices: remaining steady, trustworthy, and anchored; navigating complexities; and being decisive. When discussions grow heated or disorganized, I strive to stay steady, helping the group step back from disagreements and refocus. I show I am trustworthy by speaking clearly about what the evidence does and does not show. I keep the conversation anchored to the issue at hand and navigate competing priorities and perspectives people bring to the table. And, whether answering questions during a presentation or guiding a meeting to end on time with clear next steps, I have learned to be decisive.

I’m still not the person who has the loudest voice, or who speaks first or most frequently in a meeting. I still feel the urge to wait for perfect words. But I have become more willing to offer my voice. The clock didn’t make me braver; it made the cost of staying silent clearer.

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For women academics, feeling devalued can be a fatal career blow

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Held to higher standards. Left off invitations. Pointed to as “diversity” but ignored. These are just some of the hundreds of examples of devaluation women faculty in the United States shared with computational social scientist Katie Spoon. These experiences, more common for women than men, are to blame for the higher rate of attrition for women faculty, Spoon, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and colleagues report in an analysis published today in PNAS Nexus.

The new study “gets at things that are hard to measure, which is the climate in academia,” says Donna Ginther, an economist at the University of Kansas who studies the academic workforce. “It speaks to the subtle experiences of women not feeling like they belong.”

The work builds on an enormous survey of 10,000 U.S. current and ex-faculty, spanning institutions and fields, which found that women leave because they feel pushed out—not pulled toward another opportunity. At the end of that survey was a free-text box inviting respondents to “tell [their] story” and share negative experiences or reasons they left academia, says Spoon, then a graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Little did Spoon know she’d get 6615 responses—an outpouring of heartbreak, documenting instances of disrespect, struggles with work-life balance, lack of institutional support, and more. “I was like, ‘OK, I think we need to do like a follow-up study instead of just ignoring all of that,’” she says.

Trained as a computer scientist, Spoon saw the opportunity to spot patterns that could explain why women feel pushed out. Working with sociologist Lauren Rivera at Northwestern University, they manually assigned themes to each response and then looked for relationships with identity and attrition. Categories included issues directly related to professional responsibilities of research, service, and teaching, as well as topics capturing the work environment, such as administrative policies, caretaking responsibilities, and leadership.

Of the 12 distinct themes investigated, devaluation—feeling excluded, disrespected, mistreated, or held to different standards—showed the biggest gender gap: Forty-one percent of women versus 18% of men who left comments felt this way. Informal devaluation was more common than formal devaluation such as problems during official evaluation procedures. This may suggest policy changes aimed at reducing discrimination in these processes are having some effect. But systems are still failing in other ways. Frequently cited alongside experiences of devaluation was so-called “institutional betrayal”—institutions failing to take complaints seriously.

And whereas the gender gap in other issues remains steady or even narrows with seniority, for devaluation it widens. It seems men gain respect over their careers, while women continue to report “‘I have all these accolades, and I have all this stuff, and [yet], I have to keep proving myself,’” Spoon explains.

And that, more than anything else, pushes them out. Devaluation accounted for the majority of the gender gap in those considering leaving, and in those who had left—far more than topics such as work-life balance and child care, which are major targets of interventions.

Devaluation was also the most racialized issue, affecting nearly half of all women of color. White women were the next most affected, followed by men of color, then white men.

“It was a very impressive study,” says Bruce Weinberg, an economist at Ohio State University. Although survey responses inevitably overrepresent negative experiences, the breadth of the study “[gets at] the pervasiveness of this,” he says. Evidence of these types of issues is often anecdotal or narrow in scope, which can make it harder to address. Of the new study, though, he says, “I would call this data,” making it possible to analyze intersections with career stage and race. “That’s valuable.”

Ginther questions whether the problem is specific to academia or persists across careers. Regardless, one definite problem in academia, she notes, is the unusually slow pace of turnover, meaning “there’s not a lot of change in department climate and culture.” And with more women than men departing midway through their careers, Spoon adds, it’s not a given that any improvements at the junior level today will trickle down.

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Trump administration proposes $100,000 fee for work authorization for international students

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President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled a proposal this week to attach a $100,000 fee to a program that allows international students in the United States to stay and work in the country for up to 3 years after graduation. The program, called Optional Practical Training (OPT), is a crucial pathway for students in science fields to enter the U.S. workforce and strengthen their applications as they pursue more permanent status in the country.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, the fee seeks “to combat fraud, strengthen the integrity of the immigration system, and protect U.S. workers.” But some experts fear it’ll hamper the U.S.’s ability to attract foreign talent. It “will obliterate the pipeline,” Michael Clemens, an economist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Government & Policy, told Nature. The Wall Street Journal reported in July that the federal government was considering the new fee.

The proposed rule would require universities to pay up to $100,000 for each student they recommend to the OPT program. Until now, the monetary burden of the application fell solely on students, who are required to pay up to $2250 when submitting their initial OPT requests to the Citizenship and Immigration Services. The administration says the move would encourage universities to better vet employment efforts secured by students. But it’s unclear how universities will react to the large sum, or whether they would require students to shoulder the new fee.

Although the proposal has rung alarm bells for international students, it may not ever take effect. Courts have repeatedly challenged federal immigration changes. Most recently, a judge blocked the administration’s attempt to cap international students’ stay in the country to 4 years, a limit that would have particularly impacted those pursuing Ph.D. programs that tend to last more than 4 years.

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Why I’m going back to academia

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Every day as I walked to my office, I felt a pang. The research institute where I worked was on a university campus, but it felt a world apart. I saw my academic colleagues building fulfilling relationships with students through teaching and mentoring—opportunities I could only engage in on a limited basis, in the time I had left after completing my research responsibilities. My decision a few years earlier to leave academia and pursue more applied research had felt completely logical. Several colleagues had made similar moves, and they seemed happy. I had packed my boxes and told myself I was closing one chapter for good. But I was starting to wonder whether there might be a way back.

For some time, I convinced myself I had made the right choice. I worked on projects I enjoyed and was proud of, building national and international collaborations, writing policy reports, and contributing to R&D that had a direct impact on farmers and farming communities.

And I still had some opportunities to interact with students. Colleagues from the university sometimes invited me to cosupervise Ph.D. students with relevant research interests. I jumped at the chance, even though I had to do it on my own time as it was not an official part of my job responsibilities. I gave and attended occasional lectures at the university, and the resulting interactions with students were always invigorating. I loved that every year new students arrived with fresh perspectives, different cultural backgrounds, and questions that sometimes forced me to rethink assumptions I did not even realize I was making. After a lecture a few years ago, one student asked why a particular crop was not grown in a specific region—a simple question that stopped me midsentence. That conversation eventually grew into a research proposal. Every time I supervised or mentored a student or gave a lecture, I left feeling energized. I couldn’t deny that I wanted more.

I was also growing frustrated with some of the challenges and limitations of working at a research institute, where bureaucracy and multiple levels of management can slow even seemingly simple actions such as bringing visiting researchers on for collaborations. Universities, of course, have their own challenges, limitations, and bureaucracies. Competition for funding is intense. Teaching takes time. I was under no illusion that returning to academia would solve every frustration.

Still, whenever I came across a faculty job posting, I felt a spark of excitement and often found myself wondering whether I should give it a try. I even bookmarked a couple of faculty job ads, returning to them for days before finally closing the tabs.

A committee meeting for a Ph.D. student I co-supervise was the final push I needed. The student mentioned how overwhelming it felt to start a Ph.D. in a new country, and we spent a few minutes talking about how he could build a support network. When the meeting ended, I realized the most enjoyable part of my week had been that hour with a student. I no longer wanted to relegate the most rewarding parts of my professional life to essentially a side project. Having made what I thought was a career-defining pivot away from academia, I decided to find a way back.

It’s often said that once you leave the established path to the professoriate it is hard to get back on, and returning hasn’t been easy. My CV looks quite different from those of many others going up for university professor jobs through the traditional tenure-track route. But I talked to my professional network, explored unconventional on-ramps back to academia, and applied for openings, highlighting my unique background and the skills I’ve developed as a result. I was offered a part-time university appointment, and I now have two students to help get my research program off the ground.

I have come to realize teaching, mentoring, and academic life are part of who I am. No matter where my career or destiny takes me, I do not think I can completely walk away from them.

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NIH ends 2026 with a boost for early-career researchers, but new awards are down overall

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The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) ended the 2026 fiscal year with mixed news for the biomedical research community it supports. The agency came back from a lag early in the year to spend its entire extramural budget of $35.3 billion by 30 September. It also funded a record number of early-stage investigators—defined as those less than 10 years out from finishing their graduate degree or clinical training—who were seeking their first grant, Trump administration officials announced today. But a White House mandate to fund many multiyear grants as a single lump sum means fewer awards overall, potentially putting established labs that were counting on fresh funding at risk of downsizing or even closing.

The agency funded 17,543 new grants and renewals of existing research and training projects—a number that’s about 500 more than last year, but 11% below the 2021–24 average. A total of 1648 early-stage investigators won NIH’s bread-and-butter research grants, known as R01 equivalents, compared with just 1144 last year and a previous peak of 1608 in 2022. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced the record number of early-career grantees this morning at a science summit where President Donald Trump is expected to speak later today.

“It’s definitely good news,” Michael Lauer, NIH’s longtime extramural research chief who retired in early 2025, says of the funding for new investigators. “I’m glad to hear that the agency has reaffirmed its commitment to help early-career scientists as much as possible.”

Bhattacharya has said his plan to fund more early-career researchers centers on prioritizing edge science, which he says is more likely to be proposed by young scientists. However, the process seems to be unchanged from before his arrival. A recent NIH blog post explains that NIH’s 27 institutes and centers set annual funding targets for awards to early-stage investigators. Lauer says that’s the strategy NIH has used for years. “We set a specific goal” for each institute, he says. “About halfway through the fiscal year, we would send every 2 weeks detailed spreadsheets” to institute leaders “letting them know where we stood.”

Caught up but still behind

After a delay because of a federal shutdown, the U.S. National Institutes of Health picked up the pace and spent its entire $35.3 billion extramural budget by the end of the fiscal year on 30 September. But the count of 17,543 new awards and competitive renewals fell 2259 short of the average in fiscal years 2021–24. Award counts include subprojects.

chart showing NIH awards
(GRAPHIC) V. PENNEY/SCIENCE; (DATA) Grant Witness

“I don’t like the word quota,” he adds, because it suggests subpar grants might be funded. In all cases, the grants had “an outstanding review.”

The 2026 funding picture for established investigators may be less rosy. The overall number of research and training awards—including new projects, renewals of expiring grants that competed for new funding, and annual payments for continuing awards—fell below the 2024 total for the second year, to 61,151. That’s a 13% drop compared with an average of 70,061 in the 4 years before the White House budget office told NIH to make more multiyear-funded awards, according to the nonprofit watchdog group Grant Witness. But the actual number of active grants likely did not fall as much, the agency and observers note, because multiyear-funded awards made in 2025 or some previous years would have been ongoing in 2026, even though they received no additional payment this year.

Bhattacharya also described a plan to recruit 100 early-career principal investigators for NIH’s massive $5 billion in-house research program. Its 1200-strong roster of principal investigators has shrunk since early 2025 when Trump-imposed staff cuts, hiring freezes, and limits on travel and purchasing drove many researchers to leave the agency.

A push to hire new intramural investigators “might be the first real improvement over where we were 2 years ago,” says Ian Morgan, an NIH postdoctoral fellow who has spoken out against Trump policy changes. “It would bring new blood and new ideas.” He cautions, however, that the agency will need to address problems such as restrictions on purchasing large equipment. Those limits “could make setting up a new lab really difficult right now.”

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As a new assistant professor, I thought I needed to hide my family responsibilities

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I was rushing out of the office to pick up my two young children from day care when I ran into a senior colleague in the hallway. They wanted to chat about a proposal I was working on and how I was settling into my new tenure-track position. I was grateful for their interest and collegiality, and I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t giving the job my full attention. So, I acted as if I had all the time in the world. I didn’t mention where I was headed, or that I had a kids’ pickup deadline. I barely made it. That night after dinner and bedtime I caught up on emails, never letting on that I was working so late because of my family responsibilities. I was convinced I had to manage my demands invisibly.

To the outside world, I was building a lab, mentoring students, teaching, writing grants, and pursuing the milestones expected of an early-career faculty member. But outside the margins of my CV, I was also coordinating child care, navigating day care illnesses and closures, recovering from pregnancies, breastfeeding, pumping, and trying to think clearly through antepartum and postpartum brain fog.

For a while, I thought the solution was to become more efficient. If I planned carefully enough, woke up early enough, answered enough emails after bedtime, maybe I could make the chaotic parts of motherhood invisible in my professional life. I could be the same kind of early-career scientist I had imagined before children, just with less sleep.

This approach almost worked, until it didn’t. Day care would call and a sick child would erase a carefully planned day. School closures would rearrange an entire week. Travel anywhere involved heroic efforts to organize small lives in addition to mine. No amount of optimization gave me full control and I was simply exhausted. There was almost always something I felt I was not doing as well as I wished I could.

Then, when I was a little over 1 year into my faculty position and pregnant with my third child, an email landed in my inbox inviting me to join a gathering for pretenure mothers at my institution. A few assistant professors had bonded over the ups and downs of juggling motherhood with the responsibilities of a tenure-track faculty member, and they wanted to connect with others doing the same. The invitation offered something I had not realized I needed: a space where my identities as a mother and scientist did not have to remain separate. I filled out the scheduling poll.

At our lunches, I kept hearing people say aloud the things I had been facing silently: the guilt of leaving campus early, the exhaustion of writing after bedtime, the pressure of keeping up with peers whose lives might look very different from ours. We shared strategies, offered reassurance, and considered what types of support we actually needed. Those conversations did not magically make working life easier. But they made it less lonely.

I began to see that my struggle was not a personal failure to become efficient enough. The many demands in my life were real, even if academic culture kept them out of view.

I became more willing to acknowledge my limitations, accept help, and resist blaming every disruption on poor organization. If I need to move a meeting because of child care pickup or a sick child at home, I say so plainly. I am careful not to make my trainees responsible for my family logistics, but I also do not pretend those logistics do not exist. I want my trainees to see that being a good scientist does not require pretending to have a life untouched by caregiving, illness, rest, or limits.

This shift has also changed how I think about my life outside the lab. Recently I was volunteering at my oldest son’s kindergarten Aloha Day party. Another mother arrived with a watermelon carved to look like Stitch from Lilo & Stitch. It was spectacular compared with my store-bought popsicles. The old me might have felt a familiar pang: Should I be doing more? Does my contribution betray my divided attention? Then I looked at the delighted children and felt grateful. This parent had offered something I could not, but I had shown up in the best way I could. I did not need to disguise the constraints of my career to prove I was a devoted mother, just as I do not need to disguise the demands of motherhood to prove I am a serious scientist.

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Fed up with Brazil’s politicians not listening, a climate scientist runs for office

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One Saturday morning in late August, 100 or so women in white T-shirts demonstrate for women’s rights in a park in São José dos Campos, Brazil. They march under tall trees, a tiny remnant of the Atlantic Forest, the decimated biome that once carpeted a wide band along Brazil’s ocean coastline. It’s winter in Brazil, but Luciana Gatti is sweating. She says El Niño is causing the unseasonably sultry weather.

Gatti, a climate scientist at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), is here to ask the protesters for their votes. She’s on the ballot in Brazil’s 4 October elections, campaigning for a São Paulo seat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the country’s National Congress. Her platform is informed by her own research that shows even relatively modest logging threatens the entire Amazon rainforest, an important carbon sink that could turn into a huge carbon source, speeding up climate change. Legislators are not acting on the evidence—so she will take the fight directly to them, she says. “I will scream there.”

“I was very happy when she decided to become a candidate,” says fellow INPE employee Carlos Nobre, one of Brazil’s most prominent climate scientists. “Let’s hope she will be elected.” He says Gatti could help the legislature—which does not currently have a single scientist among its 513 representatives—make better informed decisions.

Gatti fell in love with nature as a child, sometimes sitting entranced for hours in the canopy of a tree. At college in the early 1980s she threw herself into revolutionary politics, opposing the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil. She studied chemistry, then earned a Ph.D. in environmental science. Since 2003 she has run the Greenhouse Gas Laboratory at INPE.

close-up of Luciana Gatti looking upward under a shady tree
In her scientific career, Luciana Gatti has shown that carbon uptake is slowing across the Amazon rainforest. The failure of the Brazilian government to act on such warnings has spurred her to run for office herself. DADO GALDIERI/HILAEA MEDIA

There, Gatti has spent her career collecting and studying samples of the atmosphere captured above the Amazon. Her findings have been alarming. In a 2021 Nature paper she showed that carbon uptake across the Amazon is slowing—and that the southeastern forest, which is particularly degraded, has turned from a carbon sink to a source.

Studies of tree growth had suggested the Amazon’s carbon uptake was declining, but these sampled trees across relatively small areas. Atmospheric measurements, on the other hand, reflect changes across vast swaths of the Amazon, says Paulo Brando, an ecology professor at Yale University. “The atmosphere cannot lie.”

By measuring carbon monoxide—a proxy for fire—Gatti also concluded that by warming and drying the jungle, deforestation is leading to more fires, which wipe out even more vegetation in a destructive feedback loop. The paper was a “huge landmark,” Brando says.

Despite the worrisome degradation of the Amazon, Gatti says the Brazilian government has failed to act decisively, even under the presidency of the left-wing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, generally a champion of forest protection. The major pillars of the Brazilian economy—including soy, beef, and timber production—foster deforestation, she says, and a supermajority of the National Congress consistently caters to their interests.

A stark demonstration of that center-right bloc’s power catalyzed her run for office. In November 2025, the congress passed a legislative package that all but guts the country’s rural land protection laws. The new law often leaves enforcement of mining and forestry rules, such as the requirement that 80% of a plot of Amazonian land must be left uncut, to landowners themselves. What environmentalists have dubbed “the devastation bill” was “my last straw,” Gatti says. “They are destroying the environmental protections one after other.” When, earlier this year, a political operative asked her to run as a member of the left-wing Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), she was ready.

Gatti says if she gets into power, she will lobby to move Brazil’s economy away from the agricultural and extractive activities that promote forest clearing. She plans to call for a slate of climate adaptation steps, many intended to protect vulnerable favela dwellers, such as painting roofs white and planting trees. She also envisions creating a powerful new institution staffed with nonpolitical specialists that could overrule the government on policies that might have an adverse impact on the climate.

a woman leans in to hug a large old tree that fills most of the frame and provides a shady scene outside in a park
Luciana Gatti worries about how a warming climate will affect the lives of millions of Brazilians living in uninsulated houses, without trees nearby to provide vital shade and cooling. DADO GALDIERI/HILAEA MEDIA

In São José dos Campos, after the swampy heat stops the march short, Gatti gives an impromptu speech under the shade of a gazebo. In unadorned language she describes the importance of the Amazon forest for curtailing global warming, painting a visceral and emotional picture of the hotter future that she’s anxious to prevent. She talks of the plight of millions of Brazilians living in uninsulated masonry and tin houses, unable to afford air conditioning. Because the same people are less likely to have trees nearby to provide shade and cooling and often perform outdoor manual labor, they face mortal risks from surging temperatures, she says.

Few prominent climate scientists have been elected to higher political office around the world. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, an environmental engineer, ran in part on a slate of climate proposals. But, unlike her and Gatti, Canadian climate modeler Andrew Weaver, a member of Canada’s Green Party, never campaigned on climate issues. He says his supporters could easily guess his views and preferred to hear his positions on other things. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in 2013 and then again in ’17, where he fought for, and in some cases won, climate friendly policies.

At least at the women’s march, Gatti’s climate message seems to strike a chord. The crowd listens attentively. A group energized by her emotional outpouring gathers around her when she’s done. They chant her rallying cries and complain that the legislature has too few women—and needs scientists.

Marco Gabriel Marcondes de Moura, a political scientist who recently completed a study of the electoral potential of São Paulo’s candidates for the Chamber of Deputies, says Brazil’s proportional voting system makes it hard to judge Gatti’s prospects. PSOL stalwarts running in the same district could siphon votes from her. He adds that Gatti’s gender and scientific profession might “well limit the target audience she needs to get elected.”

If she is successful, Gatti would likely face a legislature overwhelmingly opposed to the urgent forest-protection measures she demands. How much she could achieve would depend on the balance of interests in the next congress and her own political skills, Marcondes de Moura says.

Whatever her future in politics, Gatti says she plans to go on studying the air above the Amazon for clues to its future—and the world’s. Even if she has to pause her work for a while, she says, “there’s no way I’m going to stop being a scientist.”

With reporting by Dado Galdieri.

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I thought ‘I don’t know’ signaled scientific incompetence. Now, I know different

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From ScienceMag:

When I interviewed for my postdoc position, the group leader gave me a hypothetical research problem and asked, “So, Jingkai, how would you approach this?” I opened my mouth but didn’t know how to answer. To fill the silence, I scrambled to connect half-formed ideas, experimental techniques, and bits of terminology into something that sounded vaguely convincing. He smiled and proceeded to tell me he didn’t know either, which was why the question was interesting. I got the job. But afterward, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I hadn’t been good enough in that interview. It left me with a lingering sense that I couldn’t reveal any more gaps in my knowledge if I wanted to build my credibility.

Previously, as a Ph.D. student, I had sometimes felt embarrassed after asking questions that I feared came across as overly basic or ill-informed. Being hired into a postdoc position didn’t make that feeling go away. Instead, I felt I had reached a professional stage where I was supposed to know the answers, or at least look as though I did. So I made every effort I could to present myself as knowledgeable to those around me.

I brought a notebook to every seminar. I rarely wrote anything in it, but holding it made me feel protected. In meetings, I nodded in slow motion. Even coffee breaks became performances. As colleagues talked, I would stand there smiling and nodding while my coffee slowly went cold. During these conversations, questions would pop into my head, only to be cut off by the same inner voice: Don’t show your cards.

The performances were exhausting. But I kept them up for months, until I started to notice how one of the senior postdocs in our lab approached uncertainty. One day, a persistent leak crippled one of our laboratory instruments. I watched him investigate the problem and waited for the confidence I associated with experience. It never arrived. “I have no idea yet,” he said cheerfully. The sentence caught me off-guard. I had spent months trying not to say those words myself. He spent the morning testing one possibility after another. Most of them failed. Yet he never seemed bothered by that. Each dead end simply led to another attempt. Eventually, he figured it out and laughed with genuine satisfaction.

As I worked with him more, I found that “I don’t know” seemed to be one of his favorite phrases. I also noticed the same comfort with uncertainty in researchers further along in their careers. In meetings, our group leader often became most animated when discussing projects we had not yet figured out. His eyes would light up as he described a question we might pursue, a mechanism we might test, or an uncertainty we might turn into an experiment. He did not speak about the unknown as something embarrassing, to be hidden. He spoke about it as something worth moving toward.

Only then did I understand what I had missed in that interview: I had treated the moment like a test I had failed. But my group leader had admitted he didn’t know the answer and seemed genuinely excited to explore it.

After that realization, I began to change my approach. When I started to work with colleagues in a research area that was unfamiliar to me, I resisted my old instinct to search for every answer on my own. Instead, I asked questions openly. Those questions often led to discussions, and the discussions to ideas we could test. My colleagues, in turn, shared their own perspectives more freely. I got up to speed faster, avoided unnecessary detours, and, perhaps most important, stopped feeling that every gap in my knowledge had to be hidden.

For a long time, I thought becoming a scientist meant learning how to appear certain, composed, and knowledgeable. But the people I came to admire have held on to their willingness to ask questions and to be excited by what they did not yet know.

I still bring a notebook to seminars. But now it reminds me how much I have left to learn, rather than helping me pretend I already have the answers.

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I used to keep my family life private in grad school. A natural disaster changed that

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My phone has become impossible to put down. Less than 24 hours ago, a devastating earthquake hit my home country of Venezuela. After hours of calls and messages, I finally know my family is safe, for now. But my relief is quickly replaced by worry about aftershocks and everything that could come next. Sitting in the lab, waiting for a buffer to thaw, I find myself unable to focus on anything else. I’m no longer in lab. I’m back home, surrounded by chaos, fear, and pain. And I am once again tempted to wall off this part of my life.

The panic I felt waiting to hear from my parents was not new. Growing up in Venezuela, I learned that emergencies often came with uncertainty about whether help, medicine, or even electricity and other basic services would be available. When I was 10 years old and got sick during a dengue outbreak, my mother raced from clinic to clinic searching for a laboratory that could run the blood tests I needed. Years later, my grandmother received almost no medical attention during a heart attack that was ultimately fatal. Access to health care often depended on what could be found, borrowed, or purchased elsewhere. More than the events themselves, I remember the fear in my mom’s eyes, a feeling I eventually recognized in myself. Despite those challenges, my parents made immense sacrifices so my future could be defined not by instability and fear, but by possibility and hope.

Those sacrifices brought me to the United States, initially as an undergraduate and now as an M.D.-Ph.D. student. My life here is stable, structured, and privileged. Every month, I pick up my medications at the pharmacy without a second thought. When I flip a light switch or schedule a doctor’s appointment, I do so with the quiet expectation that things will function reliably. I know my family sacrificed greatly so I could be here, and they are proud of the opportunities those sacrifices have made possible. Still, I can’t shake the guilt of inhabiting a reality so different from theirs.

For years, my answer was to compartmentalize. Venezuela stayed in my phone, while the lab was where I focused on experiments, training, and progress. That compartmentalization often shaped what I shared with others. I remained reluctant to discuss my family’s situation with labmates and friends. I had been given an extraordinary opportunity, and I owed it to my family to make the most of it. I believed if I acknowledged how much my family’s struggles affected me, I would be wasting the opportunities they had worked so hard to give me.

However, this summer’s earthquakes exposed the fragility of that arrangement. I could pipette samples and attend meetings, yet mentally I was sitting in my mom’s darkened home, waiting for the power to return. Maintaining the separation no longer felt possible.

As I sat in the lab that first day, scrolling through social media for news, someone called my name, snapping me back to the present like cold water. A labmate who saw the news was asking about my family. For years, I would have dismissed the question and changed the subject. To my surprise, I found myself sharing parts of my past 24 hours, and opening up about parts of my life I had long kept to myself.

The fear, guilt, and uncertainty that I had kept carefully contained for years began to spill into conversations with friends and labmates. Their responses were simple yet meaningful: They listened, checked in, and made space for me to talk about what was happening. Those conversations made it easier to keep sharing. Instead of feeling distracted or weakened, as I once expected I would, I felt relieved. For the first time, I realized sharing my fears and guilt didn’t mean I lacked resilience. It made the burden easier to carry.

Now, when news breaks about Venezuela, I no longer pretend everything is fine. I have started to confide in my labmates and friends about my worries and guilt. I let myself step out of the lab for a few minutes to text my parents, or tell my principal investigator I need a moment to regroup. These small acts of vulnerability are becoming part of how I navigate the distance between my two worlds. By allowing myself to share both parts of my life, I am learning to live with the dichotomy. And in doing so, I feel more resilient than ever.

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How to supervise junior peers and become a mentor

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From ScienceMag:

As an aspiring group leader, marine ecologist Maysa Ito expected supervising and mentoring to become an increasingly important part of her role. But her early experience as a daily supervisor to a more junior lab member during her Ph.D. left her feeling “deeply frustrated,” she recalls. “I was unable to transfer my enthusiasm for the project,” she says. “I felt stuck, unsure how to support them.” In hindsight, she says, “Many early-career academics are not equipped or trained to supervision and mentoring roles … I was one of them.”

That experience prompted Ito, now a postdoctoral researcher at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, to take a step back and seek training. She took workshops in communication and leadership skills and enrolled in a “buddy” program at her institution as a postdoc mentor to Ph.D. students. The targeted, hands-on guidance she received “transformed how I show up as a mentor” today, she says.

Her early supervisory experience provided a valuable “entry point to discover the … roles that supervisor[s] and mentors play,” Ito says. She came to realize that “supervision and mentoring are not the same thing and they don’t always happen together.” Typically, though the two terms are often used interchangeably, a supervisor’s primary role is to see a student through a project; a mentor’s is to more holistically support their career development. But in both roles, “Truly understanding who is in front of you is essential to support their growth and help them develop their skills at their own pace,” Ito says.

To help readers at all career stages become the supportive mentors and supervisors they aspire to be, Science Careers asked Ito and other researchers to share the lessons they’ve learned on their way. The responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: What have your supervising and mentoring experiences been? Did you feel prepared?

Victoria Ann Bonnell, senior scientist of molecular biology at stealth-mode biotech startup in Boston: In my Ph.D. lab it was the natural responsibility of older graduate students to help onboard and train the newer ones. I also made sure that anyone in my department could ask me for advice if they wanted it, and later became my graduate student association’s chair on mentoring issues. I learned from building relationships with some great mentors. It’s OK to not have all the answers, and don’t assume you know what to do in every scenario. I was not a perfect mentor for all my mentees, but I always tried my best.

Joseph Walston, Ph.D. candidate in botany at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: My Ph.D. adviser had mentioned in passing that I could bring on undergrad students if I wanted; his only advice was that I find students who can help with my dissertation research. Once I found this first student—whom I heard say in a plant anatomy class during my first semester that he also liked carnivorous plants—I let my adviser know, and the student and I applied for his own funding. Since then, I have spent every year of my graduate studies mentoring a senior thesis student in my department; they get course credit for our work together. Over time, I gained confidence in my supervising role, and I have had students assist with my dissertation work as well as complete their own independent projects. I did not expect to be a mentor so early in my career, as I was practically mentoring students just a few months younger than me. But I personally felt prepared because of my pedagogical training for becoming an elementary and preschool teacher back in college. Those skills of lesson planning and turning complex topics into digestible instruction really help me with mentoring and bringing down some of the intimidating barriers for students.

Eleni Spyreli, research fellow in public health nutrition at Queen’s University Belfast: I have primarily been a mentor through ad hoc meetings and interactions with members of my team and friends. These stemmed from my desire to help colleagues with their work by drawing on my own experiences. More recently, I have started coordinating a mentoring buddy scheme between postdocs and postgraduates in my school. Having completed a milestone that somebody else aspires to reach puts you in a good place to offer advice, provided the experience is still fresh in your mind. The most valuable learning has come from reflecting on the advice that I received as a mentee and whether it has helped me—or not.

Andrew Moore, recently transitioned from a postdoctoral fellow to a lecturer in psychology at the University of Oklahoma: I started supervising undergraduate students as soon as I joined my graduate lab, in the early days of the pandemic. To make up for the lost experience during lockdown, I helped undergrads create virtual conference posters using data already collected. As we slowly returned to in person, I also started training them in data collection. Other than that, I helped a few postbaccalaureate students gain research experience as part of a formal mentoring program. I have always been told that if you feel prepared, you’ve started too late. As long as you go into these interactions with good, thoughtful intentions, I feel that you really can’t go wrong. The goal isn’t to be perfect; it is to do what you can, learn and adapt as you go, and ultimately help those around you.

Ioannis Pavlidis, associate professor at the University of Crete and coordinator of the WIDEnzymes mentoring program: I gained my first mentoring experience shortly after my Ph.D. through a platform that connected people from different professional backgrounds with high school students to offer vocational guidance. That early exposure naturally led me to embrace the role of tutor and mentor throughout my academic career. Mentoring is an interactive process, with both mentors and mentees growing over time. As I joined mentoring initiatives, there were always counselors or coordinators who helped clarify expectations or suggested ways to approach the mentee, and other mentors who were willing to share their own experiences.

Ito: Joining a mentoring program as a mentee earlier on gave me an understanding of what mentoring really means and what it can achieve. Still, I didn’t feel ready—I worried about making mistakes and the potential impact those mistakes could have on a mentee’s career. As I became a postdoc mentor in my institution’s buddy program, I learned how to listen and guide others through their careers by drawing on the failures and successes I had witnessed or experienced myself.

Q: How do you go about delivering your supervision and mentoring? What are the ingredients for a healthy and productive relationship? What insights and skills do you strive to convey to your mentees?

Pavlidis: It is important to spend the first few meetings simply getting to know each other and build a relationship based on trust. We talk about life experiences, dreams, disappointments, turning points, and the paths that brought us here. Those early conversations help the mentee see the mentor as a real person with doubts and turning points, not as an authority figure. Once that foundation is there, the meetings can become more mentee-driven and focus on career choices, workplace relationships, science communication, or any other issues. For me, a healthy mentoring relationship depends on mutual trust, openness, and enough flexibility to adapt to what is most useful at each moment. I try to pass on to mentees that there is no point in overthinking what might have happened if a different choice had been made. If the outcome is not ideal, we can always adapt and change direction.

Walston: My preferred method of mentoring is to begin at the earlier stages of their college career, as it allows for the students to build trust with me over time. I meet with my mentees as a group at least a few times a semester and individually once or twice a week. To help prevent issues and explain how they will be handled, I developed an onboarding process that includes mentoring contracts. These living documents capture the needs of the students while setting ground rules on when and how we can contact each other and what we can expect from each other. I suggest the book Entering Research: A Facilitator’s Manual by Branchaw et al. on advice for building such a document, and my institution also has a sample agreement form that I have adapted. Some of the main attitudes I strive to convey are curiosity and passion. I also try to support my students outside of research. I ask about their classes and exams and listen to their frustrations. If they experience conflict with their peers or instructors, I make sure they know I am here to help them navigate them.

Spyreli: I have been asked to help with very technical aspects, like working with a piece of software, all the way to more nuanced and sensitive situations like choosing the right Ph.D. program or navigating the relationship with their formal supervisor. I am always mindful that my experience may not be applicable to their set of circumstances and try to enhance my mentees’ ability to solve problems by considering different scenarios. 

Moore: I offer structured office hours to facilitate consistent and expected interactions, while always keeping my door open for spontaneous questions and a deeper connection. Then it is up to the mentee to help strike that balance in service of their needs. I strive to cultivate a sense of coachability in my undergraduate mentees; I hope to promote introspection about what they have yet to learn. In terms of practical skills, during group supervision I teach technical data collection, lab etiquette, and how to review the scientific literature. In one-on-one mentoring sessions I cover how to ask a meaningful scientific question, data curation, coding for statistics, and interpretation of results within the broader context. Other top skills I emphasize are being able to articulate one’s position verbally as well as through writing. Finally, I try to facilitate conversations with more senior mentors, as fostering those connections can really help students obtain letters of recommendation or enter a broader network.

Ito: Mentors and mentees in my buddy program come from different research fields, which creates space to step away from the science itself and focus on the bigger picture, including career development, work-life balance, and the personal challenges that shape an academic path. Personally, I’m most effective when I help with concrete and practical things, like deep-focus writing or time management. I share tools I’ve tried myself, providing a wide range of options because minds work differently. When asked how things went during my Ph.D., I revisit those years with careful evaluation; experiences that once felt confusing or pointless make more sense in hindsight, so I’m intentional and precise when I talk about them.

Bonnell: Over time, I have had conversations with mentees about problems regarding failed experiments, challenges with adviser relationships, local recommendations, and personal issues. Oftentimes, all these things were connected and talking helped diminish the problems they were having. If as a mentor you’re not comfortable talking about personal issues, offering support by pointing to mental health or other resources is a great approach.

Q: How do you tailor your approach to the individual needs of your mentees? What do you do when you can’t help?

Pavlidis: I tailor my mentoring by giving them space to shape the agenda, the pace, and the focus of our meetings. I believe this flexibility is important because mentoring works best when it feels genuine rather than forced. When a mentee is going through a research or personal setback, I try to listen carefully, help them put the situation in perspective, and remind them that setbacks are part of any meaningful path. When the issue goes beyond my own expertise, I do not hesitate to consult colleagues—in an anonymized way and with respect for the mentee’s privacy. I have not felt the need to draw a strict line around what I can provide, but I am always honest if I do not know something and I follow up after seeking the right support.

Moore: I get them thinking about their ultimate goals and dreams, and then we work backward to see what they need to accomplish to get there. While some students may be well versed in research or have a clear idea of what career they want, others are navigating college as a first-generation student and need a bit more coaching through the unspoken rules. For international students, connecting mentees with one another to create supportive, out-of-the-lab communities is especially valuable. Over time, you will get a better sense of when a student needs more time in the nest or is needlessly dragging their feet, often because they are nervous to move forward. Sometimes this calls for a one-on-one meeting to go over motivation and time management. Other times it’s a sign that this field might not be the right fit. If that’s the case, connecting the student to another mentor in an area they have expressed interest in might be beneficial for all.

Spyreli: Approaching the mentoring relationship with an open mind and respect for your mentee’s cultural background is always a good start. Additionally, familiarizing students with aspects that may be different in their own countries—for example, norms for communicating with supervisors—goes a long way. Equally, there have been many occasions where I felt I am not in the right place to provide advice or that I would be stepping on their supervisor’s toes. In these situations, drawing a line is the responsible thing to do.

Walston: I make sure to ask each student about their previous experience and find out their individual interests so I can tailor opportunities. I always allow my students to reschedule our meetings or shift times around if their other responsibilities are taking more of their time—but I make sure it is known and understood that this is still a class for them.

Ito: The heart of good mentoring is simple but powerful: Listen carefully and ask the right questions. The goal is to spark reflection, not to hand out ready-made answers. Try to offer mentees a fresh angle that pushes them to think beyond the immediate issue. What’s really causing it, and how can they tackle it in a way that leads to a lasting solution? Most of the time, they already hold the answers. That kind of self-reflection will build confidence and create deeper, longer lasting growth in mentees.

Q: What aspects do you enjoy most when supervising or mentoring junior peers? What challenges and tensions have you run into?

Walston: My absolute favorite moments are when the students understand the material and feel comfortable enough to start asking their own questions. Then, keeping in touch with former mentees reminds me how far I have come as a scientist. One particular challenge is when a mentee really wants to be a scientist, but they struggle to find time within their schedule. In the past, I have offered help with time management or tried to provide some accommodations, but ultimately I must be able to trust that they can complete the work. I have also found that if students start their own projects too early, it can be too intimidating and lead to a lot of unnecessary roadblocks. By first spending considerable time shadowing me to see how I think, ask questions, and address my own roadblocks, they are better prepared for their own endeavors in the lab.

Bonnell: There are many times in graduate school that feel like the end of the world—an important experiment fails in a way that doesn’t make sense, another lab scoops your thesis project, you find out your protein of interest doesn’t do anything interesting. I love seeing mentees succeed after these types of setbacks. For me, striking the balance between my own needs and those of my mentees was difficult to get right at first. But oftentimes it was as simple as me saying that I just needed to focus on my own work and referring them to someone else who could help in the meantime. You probably are not the only mentor that mentee has, so spread the responsibilities when needed.

Pavlidis: What I enjoy most in mentoring is seeing junior peers become more confident in expressing their views and making thoughtful, informed decisions. One student came to realize during our conversations that their wish to quit was driven more by external pressures than by a true personal choice, and eventually chose to stay on the academic path. Another junior peer with a strong academic profile and ambitious career plans decided to give more space to personal life and family. I found the two mentoring experiences equally meaningful, because mentoring is about helping each person identify the path that fits them best. What I still find more challenging nowadays is navigating human interactions. It is often a delicate balance between courtesy, honesty, and knowing how much one can endure without losing oneself. Often, there also is the awkwardness of the initial meetings, when both sides are still getting to know each other and trust has not yet been established. Another challenge is finding the right balance between being supportive and allowing the mentee to shape the process in their own way. I also need to be mindful of my own limits in time and energy. But often, the conversations give something back to me as well, so the relationship feels more balanced rather than conflicting.

Moore: When interacting with students or staff who are at an earlier career stage than you, always try to see the world through your younger eyes. You didn’t know the rules. You sometimes asked the wrong questions or made inappropriate assumptions. Forgive these missteps just like your mentors forgave yours. But while one should be warm and open around mentees, you may also be their supervisor, so be purposeful in forging professional boundaries. I personally do not hang out with mentees outside of the office to keep these boundaries clear and transparent to the mentees as well as to the senior lab members. I see mentoring as essential to my career development. But many institutions do not reward efforts beyond research. As a junior mentor, be sure to balance your own responsibilities and your own mentor’s expectations with your dedication to your mentees.

Q: How have you benefited from your supervising and mentoring experiences?

Pavlidis: Mentoring others has helped me become a better listener and a more thoughtful communicator, because mentoring requires me to understand not only what someone says, but also what they may be hesitating to share. It has strengthened my professional skills and broadened my perspective on both career and life choices. Some mentees also remain active in the field and become part of a strong network built on shared values and ethics.

Ito: Mentoring experiences pushed me to reflect deeply on my own career path. I discovered how much I enjoy helping others reach their broader goals.

Walston: Having mentees helps me increase my body of work while offering them a chance to be a co-author on my papers. An added benefit has been having them write letters of recommendation for me from a student’s perspective when needed.

Bonnell: Now that I’ve left academia for the biotech industry, the greatest benefit has been in my ability to form strong working relationships and communicate effectively in a cross-functional environment. Many former mentees and mentors have also become great friends, and I enjoy keeping up, even if once a year, with their next stages of life. You never know when someone can connect you with your next job or an interesting opportunity.

Spyreli: Being a mentor offers great opportunities to reflect on your own experiences, including the challenges you have overcome. This reflection can build confidence in your own abilities and in your capacity to support others through similar challenges. In a few cases, my mentees had a clear idea of what they wanted to do in the future, and interacting with them opened my mind to ways of thinking that I had not previously considered.  

Moore: As a research mentor, you are forced to push against the edges of your own understanding to offer a clear explanation to a knowledgeable yet inexperienced student. I also have had the chance to explain things to skeptical students and get out of my ideological echo chamber. But most importantly, I think being a mentor makes me a better person—more understanding, patient, thoughtful, introspective, empathetic, and kind.

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