Charlotte Roughton says she developed a deep-rooted shame and resentment towards her autism diagnosis, causing her to mask the condition during her biosciences degree at the University of Durham, UK.

But socially camouflaging and striving to appear as neurotypical to others led to burnout and poor mental health, she tells Adam Levy.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which straddled her Masters and PhD programmes, was a turning point. She cultivated a community via social media, becoming an advocate for neurodiversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

Being neurodivergent brings benefits to her role as a biological teaching technician at the University of Newcastle, UK, she says. She offers advice and how and when to disclose an autism diagnosis at work, based on her own experience, and how institutions and lab mates can support neurodivergent colleagues.

Endocrinology researcher Michelle Kimple tells a similar story, recounting the relief she felt on receiving a bipolar and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis.

She describes how this impacts her role as a faculty member in the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin Madison.

In 2024 Kimple wrote about her experiences in Nature, prompting other neurodiverse scientists to get in touch, and enabling her to mentor and support others.

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Graphic designer Jakob Trollbäck remembers a 2014 meeting with film director Richard Curtis and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, then very much a work in progress, coming up in conversation.

Curtis, whose movies include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Love Actually and the Bridget Jones series, is also a UN Advocate for the SDGs. The meeting in Trollbäck’s New York studio suddenly turned to the 17 goals, with Curtis telling him: “I think this may be our last shot of fixing a lot of the things that’s wrong with the planet. And I also think that these goals are going to fail if we can’t make them popular. Do you want to help me?”

Trollbäck, founder of The New Division agency, rose to the challenge. Over the course of a year, alongside designer colleague Christina Rüegg-Grässli, he designed the now famous multi-colour palette, individual icons and logo of the SDGs.

Their design had to tick three boxes: be accessible, universal and positive. The interconnectedness of the goals leant itself to the overall circular logo type, and the bright colours were key to making the framework interesting and likeable.

Some icons were almost instantaneous in their creation — such as the fish that represents SDG 14: Life Below Water — while others needed collaboration with the UN communications team colleagues to get right.

For example, Trollbäck remembers SDG 2: Zero Hunger; the initial design had a fork in it, until someone pointed out that two thirds of the of the world’s population don’t use forks.

The World Economic Forum say 74% of the adults globally are aware of the SDGs.

This is the final episode of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a Working Scientist podcast series that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs. Episodes 13–18 are produced in partnership with Nature Sustainability, and introduced by Monica Contestabile, its chief editor.

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Growing up in the last years of the Cold War motivated Gabriele Jacobs to enter academia and play her part in building peaceful societies. 

Jacobs works at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where she researches the role artificial intelligence (AI) can play in public safety and the ethical debate surrounding this.

She describes how experiments are being conducted on beaches in the Netherlands to see if AI can be used to predict human behaviour. These experiments also test the ethical, legal and social implications of this use of AI, and question who has the power to choose the definitions used in the algorithms.  

Jacobs’ work addresses Sustainable Development Goal Number 16: to promote peaceful and inclusive societies and justice for all. 

This is episode 16 of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a Working Scientist series podcast that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs.   Episodes 13–18 are produced in partnership with Nature Sustainability, and introduced by Monica Contestabile, its chief editor.

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Watching documentaries about the Titanic inspired deep-sea microbiologist Beth Orcutt to study life at the bottom of the ocean – a world of ‘towering chimneys, weird shrimp and octopus nurseries’ that she has visited 35 times.

But Orcutt says there is so much we still don’t know about the deep sea, which is a problem for the sustainable development of this environment. Orcutt works at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay, Maine, where her research helps to understand how deep-sea mining might impact unique ocean communities.

Research on similarly destructive activities, such as deep-sea trawling, show decades-long recovery times for keystone species such as corals and sponges, or in some cases no recovery at all.

Orcutt works through the Crustal Ocean Biosphere Research Accelerator (COBRA) project funded by the US National Science Foundation to bring academics, policymakers and science communicators together to accelerate research about the deep sea and translate that knowledge for decision makers.

This is episode 14 of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a Working Scientist series podcast that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs. Orcutt’s work addresses Sustainable Development Goal number 14: to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine sources.

Episodes 13–18 are produced in partnership with Nature Sustainability, and introduced by Monica Contestabile, its chief editor.

This episode ends with a sponsored slot from La Trobe Institute for Sustainable Agriculture and Food in Melbourne, Australia, where we hear about how its researchers are focusing on the SDGs and the university’s holistic approach to food security.

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In the sixth and final episode of The Last few miles: planning for the late stage career in science, Julie Gould unpicks some of the generational tensions that can arise in academia when a colleague approaches retirement.

Inger Mewburn, who leads research and development training at the Australian National University in Canberra, tells her: “There’s a fine line between being around and being valued, to being around and kind of being a pain in the ass and no one will tell you to go away.”

Gould also talks to scientists who, despite reaching retirement age, continue to engage with younger colleagues, enjoying positive interactions at conferences and co-authoring papers.

They include Heather Middleton, who started trawling England’s Jurassic Coast in her 60s, looking for specimens that might lead to a deeper understanding of palaeontology. Middleton, who is approaching her 80th birthday, taught science in schools and colleges, and in retirement balances her fossil-hunting, (and the collaboration opportunities it brings), with family holidays, grandchildren, friends and Tai Chi. “It’s a great balance, which I hope other retiring scientists will be able to enjoy such opportunities that I’ve had,” she says.

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