Alongside the stresses of adapting to a new country and settling into a new lab, scientists who have made the move abroad since 2020 often face extra barriers as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These include rescinded job offers, postponed start dates, burdensome vaccine paperwork and long and lonely stints in quarantine hotels.

Neuroscientist Jen Lewendon tells Adam Levy about her move from the United Kingdom to Hong Kong via Thailand to begin a postdoc at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

“The obvious disparity between the way COVID is being handled in the West and the way COVID is often being handled in Asia makes splitting life between two places very difficult,” she says.

Astrophysicist Katie Mack was on an extended visit to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, when the 2020 lockdown took effect, preventing her return North Carolina State University in Raleigh.The experience made her re-assess her career priorities.

This is the final episode of a six-part Working Scientist podcast series on moving labs.

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