If you want your product idea to succeed, one of the first steps is to interest potential investors.This can be hard for academic researchers, whose previous focus will have been on getting published, winning grants and teaching classes, says Javier Garcia-Martinez, a chemist at the University of Alicante in Spain, and founder of Rive TechnologyThis episode is part of Business of science, a six-part podcast series exploring how to commercialize your research and launch a spin-off. The series looks at investor pitches, patents, technology transfer, scaling up and how to survive the inevitable setbacks along the way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two researchers with disabilities describe an ‘ableist’ culture in academia, a system designed for fully fit and healthy people that does little to account for those who fall outside those parameters.  This culture can sideline scientists with disabilities, chronic illnesses, neurological or mental health problems. As a result many choose not to disclose their conditions for fear of being stigmatised. This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2020 Antentor Hinton led an online initiative via the Cell Mentor platform to mark the achievements of 1000 Black scientists. The list includes the cell biologist and diversity champion Sandra Murray. “If it wasn’t for her, putting up with certain institutional challenges....I wouldn’t be able to have a postdoc at Iowa, nor be able to be mentored by an African American male”, says Hinton, an assistant professor who studies mitochondrial dynamics regulation during aging at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.Carla Faria, a Brazilian laser physicist whose research group at University College London studies strong-field and attosecond-science, offers advice to scientists from under-represented groups on when to volunteer for workplace diversity initiatives. “You really have to ensure that time and the effort that you're putting there is effective”, she says. “ And what is going to happen is that your white male counterparts are going to publish another paper while you are spending your time doing this”.This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series which explores how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the past, many institutions produced similar types of scientists: researchers with a shared educational history who go straight from school to university then do a PhD and postdoctoral research.But not everyone follows this path. We meet two researchers who forged research careers later in life, and took very different routes to get there.How valuable has their previous life experience been in their current career? What skills did they learn along the way? And how did they overcome the obstacles they faced?This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world.Each episode in this series concludes with a sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) about how it is exploring diversity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Two LGBTQ+ scientists describe how sexual and gender identities can help to drive research by offering perspectives that others in a lab group or collaboration might not have considered.What role, for example, did gay scientists have in developing the direction of research into HIV and AIDS in the early 1980s, when the condition was erroneously seen as something that only affected homosexual men? And how are transgender researchers helping to shape investigations into the physiology of transitioning women undergoing oestrogen therapy to underpin fairness in sport?This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For all sorts of reasons, women remain under-represented in senior-level jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.To overcome these blocks, what can male allies do to challenge discriminatory practices and unconscious bias, and to recognize their own privilegeand the career advantages it has delivered?Two male scientists saw how female colleagues were ignored or talked over in meetings and treated more harshly than male candidates in job interviews.They discuss the need to take supportive action, including a range of measures that include a boycott of ‘manels’ — all-male panels.This episode is part of Science diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world.Each episode in this series concludes with a sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) about how it is exploring diversity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Different countries have varying working cultures — what works in China will not necessarily work in, say, Mexico.But what if you brought these cultural perspectives together in one place. How might that change research output?The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, an island university off the coast of Japan, has developed a research facility with an ethos based on international diversity. Currently, 83% of its PhD students come from abroad.Researchers there describe the challenges and opportunities of working in a university with no departments, and where the campus layout encourages interdisciplinary collaboration.This episode is part of Science Diversified, a seven-part podcast series exploring how having a more-diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world.Each episode in this series concludes with a follow-up sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) about how it is exploring diversity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine a world where science is still the sole preserve of the white, the male, the privileged. What research interests would be prevalent? And what research would get funded as a result?  Then imagine a very different world where different groups engage, bringing fresh ideas and perspectives. Because of their diverse backgrounds, these scientists study subject areas previously neglected or simply unthought-of. In this podcast series, Science Diversified, we explore how a more diverse range of researchers ultimately benefits not only the scientific enterprise, but also the wider world.Many young children have little or no exposure to working scientists and the types of jobs that they do. So the idea of pursuing a career in science is not on their radar. But that can change when you invite scientists to spend time with a class of lively pupils from a socially and ethnically diverse community. They plant a seed, in which the idea of pursuing a career in science can take root. This is what the education outreach programme team of London’s Francis Crick Institute aims to do. The team hopes that building ‘science capital’ in those crucial early years will lead to a more diverse scientific workforce.Each episode in this series concludes with a follow-up sponsored slot from the International Science Council (ISC) about how it is exploring diversity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many postdoctoral researchers can trace their career journey back to childhood experiences. In Pearl Ryder’s case it was spending lots of time outdoors in the rural area where she grew up, combined with the experience of having a sibling who experienced poor health.Ryder, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Boston, Massachusetts, and founder of the Future PI Slack group, says: “It made me realize how important health is, and that there’s so little that we understand about the world.”But is science, like some other professions a calling? Yes, says Christopher Hayter, who specializes in entrepreneurship, technology policy, higher education and science at Arizona State University in Phoenix. “There are professions that are a little bit different from your day-to-day job, something people gravitate towards, something bigger than themselves,” he says.“It is often referred to as a calling. I think we could say that about a lot of scientists. It’s how they define themselves: ‘I’m a scientist.’ ‘I’m going to cure cancer.’ ‘I’m going to discover the next planet.’ When students transition from doctoral students to postdoc they are really doubling down on that identity.”Michael Moore, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis, adds: “Being a scientist is overcoming a series of hurdles, and you need to see yourself as a scientist to get that internal motivation to keep going. You have to publish so much, get so many grants, teach so many courses. Having that identity and that motivation is really key to moving forward.”Gould’s guests discuss how to maintain that motivation despite the setbacks, and how a scientist’s professional identity and career path is underpinned by the networks, mentors and transferable skills acquired during a postdoc. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Postdocs and other career researchers need better trained lab leaders, not just nicer ones, Julie Gould discovers.Calls to change the research culture have grown louder in 2020 as COVID-19 lockdowns led to extended grant application and publication deadlines.As the world emerges from the pandemic, will researchers adopt more respectful ways of communicating, collaborating and publishing?Anne Marie Coriat, head of the UK and Europe research landscape at the funder Wellcome, tells Julie Gould about the organisation's 2019 survey of more than 4,000 researchers. The results were published in January this year.She adds: "We know that not everything is completely kind, constructive, and conducive to encouraging and enabling people to be at their best. "We tend to count success as things that are easy to record. And so inadvertently, I think funders have contributed to hyper competition, to the status of the cult hero of an individual being, you know, the leader who gets all the accolades."But what else is needed, beyond a kinder culture? In June 2020 Jessica Malisch, an assistant professor of physiology at St. Mary's College of Maryland, co-authored an opinion article calling for new solutions to ensure gender equity in the wake of COVID-19. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/27/15378 She says "We can't rely on kindness and good intentions to correct the systemic inequity in academia.Katie Wheat, head of engagement and policy at the researcher development non-profit Vitae, tells Gould that researchers who feel that they're their manager or their supervisor is supportive and available for them during the pandemic have better indicators of wellbeing than those who are not getting that support. "A PI might also be in a relatively precarious situation, reliant on grant income for their own salary, and for their team's salary. "You can be in a scenario where the individualistic markers of success put everybody in a competitive situation against everybody else, rather than a more collaborative and collegial situation where, where one person's success is everybody's success." Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.