Working Scientist

After a mostly miserable childhood in the small Israeli village of Tel Aviv (his words), Ori Amir moved to the US, where he gained a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and launched a second career as a stand-up comedian.Amir is now a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he researches what happens in our neural networks when we are trying to be funny.His interest in this was triggered after realising there were around 20 studies examining brain activity when we are enjoying comedy, he says, but nothing about the creative process involved in being funny. Amir’s research also investigates attempts to use artificial intelligence to generate humour.“I’m afraid that if I make any jokes about artificial intelligence, I will get in trouble in the future. Artificial intelligence would cancel me. So I’m refraining from making any such jokes,” he tells his audience.Amir’s stand-up act also includes anecdotes about life as a PhD student. “It’s going to take seven years, the first five-and-a-half-years to work very hard on developing a silly accent,” he adds. “Then you do some original research and it all culminates in a dissertation defence in which you present your work in front of five important neuroscientists. And if you fail, they eat your brains.”This is the third episode of Tales from the Synapse, a 12-part podcast series with a focus on brain science, produced in partnership with Nature Neuroscience and introduced by Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at the journal.The series features brain scientists from all over the world who talk about their career journeys, collaborations and the societal impact of their research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second episode of this 12-part podcast series, Tales from the Synapse, neuroscientist Anil Seth describes his research into consciousness, which he describes as “insurance against falling into a single, disciplinary hole.”Alongside neuroscientists, Seth’s research group at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, also includes string theorists, mathematicians and psychologists. The team also collaborates with academics in the arts and humanities.His 2021 book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. begins by challenging the idea that consciousness is beyond the reach of science, and concludes with a look at consciousness in non-human animals, before asking if artificial intelligence will one day become both sentient and conscious.Seth’s own academic career path demonstrates the many disciplines with an interest in consciousness. He began studying physics but transitioned to psychology, computer science and artificial intelligence, the subject of his PhD at Sussex. He returned there to set up his neuroscience group after completing a postdoc at the The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, from 2001-2006.He admits to an ongoing sense of wonder that that the self is experienced through brain activity, the “tofu-textured electrical wetware inside our skulls” with its “86 billion neurons and 1000 times more connections,” adding: “It seems like a miracle. But that’s the point of science, isn’t it, to preserve the wonder of a phenomenon, but to explain it too?"Tales from the Synapse is produced in partnership with Nature Neuroscience and introduced by Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at the journal. The series features brain scientists from all over the world who talk about their career journeys, collaborations and the societal impact of their research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a pharmacy student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Natasha Mason was struck by the high volume of patients who complained about opiates and antidepressants not working, but at the same time became more and more dependent on them.This observation triggered an interest in the behavioural effects of psychedelic drugs, which took her career in a psychopharmacological direction. She now researches the neural effects of cannabis, both when people are under the influence of the drug, and over the longer term, at Maastricht University in the Netherlands.Mason is also interested in the positive and negative effects of developing a tolerance to cannabis.“Recreational users tend to use cannabis for the relaxing or the euphoric effects. So here, tolerance can be seen as kind of a maladaptive thing. You have to use more of the drug to get the high that you want … This is where addiction dependence can come in,” she says.“But tolerance can be a good thing in regards to the clinical use of this drug. Individuals who are using cannabis for pain do not want the high, because this also comes with the impairment as well.”This 12-part Working Scientist podcast series, Tales from the Synapse, is produced in partnership with Nature Neuroscience and introduced by Jean Mary Zarate, a senior editor at the journal. The series features brain scientists from all over the world who talk about their career journeys, collaborations and the societal impact of their research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you learn leadership skills as a researcher, and how well is science served by its current crop of leaders?These are just two of the questions asked of scientific leaders from a range of sectors and backgrounds in this five-part Working Scientist podcast series, all about leadership.In this final episode, Gianpiero Petriglieri focuses on the emotional aspects of leadership — describing it as a love for an idea, and for a group of people whom you’re trying to both protect and advance.Petriglieri, who researches organizational behaviour at INSEAD Business School in Fontainebleau, France, says that being in the physical presence of an effective leader should ideally make you feel calm, clear about priorities and cared for.Julie Gould also talks to Robert Harris, a past president of ORPHEUS, the Organisation for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences in the European System; he’s also a research-group leader at the Centre for Molecular Medicine, part of the Karolinska Institute in Solna, Sweden.Good leadership is all about effective communication and being able to inspire and empower others, he says. To do that, you need to ask the right questions, and make suggestions, rather than giving orders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you learn leadership skills as a researcher, and how well is science served by its current crop of leaders?These are just two of the questions asked of scientific leaders from a range of sectors and backgrounds in this five-part Working Scientist podcast series, all about leadership.In this penultimate episode, stem cell biologist Fiona Watt tells Julie Gould that one of her leadership mantras is: “There is nothing wrong with being wrong,” and that science is in good shape if it can acknowledge this.Watt is director of EMBO, the European molecular biology organization, based in Heidelberg, Germany.Her leadership positions before joining the organisation in 2022 include leading the Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine at King's College London.In this role she was able to indulge an interest in improving scientists’ working environments as part of a redesign project of its labs, offices and core facilities. In 2018 Watt was appointed the first executive chair of Medical Research Council, the UK funder.She compares her own hands-on and largely self-taught leadership skills (helped by a strong network of female colleagues earlier in her career) with opportunities for young aspiring lab leaders today.These include EMBO’s lab management course, which provides researchers on the cusp of independence with a trusting environment to learn about the common challenges group leaders are likely to face.Watt also tells Julie Gould about the role of science leaders in articulating the need for government funding for science, but says that spending decisions should sit with them, and not with politicians. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you learn leadership skills as a researcher, and how well is science served by its current crop of leaders?These are just two of the questions asked of scientific leaders from a range of sectors and backgrounds in this five-part Working Scientist podcast series, all about leadership.In this episode, Hagen Zimer tells Julie Gould about the qualities and skills you need to be a science leader in industry and how he approaches his role as managing director of TRUMPF Laser, a global company based in Schramberg, Germany, that manufactures lasers and laser-processing machine tools.Zimer says that effective leaders are good listeners who display high levels of empathy, so that they can understand individual colleagues’ fears and concerns. They also need to be authentic, he adds. If not, teams will not believe what they are being told.Zimer says that early-career researchers with leadership ambitions should ask themselves whether they see themselves taking the lead role in a play. “If you are in the leading position, you cannot hide any more. You are at some point also alone.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you learn leadership skills as a researcher, and how well is science served by its current crop of leaders?These are just two of the questions asked of scientific leaders from a range of different sectors and backgrounds in this five-part Working Scientist podcast series all about leadership.In this episode, Spanish neuroscience and mental health researcher Gemma Modinos talks about her own leadership journey as a group leader at King’s College London and former chair of the Young Academy Europe.Modinos compares “command and control” leadership styles with more collaborative approaches and says aspiring science leaders should not neglect leadership training as part of their career development.Learning how to say no effectively and allocating time to meet looming deadlines is another key skill, she tells Julie Gould.But should all early career researchers nurture leadership ambitions? No, says Modinos. “Not everyone has to strive to become a PI, or to be involved in chairing an organization, or being president, or being in boards,” she says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you learn leadership skills as a researcher, and how well is science served by its current crop of leaders?These are just two of the questions asked of scientific leaders from a range of different sectors and backgrounds in this five-part Working Scientist podcast series.In this episode, Charu Kaushic, a research group leader at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, says that leadership is more than just exercising power, competence and confidence, it is also about wanting to do good.Kaushic, who is also scientific director of the Canadian Institute of Infection and Immunity in Ottawa, describes how a better gender balance in science’s senior ranks will lead to a more consensual style of leading teams.She also offers some insights into how she honed her personal leadership style and how she adapts it for her different roles. She also talks about some leadership tasks that she still finds challenging. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kelsey Byers outlines some of the things disabled scientists should look out when they are looking to move labs, both at home and abroad. Byers, an evolutionary chemical ecologist who was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in her 20s and is now a group leader at the John Innes Institute, a plant and microbial research institute in Norwich, UK, also offers advice on how to talk about disability to potential employers.She is joined by Logan Gin, a STEM education researcher at Brown University in Providence. Gin, who has diastrophic dysplasia dwarfism, describes how his research is helping to identify solutions to support students with disabilities.Every institution should be able to support faculty members and scholars with disabilities, adds Siobhán Mattison, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who has myasthenia gravis.Kim Gerecke, a behavioural neuroscientist at Randolph Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, talks about the measures she has been able to take to support disabled colleagues at her institution. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.