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Life in Science

        
            Life in Science
        
    Reaching Out to Senior Scientists: A Step Worth Taking
            When we start out as early career researchers, we often hesitate to reach out to senior scientists. However, they are often excited to help young scientists. Here, Owen Ouyang discusses how mentorship, collaborations, and encouragement can come from a simple email to a senior colleague.
        
Owen Ouyang

    3 Jul 2025
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    4 min read
    
            Careers
        
    Zigs Can Zag with Purpose: Finding My Calling in Science
            Academic careers are full of surprises. Every step brings new questions that might involve navigating diverse fields. Here, Jonathan Tsay tells us how exploring multiple fields led him to the position where he is today.
        
Jonathan Tsay

    17 Apr 2025
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    4 min read
    
            Careers
        
    How to overcome your “academic midlife crisis” (Part 2 -  finding your path)
            The process of finding your ideal career path is not straightforward.  Fortunately, there are many career options for PhDs. Here, Nele talks about how you can find career paths that excite you and learn from others' experiences.
        
Nele Haelterman

    3 Apr 2025
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    5 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    How to overcome your academic midlife crisis (Part 1 – navigating your feelings and establishing your goals)
            Academic training takes many twists and turns, and, over time, our passions and goals may evolve. This can be confusing, but it offers an opportunity to reflect upon what brings us joy. Here, Nele Haelterman shares how she faced this uncertainty and came out with a clearer view of her path forward.
        
Nele Haelterman

    6 Mar 2025
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    5 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    Overcoming hardships for internationals in academia
            Doing research abroad is a dream for many scientists. However, the road is not always smooth: it takes time to master the social and bureaucratic aspects. Here, Yseult, Ankita, and Ruchika explain some of these challenges and how to help our international colleagues feel at home.
        
Multiple authors

    14 Mar 2024
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    5 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    Let’s get rid of confidential ‘reference letters’ in academia — a tool misused by abusive supervisors
            Reference letters hold a lot of power over an academic's career path and can make an ECR's life miserable if they are stuck in an abusive lab. Here, eLife community ambassadors Ruchika, Rio, and Suhaila advocate for alternative ways to get to know an applicant.
        
Multiple authors

    14 Sep 2023
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    6 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    Towards an increased awareness on the importance of Computational Reproducibility in Biological Sciences in Latin America
            Collaboration helps push science forward. However, its power depends on us sharing workflows, reagents, and results that our colleagues can reproduce. Here, a team of ECRs share how they came together with the mission of making science more reproducible and their upcoming projects.
        
Reprodutibilidade Computacional Bio

    31 Aug 2023
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    7 min read
    
            Careers
        
    My Successful Mentoring Experiment
            Throughout our scientific training process, many of us find ourselves asking if we have what it takes to become a successful mentor. In this blog post, Ruchika Bajaj shares her experience with designing a mentoring experiment to test the hypothesis that she can, and will be a great mentor.
        
Ruchika Bajaj

    3 Aug 2023
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    6 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    From Lone Wolf to Pack Power: Empowering Early-Career Researchers through Scientific Communities
            Life as a scientist comes with many personal and professional challenges. Thankfully, we do not need to face them alone, as there are many others like us out there. In this post, Yu-Fang Yang shares how she found the best communities for her and how being together lifts everyone up.
        
Yu-Fang Yang

    14 Jul 2023
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    6 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    Academic unions - Rectifying myths based on frontline experiences
            Early Career Scientists often find themselves in vulnerable situations, so it's important to put systems in place for their voices to be heard. Danny Doucette explains how academic unions provide such a platform, but also how unionization is at times hindered by bureaucracy or lack of confidence.
        
Danny Doucette

    1 May 2023
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    5 min read
    
            Publishing
        
    The Many Languages of Science
            There are more than 7000 languages in the world. So how do you make sure science communication, which typically happens in English, is accessible to everyone? In this blog post, Kanika Khanna tells us how to engage in and feel comfortable talking about science in a non-English language.
        
Kanika Khanna

    10 Nov 2022
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    4 min read
    
            eLife Ambassadors
        
    Learning how to change the research environment as an eLife  Community Ambassador
            Research can be incredibly rewarding, but there are a lot of hurdles along the way. Some of these relate to our environments and are difficult to overcome. In this post, Maria Sol Ruiz and Nalaka Wijekoon explain how to take matters into our own hands and step up to induce global change.
        
ecrLife editors

    4 Oct 2022
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    7 min read
    
            Careers
        
    How to avoid overcommitting in grad school
            The drive to publish is a strong motivator for scientists to spend late nights and weekends in the lab. While long hours may initially pay off, the lack of time for self-care and rest quickly  make you less focused and productive. Find out how to keep a healthy balance in our latest blog post.
        
Karishma Gangwani, Aishwarya Kothari

    3 Feb 2022
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    5 min read
    
            Careers
        
    How to get what you want out of graduate school: lessons from the business world
            Academic training teaches ECRs how to design, run, and analyze experiments, but often overlooks soft skills such as interpersonal and organizational skills. In this blog post, Rachel Meade shows you how to develop these skills and become a more well-rounded scientist.
        
Rachel Meade

    13 Jan 2022
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    6 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    How volunteering can support you and your research
            While life as a scientist can be incredibly rewarding, day-to-day life at the bench can at times feel like a drag. In this post, Katherine MacInnes tells us how transformative it can be to find an extra passion that provides short-term rewards for the soul to keep us healthy and motivated in life.
        
Katherine MacInnes

    16 Dec 2021
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    5 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    Mental health of early career researchers: COVID-19 brings the community together (virtually)
            COVID-19 has restructured the way we produce and share science, producing an unparallelled increase in stress and anxiety-levels among early career researchers. Here, members of the Berlin research community highlight key findings from their virtual brainstorming event to cope with this stress.
        
Berlin Institute of Health Research Community

    9 Sep 2021
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    4 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    Higher education re-imagined: goals, societal impacts, and pandemic effects
            Higher education will never be the same again post-pandemic, as hybrid learning is likely here to stay. In this post, Adriana invites us to review and implement today the changes needed in higher education to ensure sustainable training environments for the next generation.
        
Adriana Bankston

    10 Jun 2021
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    5 min read
    
            Life in Science
        
    My service in the Air Force made me a better scientist
            Pathways that lead to science are not straight forward: life usually doesn’t fit the patterns we draw. In this post, we can see that every experience can be taken as an opportunity for personal growth. The skills needed to achieve our purposes can come to us, very often, in unexpected shapes.
        
L.

    22 Apr 2021
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    5 min read
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