Ep35: All Change Please! (Bonus Episode)

January 3, 2017 in Season 2
Photograph of traffic lights in a city.
Green lights ahead. Image credit: Stuart Higgins.
Being a scientist means being comfortable with change. Just when you’ve settled down and got things sorted, it’s all change and on to the next thing.

Do I belong here? ... Well, I definitely enjoy it

That change could be a new project, a new discovery, a new contract. It seems inherent to being a scientist that you must always be ready for change.

Inspired by my own change of job, I wanted to find out about other scientists experiences of change too. Firstly I catch up with my friend and interviewee from Season 1, Christian Clear. He moved away from an industry job to start a PhD, and now with the benefit of hindsight I wanted to see how that change had been for him. We reflect on how his life before returning to academia has influenced his PhD.

What does it mean to have made it? That’s not the point of our job

I also speak with Dr Jean-Philippe St-Pierre, on his last day as a postdoc at Imperial College London, before becomes an Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa. After many years as a researcher, what does it feel like to finally ‘make it’? We talk about his pathway to this point and his expectations for the future.

This is a in-between seasons bonus episode. A full new season is coming in Spring 2017.

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