Today marks the end of my first month in my new lab and so a chance to take stock of the move. Working with great new colleagues and having the…
Back in the lab: molecular self-assembly on surfaces
Last Friday, I was fortunate enough to be allowed to make an early start on my return to the lab by taking part in the EPSRC Directed Assembly Network’s meeting…
Confidence: the essential requirement for tenure?
Recently, I commented on a post made by another former postdoc describing why she left science and trying to come to terms with the low probability of making it through…
Taking a fresh look at past papers
Do you blog or tweet about your research as you publish new papers? An excellent post by Prof Athene Donald on Physicsfocus earlier this week commented on how often academics…
Finishing the job: how can we help students turn a thesis into publications?
As my week for reading and writing papers (A step back gives a wider view) starts to fade into the background of a busy final few weeks in my current…
A step back gives a wider view
Although I won’t be back in the lab full-time until January, I returned to my old group for a few days last week to work on some papers and to start to…
Finishing that first postdoc: a critical moment
Recent estimates suggest that just somewhere between 6 and 15% of PhD students end up in tenured academic posts (Nature, 2011). Clearly, one of the major exit points is straight…
Returning to Science: on Ada Lovelace day
Tuesday was Ada Lovelace day, an annual celebration of women in STEM named after the early pioneer of programming algorithms. Last weekend I was took part in a Wikipedia editathon…