Category: Europe
Growing up in Science: Anne Urai
Anne Urai Ihad a careless childhood. I was good at school, but could never quite decide on my passions. I dropped high-school physics and chemistry in a streak of rebelliousness, only to realize my mistake a year later and catch...
Finding a Passion for Physics and Virtual Reality Headsets
Haxhi Pantina: "To this day, I still like reading about stars and the universe, but quantum mechanics, quantum optics, and quantum information contain the largest part of my daily routine."
Sleeping Astrocytes: Failures and Successes on the Journey to Publication
Laura Bojarskaite: "I want to be honest and tell you the story of how science actually happened for me and not how science should have happened according to all the rules, supposed-to’s, and textbooks."
Becoming a parent in academia – when science fails you
B. Muehlroth: "Although I managed to continue devoting a major part of my life to my PhD, my life with infertility made me aware of my own boundaries and forced me to overstep them many times. I was never sure...
Take A Chance
Inna Nechipurenko: "I switched model organisms and shifted the focus of my research to cilia – microscopic signaling “beacons” of our cells. Specifically, I wanted to understand how they form and function in specialized sensory neurons."
Protected: How Imprisonment Inspired My Freedom
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Getting Started in Academia
Cristina Savin: "In retrospect, I had very little idea what I was doing. After the first few rejections, I started doubting that I belonged in academia at all."
An Immunologist’s Perspective
Dr. Viki Male started her scientific career as a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, where she worked on the development of NK cells in the human uterus before moving to Imperial College London to find out how NK...
But You Are A Girl!
Sophie Farr: "In a society where most famous celebrity women are known for makeup and fashion, most girls think they can’t get anywhere as a woman unless they want to do fashion or art. I want that to change."
The PhD Delusion
My parents were still on cloud nine about their daughter having finished a PhD at a highly-ranked university, doing ground-breaking research on cystic fibrosis. They were talking about it as if I had been on a wonderful, noble mission which...
How My PhD Training is Empowering Me
Teresa Ambrosio: "I wasn’t aware I was suffering from depression for so long and I blamed chemistry for missing out on all the other aspects of life. I suddenly realized that my whole world was my 1x2 square meter desk...
A Science Outreach Story
Claudia Gisela Willmes - I enjoyed helping students understand the importance of animal research and to challenge their assumptions about the kind of experiments that scientists conduct.
Can You Ever Escape Your Personal and Scientific Bubbles?
I’ve wanted desperately from early on to have a straightforward path. I imagined that everyone knew what they were supposed to be doing professionally, and that they were surely great at it. Everyone but me. I always thought that I...
Me Versus Me
It was around 8th grade that my own personal video game boss blocked my progression. I was struggling in an earth science class and failing to reach the high standards I had set for myself. It wasn’t long before I...
Breaking Through My Glass Ceiling…Twice
I was not born a scientist nor was I born with the knowledge that I would one day be a L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate in France. However, I attained these achievements through maintaining curiosity, making difficult choices, sustaining...
Art and Design Meets Science: A Reflective Conversation on Science Communication
For all its diversity, one thing is certain: like science, art and design makes its own image of the world. Both are searching for a deeper insights, for the not obviously visible, for the substantial, and how our common future...
The Anxiety Fights Back
– Erica Hawkins – – The story below originally appeared on Erica’s Phd Freaking Out Blog on August 9, 2017 – Anxiety ebbs and flows. One week you can feel super chilled, and the next feel on the edge all...
Academic dreams: they come and they go
– Bill Hinchen – Is it time I let go of the academic dream? I seem to have been battling with this question for several years now. For as long as I can remember, I wanted to do science — I mean proper...
Diffraction
– Rowena Fletcher-Wood | Programme Delivery Officer at Science Oxford – The story below by Rowena was originally published in 2014 through the Story Collider. You can listen or read it below! When I was eighteen, I loved school and I loved...
Why I Sci
by Natalie Hamer | Biomedical Science Student at Newcastle University | My favorite question has always been ‘why?’ As a child, this question frustrated my mother to no end. I asked her a million questions, and interrogated all of her answers....
Take a Chance On Me
by Jessica Okoro | TEDxLeicester Jessica Okoro the founder and director of BeScience STEM. Their mission is to “bring STEM to communities that do not currently have the opportunity to experience different aspects of STEM and to explore career choices, explore...
An expedition across the Atlantic Ocean
Stephanie Fiedler, PhD Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg An alarming sound rings through the ice-cold air as a giant crane lifts my heavy boxes. I quickly search for a way through the maze of steep staircases. My adventure on...