Q&As

Francesco Mattia Rossi is an Associate Professor in the Laboratorio de Neurociencias at the Facultad de Ciencias - Universidad de la República in Montevideo (Uruguay), investigating the mechanisms of neuronal plasticity in the visual cortex. In addition to his faculty role, Dr. Rossi chairs the Federation of Latin American and Caribbean Neuroscience Societies. In this Q&A, he discusses his career journey and his engagement in promoting (neuro)science research and education in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ingrid Eftedal is a senior scientist at Norwegian University of Science and Technology Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, Norway, and a leading expert in baromedicine. In this Q&A, we talk about what started her career and the challenges of conducting niche research.

In this interview, marine biologist Jasmin Graham shares about her experience building grassroots change in science, navigating exclusionary spaces and what it means to foster belonging in the ocean sciences.

Audrey Dussutour is a Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (Toulouse, France), specializing in the adaptive behaviors of ants and slime molds. She has authored over 70 scientific papers and four award-winning science books. Dr. Dussutour has led two influential citizen science projects: “Raise Your Blob”, engaging 350,000 students, and “Behind the Blob”, mobilizing 15,000 volunteers to study climate change impact on slime molds. Her science communication efforts have been recognized with the National Order of Merit and the first CNRS Medal for scientific outreach. In this Q&A, she discusses the fascinating world of social insects and slime molds, the challenges of pursuing basic research outside mainstream funding priorities, and the importance of science education.

In this Q&A, Christopher Smith, Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, discusses his journey from medical illustration to evolutionary anatomy, emphasizing how artistic skills have shaped his scientific research and how visual representation can drive scientific discovery.

Professor Faraz Mardakheh began his research quest as an undergraduate at the University of Birmingham, after which he completed his PhD on receptor tyrosine kinase signalling in cancer. His journey continued at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, where he became a postdoctoral fellow investigating signalling mechanisms behind cancer invasion and metastasis. An unexpected turn of events, as often happens in research, awakened a passion for RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) which guides his research interests to date. Last year, Professor Mardakheh’s career experienced another exciting shift as he relocated his lab from the Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, to the University of Oxford. Leveraging their expertise in cutting-edge Mass Spectrometry-based proteomics complemented by RNA-sequencing, bioinformatics and a variety of cell-based and biochemical techniques, the Mardakheh lab aims to explore the mysterious world of RBPs and, more specifically, their implications in malignant transformation.

Nicolas Decat is a PhD student in neuroscience at the Paris Brain Institute. By day, he investigates what goes through people’s minds as they drift off to sleep. When they’re sleeping, he works on ways to turn science into visual stories that inspire.

Dr. Rachael Dangarembizi is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Human Biology and a neuroscientist in the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She has established the first laboratory in Africa that studies the mechanisms of brain injury caused by fungal neuroinfections. Her research bridges basic science with clinical insights, aiming to improve diagnosis, treatment, and patient outcomes by understanding fungal-host interactions, neuroimmune responses, and brain injury. Dr. Dangarembizi has earned multiple awards for her work and leads several organizations dedicated to advancing neuroscience capacity across Africa with the aim of growing local expertise and infrastructure to drive impactful research. In this Q&A, she tells us about the challenges and opportunities of conducting globally competitive research with limited resources.

Investigating the complexities of ageing through computational biology, Handan Melike Dönertaş shares her journey from evolutionary genomics research at Middle East Technical University to leading her own lab at the Leibniz Institute on Ageing. Her team is developing and applying computational approaches aiming to advance our understanding of the microbiome and ageing.

Dr. Guifen Liu, now an Associate Professor at ZhangLab, Tongji University, began her research in epigenetic regulation using zebrafish as a model, first as a postdoctoral researcher and then as a research scientist. She established the zebrafish culturing system at the Department of Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai, China. Dr. Qi Wang is an Assistant Professor at ZhangLab, Tongji University, and she is in charge of the cell culture part of the lab and has broad expertise in high-throughput experimental research on chromatin structure. They are the only two experimental biologists in a dry lab focusing on different research topics. At present, they are in the transition period from experimental scientists to computational scientists. Current Lab Members-Yong Zhang Lab (tongji.edu.cn).

In this Q&A, Brianna Bibel, also known as the Bumbling Biochemist, talks to the journal about how social media can be harnessed to relay scientific information to other researchers, while making it fun and accessible.

Conducting research at the interface of chemistry, microbiology and marine biology, Constanze Kuhlisch reports on challenges in science due to COVID and the situation in Israel, while preparing grants to start her own research group.

Dr. Rui Seabra studies the thermal landscapes of rocky shores across the world and how environmental complexity drives species’ distributions and vulnerability to global warming. He co-leads the Coupled Coastal Temperature and Biodiversity Observation Network (CCTBON), a network aimed at monitoring patterns of rocky shore temperatures and biodiversity patterns across the Atlantic Ocean. In this Q&A we discuss the challenges of biodiversity research at the global scale.

Dr. Chris Wallace is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, Director of Research, and Principal Investigator in the Department of Medicine and a Programme Leader in the MRC Biostatistics Unit (BSU) at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Guillermo Reales is a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Wallace’s group, where he recently co-authored a Comment evaluating the impact of sharing summary statistics on average citation rates of genome-wide association studies (GWASs). In this Q&A, we discussed the inspiration for their recent analysis on GWAS summary statistics, the importance of open data, and potential barriers or paths to data sharing in genomics.

March 31st marks Transgender Day of Visibility, an opportunity to celebrate and elevate the achievements of the transgender community. As part of our annual celebration of Transgender Day of Visibility, we reached out to Leland Graber and Dr. Ezra Kottler, two early-career transgender biologists who shared their own experiences and perspectives on improving support systems for the transgender research community.

Although we have come a long way in breaking down the stigma surrounding mental health conditions, we still have a long way to go. Here we speak to Dr Anna Schueth - a postdoc and passionate advocate whose blogs and other efforts are leading the way in changing academia towards a direction that will allow everyone to thrive as their authentic selves and to get the support they need.

To commemorate LGBTQIA+ STEM Day this year, we reached out to faculty in institutional and national leadership roles to discuss their academic journeys, the importance of having queer role models and ways to better support LGQTBIA+ researchers.

The STEM Village is an international effort dedicated to improving the visibility of the LGBTQ+ STEM community. As part of our own celebration of LGBTQIA+ STEM Day, we spoke to members of The STEM Village leadership team about their programming and ways to get involved.

Dr. Nikki Traylor-Knowles is an Associate Professor of Marine Biology and Ecology at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science. Dr. Traylor-Knowles received her Ph.D. from Boston University and was a NSF Ocean Sciences postdoctoral fellow at Hopkins Marine Station before starting her own research lab in 2016. In this Q&A, Dr. Traylor-Knowles tells us about her work on understanding the complexities of coral and role as the founder of Black Women in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Science (BWEEMS).

In this second Q&A for Peer Review Week, we spoke to Dr. Franziska Denk and Professor Katryn Stacey about their views on research integrity as scientists and reviewers.