Naturejobs Podcast

Francisco Ferreira’s first exposure to inequality of opportunity was during his daily ride to school in São Paulo, Brazil, and seeing children his age selling chewing gum on the streets. Ferreira, a former World Bank economist who now researches inequality at the London School of Economics, speculates on the wasted human talent caused by such hardships, and how many more scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and writers there would be if inequalities could be tackled at an early stage in children’s lives. “I think it deserves even more attention than it already gets,” he says, before going on to describe progress toward delivering Sustainable Development Goal 10: to reduce inequality in and among countries, and how best to measure it. Ferreira outlines how machine learning tools are helping to identify the most powerful predictors of societal divisions and how income is distributed.How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals is a podcast series that profiles scientists whose work addresses one or more of the SDGs. E

Power networks are humankind’s biggest engineering achievement to date, says Sinan Küfeoğlu. But ageing infrastructure in advanced industrialised economies, coupled with the fact that around one billion people in the world lack continuous power access, particularly in Global South countries, could threaten the delivery of Sustainable Development Goal 9 by 2030, he warns. The goal promotes resilient infrastructure, inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and innovation.Speaking in a personal capacity, Küfeoğlu, a senior policy manager at the UK government gas and electricity market regulator OFGEM, lists some of the hurdles ahead, based on his work as an energy systems researcher in Finland, UK, US, and Turkey, where he grew up.Many funding proposals, he says, pack in “buzzwords” such as green, sustainable, holistic, inclusive, and circular economy, but governments and other infrastructure project funders are often poor at measuring impact, and undertaking return-on-investment and cost-benefit analyses.Ho

In Kenya, where Moses Ngoze teaches entrepreneurship and management at Masinde Muliro University in Kakamega, micro, small and medium enterprises provide 75% of jobs and more than 80% of the country’s gross domestic product. Typically these organizations employ between one and 100 people and include subsistence farming, hospitality and artisan businesses, mostly operating in a jua kali environment, a Swahili term meaning “hot sun,” he says.Ngoze's research explores how the enterprises can help achieve full employment and sustained (and sustainable) economic growth by 2030, captured in Sustainable Development Goal 8, one of 17 agreed by the United Nations in 2015.He tells the How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals podcast that African economies and employment ambitions need more than multinational employers moving there. These firms only employ 10% of the world’s workforce, he says.Infrastructure improvements are also needed, Ngoze adds, alongside more reliable energy, stronger internet connectivity, and t

Julien Harou’s career started in geology in his current role as a water management and infrastructure researcher now straddles economics and engineering, with a particular focus on using artificial intelligence (AI) to measure Ghana’s future energy needs. Harou is relatively upbeat about progress so far towards achieving sustainable and reliable energy for all by 2030, the seventh of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations in 2015. He points out that from 2015 to 2021, the portion of the global population with access to electricity increased from 87% to 91%, and last year about 30% came from renewable sources. Harou’s research at the University of Manchester, UK, incorporates computer modeling and artificial intelligence design algorithms to balance Ghana’s long term renewable energy and infrastructure needs. But AI also helps to address the environmental and human health impacts. For example, Ghana’s Volta River was dammed in the 1960s to create the Akosombo dam. But it

María Teresa Dova describes how an early career move to CERN as the first Latin American scientist to join Europe’s organisation for nuclear research ultimately benefited both her but also the researchers she now works with back home in Argentina.The move to Geneva, Switzerland, where CERN is based, required Dova to pivot from condensed matter physics, the subject of her PhD at the University of La Plata, Argentina, which she gained in 1988. But any misgivings about the move to Europe and switching to a new field were quickly banished by her excitement at working on the L3 Large Electron Positron Collider project, she tells Julie Gould. Dova returned to Argentina two-and-a-half years later, launching the experimental high energy group at La Plata and driving other important collaborations, including the inclusion of Argentina in CERN’s ATLAS particle detector collaboration. She describes how it happened. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A 2021 report by the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean revealed that only 18% of public universities in the region had female rectors. Vanessa Gottifredi, a biologist and president of Argentina’s Leloir Institute Foundation, a research institute based in Buenos Aires, says this paucity of visible role models for female scientists in the region means that damaging stereotypes are perpetuated.A female, she says, will not be judged harshly for staying at home to handle a family emergency, but will be for being pushy at work, unlike male colleagues. “Women need to hear that they are good, more than men do, because they tend to convince themselves they're not good enough,” she adds.In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series about female scientists in Latin America, Gottifredi, who worked abroad for 11 years before returning to Argentina, tells Julie Gould how she aims to empower female colleagues, based on what she witnessed elsewh

Fernanda Staniscuaski earned her PhD aged 27. Five years later she had a child. But in common with many scientist mothers, Staniscuaski, a biologist at Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, saw funding and other career opportunities diminish as she combined motherhood with her professional life. “Of course I did not have as much time as I was used to have. And everything impacted my productivity,” she tells Julie Gould.The Brazilian biologist founded the Parent in Science advocacy movement after talking with other scientist parents. In the fourth episode of this six-part podcast series about Latin American women in science, Staniscuaski lists the movement’s achievements so far, and the challenges that lie ahead.In 2021 Parent in Science won the science outreach category in the Nature Inspiring Women in Science awards, in partnership with the Estée Lauder Companies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Paleontologists Ana Valenzuela-Toro and Mariana Viglino outline some of the challenges shared by researchers across Latin America. These include funding, language barriers, journal publication fees and conference travel costs. But the two women then list some of the extra burdens faced by female researchers who live and work there, many of which will resonate with female colleagues based elsewhere. “When you are in a room sharing a scientific idea or project, nobody listens to you. Then another person, usually a male researcher, says what you said,” says Valenzuela-Toro, who is based in Caldero, Chile. Mariana Viglino, a Puerto Madryn-based researcher at CONICET, an Argentine government science agency, says the election of far-right governments inevitably results in science funding cuts. “And that means many people having their careers cut. Many research projects that are not going to be able to continue,” she warns.“It makes me feel really hopeless, and really burnt out, and really sad. I

In 2013 physicist Carolina Brito co-launched Meninas na Ciência (Girls in Science), a program based at Brazil’s Federal University of Rio Grande de Sul.The program exposes girls to university life, including lab visits and meetings with female academics. “There are several girls who have never met someone who has been to university,” says Brita. “It’s beyond a gender problem.”Jessica Germann was one of them. The 19-year-old is about to start an undergraduate physics degree. She tells Julie Gould how writing a school essay about particle physics and a fascination for YouTube science videos helped in her career choices.This episode is the second episode in a six-part Working Scientist podcast series about Latin American women in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In her role as Vice Rector for research partnerships and collaboration at the University of the Valley in Guatemala City, Monica Stein works to strengthen science and technology ecosystems in the Central American country and across the wider region.To mark International Women's Day on 8 March, Stein outlines the steps needed to attract girls into science careers. Access to higher education needs to widen, she argues, alongside more robust legal and regulatory frameworks to make research careers more diverse.“We need to inspire other women, we need to mentor other women, we need to be available for conversations,” she says. “We need to tell them it’s okay to say no to a project, because you’re pregnant, just giving birth, or your child is young, which is something that is so common here in Guatemala.”This episode is the first episode in a six-part Working Scientist podcast series about Latin American women in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Laure Sione’s postdoctoral research at Imperial College London addresses the sixth of the 17 United Nations SDGs, but, she argues, sanitation also plays a huge role in gender equality (SDG 5) and good health and well being (SDG 3) targets.Sione’s PhD research focused on water management challenges in Kathmandu, but she now focuses on Sub-Saharan Africa and the problems caused by open defecation and excrement-filled pit latrines that are sited too close to the water table, risking contamination.A third option is toilets layered with Tiger Worms. A key advantage is that these take longer to fill up as the worms quickly degrade faeces, but one barrier is getting people to use them in the first place. “It’s like, it’s a gross thing, and they don’t want to think about it. But I think the benefits quickly take over,” she says.Each episode of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a Working Scientist podcast series from Nature Careers, features researchers whose work addresses one or more the targets. The first six

In 2016 the University of Melbourne, Australia, asked for female-only applicants when it advertised three vacancies in its School of Mathematics and Statistics. It repeated the exercise in 2018 and 2019 to fill similar vacancies in physics, chemistry, and engineering and information technology.Elaine Wong and Georgina Such tell the How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals podcast why certain schools wanted only female candidates to apply, and how staff and students reacted to the policy. They also explain what it achieved in terms of addressing the under-representation of female faculty in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects.Both Wong, a photonics researcher who was appointed Pro Vice-Chancellor (People and Equity) at the university in 2023, and Such, a polymer chemist and associate professor there, explain how the university’s “affirmative action” strategy is helping to address the fifth of the 17 United National Sustainable Development Goals: to achieve gender equality and empower a

As a child Solomon King Benge loved Eric Laithwaite’s 1974 book The Engineer in Wonderland, based on the mechanical engineer’s 1966 Royal Institution Christmas lectures. After reading it he asked his physics teacher if he and his classmates might try some of Laithwaite’s practical experiments, but was told: “Don’t waste your time with this. This is not important, because it’s not in the curriculum.” The rejection promoted Benge to launch Fundi Bots in 2011. The social education initiative aims to give education a stronger practical focus, a move away from learning by rote in front of a blackboard. Last year it reached 22,000 students, most of them in Uganda, and hopes eventually to cover one million across Africa.Robotics is a key component of the program. Benge recalls one child in northern Uganda who built a sensor-driven robot and was asked what he might do with it. He said: “I think I can now create something that lets the goats out of the pen in the morning so that I don’t have to wake up early

A drive to reduce suicide mortality rates is a key indicator of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Psychiatrist Shekhar Saxena, who led the World Health Organization’s mental health and substance abuse program after working in clinical practice for more than two decades, says that although progress is being made, a worryingly high number of young people are choosing to end their lives.“They have to struggle through the school education, competitive examinations, then they have to struggle for a job,” says Saxena, who now teaches at Harvard Chan School of Public Health, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “And many young people decide that dying is easier than struggling through for many years, which is very sad. It reflects the society that we live in where a young person does not feel that life is worth living.”In the third episode How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals podcast series, Saxena welcomes the inclusion of mental health in SDG 3 and its aim to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being fo

As a nutrition and planetary health researcher, Christopher Golden takes a keen interest in the second of 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and its aim to end hunger.But Golden’s research also focuses on “hidden hunger,” a term he uses to describe the impact of dietary deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, fatty acids, and vitamins A and B12.Hidden hunger, he argues in the second episode of the How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals podcast series, could be better addressed if more people adopted a diet that includes more ‘blue’ or aquatic foods. These include fish, molluscs and plant species.Golden, who is based at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, says discussions about hunger and food security have tended to focus on terrestrial food production.As soil nutrient levels deplete and farmland becomes scarcer as human populations rise, more attention needs to be paid to marine and freshwater food sources, he adds.But rising sea temperatures threaten

Poverty is about more than just meeting basic material needs, says Catherine Thomas. Its corrosive effects are also social and psychological, causing people to feel marginalized and helpless.Thomas’s research into anti-poverty programs has focused on the effects of one aimed at women in the West African country of Niger, which aims to support subsistence farmers whose livelihoods are impacted by climate change.One branch of the program involved providing an unconditional $300 cash transfer alongside business and life skills training. Thomas, who is based at the Unversity of Michigan in Ann Arbor, describes the impact it had, compared to similar schemes. These include microfinance business loans, but these tend not to reach those most in need, she says.Thomas’s research is very much focused on the first of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which aims to end poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030. Each episode of How to Save Humanity in 17 Goals, a Working Scientist podcast series, features

In August the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft touched down, making India only the fourth to have successfully landed a spacecraft on the moon. In this special episode of the Working Scientist podcast, Somak Raychaudhuryan astrophysicist and vice-chancellor at Ashoka University, tells Jack Leeming about India’s history of space research, the significance of the lunar landing, and how it might help to stem a “brain drain” of Indian researchers moving abroad permanently to develop their careers. The episode is part of the Nature Spotlight on India, an editorially-independent supplement. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For a three-year period as a postdoctoral researcher, molecular biologist and visual artist Daniel Jay was given both a lab and a sudio to work in. In the final episode of this six-part Working Scientist about art and science, Julie Gould asks why, decades later, Jay’s experience is still unusual. Why do scientists with expertise in, say, music, sculpture, pottery or creative writing have to pursue these interests as weekend hobbies, with science “paying the bills?”Jay, who is Dean of the graduate school of biomedical sciences at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, says today’s early career researchers want what he calls a “post disciplinary society,” offering the freedom to pick and choose different areas and competencies.Lou Muglia, a medical geneticist who is now president and CEO of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a private foundation located in North Carolina, co-authored a 2023 paper in PloS Biology on art-science collaborations. Muglia says many early career researchers today do

Data form the backbone of the scientific method, but it can be impenetrable. In the penultimate episode of this six-part Working Scientist podcast series about art-science collaborations, Julie Gould talks to artists and data visualisation specialists about how they interpret and present data in art forms ranging from music to basket weaving.Keep things simple wherever possible, agree Duncan Ross, chief data officer at the Times Higher Education publication, and James Bayliss, an interaction and visualisation analyst at Springer Nature. “My go-to tool is a pen and paper or coloured pencils,” says Bayliss. “Start slow and don't get too complicated too fast.”Akshat Rathi, a senior climate reporter at Bloomberg News, describes how he used data to visualise the devastating impact of a 2015 earthquake in Nepal for an article in the business title Quartz.And Nathalie Miebach, a basketware artist who created a reed sculpture based on daily weather data she had collected in Provincetown,

GUI/GOOEY is an international online exhibition that explores digital and technological representations of the biological world.In the fourth episode of this six-part Working Scientist podcast series about art and science, Julie Gould talks to some of the artists and scientist whose collaborations created exhibits for the event, which ran from March to June 2023.Its curator Laura Splan, an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York, says GUI/GOOEY reconsidered how technology affects our understanding of nature and our constructions of nature. She is joined by Diana Scarborough, arist-in-residence in bionanotechnologist Ljiljana Fruk’s lab at the University of Cambridge, UK.Scarborough describes a project involving Anna Melekhova, an inorganic chemist based in Fruk’s lab, which was influenced by an ancient method used in Mayan art to stabilise pigments using clay.Scarborough says the film she produced to communicate Melekhova’s science depicted a “luminous jelly,” included soundtracks from