Burnout and breakdowns: how mid-career scientists can protect themselves

Burnout and breakdowns: how mid-career scientists can protect themselves

Trying to achieve balance in your personal and professional lives is misguided, four researchers tell Julie Gould in the third episode of Muddle of the Middle, a six-part podcast series about the mid-career stage in science.


Jen Heemstra, a chemistry professor at Washington University in St. Louis, says that the aim should instead be to avoid allowing periods of imbalance to last longer than necessary.


Cara Tannenbaum, a physician and a director at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, agrees, saying that the key is to focus on personal fulfilment, and that some aspects of your life will often have to take a back seat.


Inger Mewburn took a data-driven approach to managing her time (and her manager’s expectations) after experiencing two breakdowns in her mid-career stage.

Mewburn, director of research training at the Australian National University in Canberra, now uses a software program to track and prioritize tasks, schedule meetings and negotiate with her supervisor things that she can stop doing.


Chemical engineer Andrea Armani, a vice-dean at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, cautions against accepting all invitations at the mid-career stage, noting that at one point she was sitting on 30 committees.

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Episoder(221)

Switching scientific disciplines

Switching scientific disciplines

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The school physics talk that proved more popular than Lady Gaga's boots

Media interest in particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider boosted Jon Butterworth's interest in public engagement, reports Julie Gould.Jon Butterworth developed a taste for public engagement af...

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Career transitions from physics to data science

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Industry has long courted physicists for their data science expertise, but will this change as more undergraduates acquire these skills?In 2013, Kim Nilsson co-founded Pivigo, a training company to pr...

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Global career moves, and how to survive them

Global career moves, and how to survive them

Elizabeth Tasker's career has taken her from Europe to Japan via North America, including a Florida campus where alligators lurked in drainage ditches.If your career looks set to include geographical ...

1 Aug 201920min

Why physics is still a man's world, and how to change it

Why physics is still a man's world, and how to change it

Earlier this year Eindhoven University of Technology faced a social media backlash after announcing that from July 2019, all academic staff vacancies will be open to female applicants only for the fir...

24 Jul 201924min

Talking about a technological revolution in the lab

Talking about a technological revolution in the lab

In the final episode of this six-part podcast series about workplace technology, Lee Cronin talks about the "chemputer," a device he and his team developed as a "chemical Google to search for the orig...

9 Mai 201913min

Slack, and other technologies that are transforming lab life

Slack, and other technologies that are transforming lab life

Ben Britton's experimental micromechanics lab at Imperial College London currently includes four postdoctoral researchers, 11 PhD students, and four Masters students.Alongside computational analysis t...

1 Mai 201912min

How technology can help solve science's reproducibility crisis

How technology can help solve science's reproducibility crisis

Machine learning and data management skills can raise your scientific profile and open up career opportunities, Julie Gould discovers.As a biomedical science student, Jake Schofield felt frustrated at...

26 Apr 201915min

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