• Question: What is the most challenging thing you have had to overcome in you field? Why was it so difficult to figure out? Did it help you to solve the problem you faced?

    Asked by Luke.N on 13 Jun 2023. This question was also asked by back485naw.
    • Photo: Laura Thomas-Walters

      Laura Thomas-Walters answered on 13 Jun 2023:

      When I was an undergraduate in university I did a research project on genetic testing for amphibian diseases, and kept getting really weird results. I read the entire manual for the machine I was using, did a ton of problem-solving, and eventually figured out I’d accidentally contaminated the sample! I was able to start again with a new sample, complete the project, and realised that lab work was not for me…

    • Photo: Ferran Brosa Planella

      Ferran Brosa Planella answered on 15 Jun 2023:

      I think the most challenging thing was not scientific, but more personal. There is a lot of very smart people in science, so I often felt that I wasn’t smart enough (this is what is called Impostor Syndrome). Luckily, having supporting colleagues and talking about really helped :).

    • Photo: John Grasmeder

      John Grasmeder answered on 16 Jun 2023:

      The most challenging thing I had to do in my career wasn’t actually a science thing, it was bnecoming fluent in another language. I moved to Germany and had to lead and manage a team of scientists who were all German, so I had to be able to speak, read and write in German, including all the scientific language, as well as the everyday things in life.

    • Photo: Alexander De Bruin

      Alexander De Bruin answered on 16 Jun 2023:

      The most challenging part of my job is figuring out how to go from the lab scale to mass-production. We’re currently figuring out how to make something that is the same when I make 10g and production makes 1000kg!

    • Photo: Amy Stockwell

      Amy Stockwell answered on 19 Jun 2023:

      One of my biggest challenges is still ongoing. I follow specific rules to calculate environmental impacts. But as we improve our scientific understanding of this area, we improve the rules. This means that the rules keep changing! I have to explain to my clients why we can’t do things in the same way as their competitors did last year. It is frustrating and interesting at the same time.

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