We are really excited to have Sarah Ruediger join the regular Black Hole crew. Sarah is a postdoctoral fellow who is transitioning to a group leader position at University College London this coming June. She is an outstanding neuroscientist (with first author papers in Nature, Nature Neuroscience and eLife) with a long list of fellowships and scholarships who has undertaken work in Switzerland and the U.S. prior to her move to the U.K. Sarah also has a young family and has had years of experience navigating many of the issues that we discuss regularly on the Black Hole – from the administrative curiosities of academia, to the challenges of living abroad, to the desire to widen participation in science. She is also an advocate for open science and reducing the impact of research on the environment.
Late last year, Sarah wrote her first post on sustainable science and it was met with many positive comments from our readers, so we invited Sarah back to share some more of her great ideas with the Black Hole readership as a more permanent member of the writing team. While there will inevitably be some drift in topics as new issues emerge, Sarah will try to focus her articles on some of the following areas:
- The new PI perspective (everything from applying for positions and funding, to recruitment and dealing with administration)
- Open, team-based science
- Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in science
- Cross-disciplinary science and skills development
- Making science more green
We are absolutely thrilled to have Sarah on board. Her next column will be on how we evaluate the success of EDI initiatives – something that is critical to get right if we are to create meaningful change in research culture. If you would like to feed through any ideas to Sarah and/or start a conversation on particular topics in her wheelhouse, please do not hesitate to do so via the comments section or by emailing [email protected].
