Blanka was scouring the field for evidence, collecting samples and making do with the supplies for a short field trip expeditiously. And then she couldn’t travel back home anymore: I am stuck at my fieldwork location due to closed borders and social distancing. What to do? Dear Blanka, That must be very inconvenient. I do hope that you can manage with the restrictions placed upon your moveme ...[Read More]
No physical assembly. A digital sharing platform. EGU reinvented. Valeri needed some time to process all this and is still deliberating his opinion: What did you think about the digital version of the EGU GA? Dear Valeri, It was great. Just. Great. There were loads of presentations with brand new science available online. Greatly readable, enjoyable and clear. So many new insights there, it was ey ...[Read More]
This week, the EGU General Assembly is taking place. As it was announced a long time ago: More than 16’000 scientists from all over the globe are meeting and sharing their science in sessions that cover all disciplines in Earth, planetary and space science. But still, everything is a little bit different this year: The EGU General Assembly 2020 takes place online Due to the ongoing coronavirus pan ...[Read More]
In response to the growing concerns over the COVID-19 epidemic, EGU has cancelled the physical General Assembly in Vienna and will instead host EGU 2020: Sharing Geoscience Online (#shareEGU20), a week-long series of online activities during which attendees can remotely interact, discuss and share research. With the virtual GA looming in less than a week, it’s time for all attendees to finis ...[Read More]
Tokío’s contract is about to expire. Confident she would convince someone to hire her through expert presentations, astute questions, insightful discussions and uncanny charm, she now frets: I was counting on networking at the EGU GA to find a new job, but now I can’t. What can I do? Dear Tokío, I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Don’t trap yourself in a panicking fit just ...[Read More]
This week on the GD Blog we are taking a magical geodynamicist’s mystery tour to our planet’s Moon thanks to Tobias Rolf, Researcher at the Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED) at the University of Oslo, Norway (currently a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Geophysics at the University of Münster, Germany). Imagine you are orbiting the Earth at an altitude of a few hun ...[Read More]
‘Now, more than ever, we need science’, thinks the editor of this blogpost as he works from his small studio paid by a rent-burdened academic salary while under lockdown in California due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the need for an open, fair, inclusive science seems to be ignored all across the world by policy makers and university administrations, who refuse to pay graduate st ...[Read More]
Agata struggles with the many and diverse opinions thrown at her whilst endeavoring to finish a paper: What is the perfect number of co-authors for a paper? Dear Agata, As few as possible. Limit yourself to the people you really cannot avoid. Such as those collaborators that have actually provided a significant contribution to the body of work presented in a manuscript. For every researcher this d ...[Read More]
Tuckered from simply contemplating the infinite myriad of possibilities arising behind the dandy phantasmagoria at the pristine horizon which is a doctorate, Maite considers: Should I start a postdoc directly after my PhD? Dear Maite, I would. If you want to stay in science, that is. Consider yourself a prospector initiating the exploration of an unsullied landscape. A wonderful scenery of excitin ...[Read More]
A scientific career can be a struggle. This week Dave Stegman, Associate Professor at Scripps, draws parallels between being a scientist and being an Antarctic explorer. He dangled in the crevasse, unable to touch the sides; the abyss beneath was hundreds of feet deep; the rope he was suspended from was 14 feet long, connected above to the sledge he had been hauling. Was it luck when his sledge ha ...[Read More]