• Question: what are the biggest challenges in research? how do you overcome them?

    Asked by 796mcrk27 to Ananthi, Aaron, Lea, Emma, Christopher, Ashley on 7 Nov 2017. This question was also asked by 757mcrk35, Gracious, ashleybe.
    • Photo: Emma Stevenson

      Emma Stevenson answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      For me the biggest challenges have to be trying to find a good job in the area of the country I want to settle in. Most people in research move around a lot, but it’s not practical when you have a family to think of! Also the job contracts in science are quite short (1-3yrs) so you are always aware you might not have a job at the end. This is quite stressful. But you have to keep positive and be proactive when dealing with these things and ultimately for me it’s all worked out.

    • Photo: Lea Carlesso

      Lea Carlesso answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      I would say there is two biggest challenges in research (in my opinion):
      As a woman, it is often not easy to reconcile your career and a family life. It is usually needed to move after a Phd in order to find a postdoc (a short term contract). Because you may need 3, 5, or more postdocs to get a permanent position, and because of the uncertainty of finding one, women (and men as well) often have to choose between personal life or career. Fortunately things are changing.
      The second point and it is rather personal, I find sometime hard not to loose track with my own work. It is good to have a clear objective and questions and to hold your course.

    • Photo: Aaron Brown

      Aaron Brown answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      I think the biggest challenge is the way you have to manage and teach yourself rather than having the knowledge and skills passed down to you by teachers. This can work great for some people, but a few people find it a little difficult at first 🙂

      I suppose it’s always important to talk to people doing similar work to you and try and ask for help from other scientists if you need it.

    • Photo: Ashley Otter

      Ashley Otter answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Getting money would be the honest answer i think. Lots of science depends on money to buy consumables, do particular experiments etc. Without good funding, its really hard to do novel research and possibly find new drugs/therapies/diagnostics etc. But luckily, most scientists are able to do great research on the budgets they have

    • Photo: Ananthi Ramachandran

      Ananthi Ramachandran answered on 7 Nov 2017:

      Many of the challenges have been listed by Emma, Lea, Ash and Aaron, I would go with money/ funding and I want to add one more to the list which is deadlines. I don’t mean deadlines like you have homework due in for a certain date. What I mean is e.g if you are given 3 years to answer a research question those 3 years may not always go to plan and you may not have the results you want and need by then…another possibility is the complete opposite. You might have such fantastic results that you are dying to do more research on it but you’ve then run out of money.

      For the deadlines problem, what I have realised is that in science even negative results are still a result. It might not be what you would like to see, but it is a result all the same.

      Likewise for the funding problem if you foresee that you work is getting very interesting and you might be onto something you can try applying for grants to ask for money so they can fund you for this path of research.

      In every job there will always be challenges, but all challenges can be overcome in some way 🙂

    • Photo: Christopher Richardson

      Christopher Richardson answered on 8 Nov 2017:

      Again I agree with my science peers above! Money! throughout my career I have been lucky working in medicine there is a lot of money and funding from government and the universities because peoples health is very important but I have witnessed other areas of exciting research not happen simply because it was not “important” enough at the time!

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