Editorial |
Featured
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Spotlight |
I fell out of love with the lab, and in love with business
The COVID-19 pandemic changed Karolina Makovskytė’s career ambitions, propelling her to a business development role in her home nation of Lithuania.
- Jacqui Thornton
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News |
This social sciences hub galvanized India’s dynamic growth. Can it survive?
The Centre for Policy Research has lost its chief executive, most of its staff and is running out of cash.
- Michele Catanzaro
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World View |
We must protect the global plastics treaty from corporate interference
A United Nations-backed agreement to end plastic pollution is within reach — but only if scientists, civil society and businesses unite against powerful vested interests.
- Martin Wagner
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News |
AI now beats humans at basic tasks — new benchmarks are needed, says major report
Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index charts the meteoric rise of artificial-intelligence tools.
- Nicola Jones
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Career Q&A |
The beauty of what science can do when urgently needed
Working amid New York City’s pandemic response inspired Nili Ostrov’s approach to expanding the list of organisms that can be used in synthetic biology and engineering.
- Katherine Bourzac
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News |
More than 4,000 plastic chemicals are hazardous, report finds
Year-long effort compiles comprehensive database of chemicals in plastics.
- Nicola Jones
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Book Review |
Act now to prevent a ‘gold rush’ in outer space
As private firms aim for the Moon and beyond, a book calls for an urgent relook at the legal compact that governs space exploration.
- Timiebi Aganaba
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Career Q&A |
‘This is my calling’: building point-of-care diagnostic tools to fight tuberculosis
Mireille Kamariza talks about her journey from community college to biotech chief executive, and the uphill battle to stop the spread of the deadly lung disease.
- Abdullahi Tsanni
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Career Feature |
How co-working labs reduce costs and accelerate progress for biotech start-ups
Shared lab spaces provide a streamlined launchpad, offering benches as well as a diverse network of industry mentors.
- Rachel Brazil
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News |
Canada’s oil sands spew massive amounts of unmonitored polluting gases
Innovative aircraft-based technique records carbon emissions not tracked before from the industrial region.
- Nicola Jones
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Comment |
To curb plastic pollution, industry and academia must unite
Collaboration is key to making plastic use greener as soon as possible. Our experience yields tips on how to set up industry–academic partnerships.
- Collin P. Ward
- , Christopher M. Reddy
- & Steven T. Perri
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Comment |
Impacts for half of the world’s mining areas are undocumented
As the race to extract minerals and metals for clean-energy technologies accelerates, researchers must take more steps to map and study mines globally.
- Victor Maus
- & Tim T. Werner
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Career Q&A |
How my MBA helps me keep my donor-funded research centre afloat
Medicinal chemist Susan Winks shares how she keeps money flowing at the drug-discovery centre she helps to manage.
- Sarah Wild
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Career Column |
Why postdoctoral training needs a stronger focus on innovation
Innovation straddles policy, change management, budgeting, negotiating and influencing skills. Researchers need all these and more, says David Bogle.
- David Bogle
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Career Feature |
How five researchers fared after their ‘great resignation’ from academia
A career leap into the unknown can be unsettling, but you can take steps to ease the transition.
- Virginia Gewin
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Career Q&A |
My path to heading a biotech company
Shadi Farhangrazi describes how she accidentally became a chief executive.
- Raveena Bhambra
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Obituary |
C. R. Rao, statistician who transformed data analytics (1920–2023)
Pioneer of powerful tools for sifting data and optimizing device designs.
- Shyamal D. Peddada
- & Ravindra Khattree
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Career Feature |
Postdoc career optimism rebounds after COVID in global Nature survey
Postdoctoral researchers still feel as though they are academia’s drudge labourers, but have more confidence about job prospects in a post-pandemic world.
- Linda Nordling
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Career Column |
How ‘retro’ meetings can enhance collaboration
Allowing team members time to reflect, celebrate successes and learn from mistakes is a tried-and-tested way to foster continuous improvement.
- Akshay Swaminathan
- & Lathan Liou
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Comment |
‘Benevolent’ patent extensions could raise billions for R&D in poorer countries
Research into vaccines, crop seeds and other innovations for low- or middle-income nations could be rewarded by offering longer patent coverage for profitable, non-essential inventions.
- Christopher B. Barrett
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Career Feature |
Promotion pathways: how scientists can chart their industry career trajectory
Confused about promotion opportunities after moving to industry? Here are some pointers.
- Sandeep Ravindran
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Career Q&A |
Biotechnologist’s long-life bananas unite business and social solutions
George William Byarugaba Bazirake brings academic values to his company.
- Christopher Bendana
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Career Feature |
‘Gagged and blindsided’: how an allegation of research misconduct affected our lab
Bioengineer Ram Sasisekharan describes the impact of a four-year investigation by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which ultimately cleared him.
- Anne Gulland
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Career Q&A |
Leveraging my training in space medicine for technological innovation
Shawna Pandya explores entrepreneurial niches to bring virtual-reality medicine to space exploration.
- Lesley Evans Ogden
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Career Feature |
How to make the leap into industry after a PhD
Landing that first job in industry requires planning, homework and networking — and a bit of soul-searching.
- Spoorthy Raman
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News |
How the ‘groundbreaking’ Henrietta Lacks settlement could change research
Thermo Fisher Scientific and Lacks’s family reach a deal over the unethical use of her cells.
- Anil Oza
- & Mariana Lenharo
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Career Q&A |
No drug for COVID: ‘the most successful failure in my life’
Laura Walker co-founded a spin-off company, but she moved to big pharma after the therapy the firm had been testing came to nothing. She explains why.
- Rachel Brazil
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Career Q&A |
Women in engineering: giving Porsche 911s the ‘ultimate’ makeover
As a child, Imogen Howarth enjoyed solving problems and playing with cars. Now, she helps to redesign a classic and acts as a role model for aspiring female engineers.
- Jacqui Thornton
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Obituary |
Gordon Moore (1929–2023)
Microchip entrepreneur and architect of Moore’s Law.
- Christophe Lécuyer
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Career Q&A |
Pay, perks and culture shocks: a toolkit for scientists moving to industry
Don’t underestimate the steep learning curve involved when you switch sectors, says Jonathan Bowen.
- Anne Gulland
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Correspondence |
Europe: hold industry accountable for forever chemicals
- Muhammad Usman
- & Khalil Hanna
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Career News |
Are you a postdoc working in academia or industry? Share your career experiences with Nature
Our second global survey of postdoctoral researchers is now live, with new questions to reflect seismic changes to the world of work since 2020.
- David Payne
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Outlook |
The Spinoff Prize 2023
Nature introduces the finalists and those that made it on to the longlist for this year’s award.
- Herb Brody
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Outlook |
The Spinoff Prize: where are they now?
Clinical trials, industry partnerships and other milestones reached by previous finalists of The Spinoff Prize.
- Neil Savage
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Career Feature |
How mixing academia and industry opens doors in graduate school and beyond
A growing number of PhD programmes and postdoc positions combine academic questions and industry resources.
- Freda Kreier
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Editorial |
In space, failure is an option — often the only one
Space companies should not lose heart when things go wrong. The first Moon missions failed repeatedly — and provided lessons on how to achieve success in space and beyond.
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News Explainer |
Moon mission failure: why is it so hard to pull off a lunar landing?
The ispace lander’s failed touchdown highlights the challenges Moon landings pose, especially for private companies.
- Alexandra Witze
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Career Feature |
Leaving academia for industry? Here’s how to handle salary negotiations
Don’t sell yourself short when talking about pay, annual leave and other benefits, say scientists who have made the move.
- Sarah Wild
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Nature Video |
The driving test for driverless cars
A virtual world filled with bad AI drivers can be used to test autonomous vehicles.
- Shamini Bundell
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Nature Index |
Freeing up Japan’s PhD potential
Better prospects are needed in universities and industry to make the most of valuable talent.
- Ayuko Hoshino
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Nature Index |
How Japanese science is trying to reassert its research strength
Successes in life sciences and international collaboration could be key to boosting the country’s high-quality output.
- Tim Hornyak
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Nature Careers Podcast |
Showing the love as a science leader: the emotional side of empowering and inspiring others
Effective leaders should ideally make you feel calm, clear about priorities and cared for, say Gianpiero Petriglieri and Robert Harris.
- Julie Gould
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Career Feature |
Measuring societal impact: how to go beyond standard publication metrics
Approaches to capturing the benefits of research on society are improving — but huge challenges remain.
- Chris Woolston
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Nature Index |
Overcoming the obstacles to invention
The innovators successfully navigating the global turmoil of recent years could be well placed for years to come.
- Simon Baker
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Nature Index |
The institutions forging the strongest innovation links
Tracking patent citations and academic–corporate collaboration points to some of the pioneers in knowledge application.
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Nature Index |
How leading nations fare on applying knowledge
The countries and territories that do well in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index tend to have impressive research density.
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Nature Index |
How the pandemic inspired a new generation of creators
The COVID-19 crisis echoed the ‘all-hands-on-deck’ response to the Second World War, but such agility needs to be maintained.
- Chris Woolston
Reinvent oil refineries for a net-zero future