Research and its outputs are for everyone. While it has historically been a rich person’s endeavour, it is now becoming a more accessible career option for everyone regardless of class, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, or other personal characteristics. Despite major progress that we have made, we work in and with inherited academic systems that are flawed. These systems will certainly benefit from more openness, inclusion and integrity, which is not only morally better, but improves productivity as well as the quality of science.

For instance, publishing in academia is riddled with major flaws, biases and inequities. The more obvious problems include the association between journal impact factor and the quality of the work, as well as the high article processing fees that scientists pay to publish their work in journals. There are more insidious ones, too, like how anonymous peer review often ends up yielding destructive criticism and how fewer women are given the opportunity to peer review papers because editors tend to select reviewers of the same gender as themselves - a practice called homophily (1). These practices often go unchecked and are counterproductive for science.

Changing research culture isn’t easy. It takes a lot of human hours and, more importantly, it needs a group of driven individuals with a shared vision to combine their efforts and lead the way. This is where the eLife Community Ambassadors program comes in. Apart from being a leading publisher in the life sciences, eLife has a mission to foster change in the academic community. The Ambassadors Program is one of its initiatives that aims to empower a global community of early career researchers (ECRs) to network and take action to create a culture that benefits both science and scientists. After all, you’re never too young to fix science.

I applied for the program in its second iteration, at a time when my PhD wasn’t going so well and I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Around that time, my advisor sent out an email to the campus saying that eLife was recruiting a new cohort of Ambassadors and that it was an opportunity to participate in promoting the best practices in science. I thought it would be a good idea to take a chance and apply for the program, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what I was signing up for. Looking back, I’m glad I took the chance and I would recommend it to anyone.

The 2019-20 cohort of Ambassadors, which I was a part of, was a diverse group of 243 early career researchers from all over the world. These participants, along with members of eLife’s Early Career Advisory Group (ECAG), split up into group initiatives, based on common passions and goals. Here I share my experience of two projects I joined: the Meta-research initiative and the Readability initiative.

Meta-research is the science of science, i.e. a discipline that asks questions about how the scientific enterprise works, identifies areas that need strengthening and comes up with solutions to these problems.

Our meta-research team chose to address how well images are reported in published papers. Given our experience in reading papers, we knew that the answer was “not always well”, but that’s not enough. We wanted to find out if it was a field-specific problem, and what kinds of problems were most common.

Along with Ambassadors from the previous cohort, we designed the study, collected and analysed the data. We found that across three disciplines - cell biology, physiology and plant sciences, less than 20% of papers followed all good reporting practices. These included basic things like having appropriate scale bars, being colour-blind friendly, describing what readers are looking at and what all the colours mean. What was interesting to note was that colours are usually well done in images, but scale bars and labels were major problems in images (2).

A meta-research project doesn’t end once we have the numbers. Having identified the problem areas, we also came up with guidelines on how to make figures to best represent image data. This was a learn-by-doing project led by the exceptional meta-researcher Tracey Weissgerber (Berlin Institute of Health at Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin, QUEST Center, Berlin) who was a member of the ECAG at the time. The experience taught me a lot about meta-research and how to contribute to improving science, all while working in a large team from all over the world (fun fact: our team was spread out over four continents and have never met in person!)

The second project I was a part of was the Readability initiative, which aimed at bringing academic papers into the Internet Era. We still follow the publishing style from early days of academic publishing, when journals had to produce and distribute physical copies with limited space and when printing, especially in colour, was costly. However, now we have the Internet, putting up a colour figure in an online manuscript costs far less and there is no space limitation, either. The Web also offers ample space to be more interactive and inclusive - graphs that can be toggled on and off, structures that can be viewed in all orientations instead of snapshots, larger font sizes for people with visual deficiencies, or even different fonts that make it easier for dyslexic people to read.

Furthermore, since we have been limiting the style of scientific communication, research articles have progressively become harder to read even for other scientists.

We sought to solve these problems by taking a paper published in eLife and rewriting it by incorporating many of the features of a modern, 21st century paper. Our focus was to simplify writing, add interactive graphs and definitions of keywords, among other features, to make what we called the “Lucid Bio” version of the paper. This project is still nascent and I hope others will contribute to its improvement to make it ready to be better publicised.

The outputs of the eLife Community Ambassadors program were as diverse as the group itself (complete list of initiatives and their outputs here; we’ve also continued several initiatives after the program ended). For example, the Sustainability initiative aimed at raising conscientiousness among scientists as we face a climate crisis. To bring more awareness about the problem of single-use plastics in our work, they started a Twitter initiative - #LabWasteDay, where scientists across the world collect all the plastic waste they produce in a single day, weigh it and share a photo of them carrying it (read more here).

Not all initiatives were about the physical outputs of science; some were about forging support systems. For example, the Intersectionality initiative aimed at giving a safe space to all members to discuss the challenges they face as a result of who they are or where they come from. The group started a book club to discuss works (like the book “Inferior” by Angela Saini) that highlight challenges that minorities face in academia and developed resources to help overcome them.

The Ambassadors program continues to grow and has recently welcomed a new group. We have learnt from the previous iterations of the program and have modified the program to make it more streamlined and now have a training and networking period for its members before the actual advocacy work begins. Furthermore, given that we only have limited spots in the Ambassadors Program, we end up having to reject many good quality applications. This doesn’t quite add up with the spirit of being inclusive, so we’ve started a pilot program called the Open Science Champions network to give everyone a chance to be associated with the network and get to know about open events, even though they didn’t get to be part of the main cohort of Ambassadors.

Change is slow, but all these projects help shape research culture to make the vision of a healthy culture a reality. After all, having this kind of support system made up of colleagues who share a vision goes a long way in driving change. I was and continue to be impressed by the enthusiasm and energy that early career researchers have to be the change they want to see in academia and look forward to the research culture of the future.

The most important aspect in the journey of a researcher is to present his or her work in front of experts from the field as well as to engage in exhilarating scientific discussions with people from within the community. This was the aim with which I decided to apply for Neuroscience 2021, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). SfN’s annual meeting is the biggest neuroscience consortium that helps in bringing together neuroscientists working on a variety of topics under one roof. The idea was to present my work in front of the scientific community to gain some interesting insights and inputs as well as to meet potential collaborators and form new networks.

The meeting happens in the United States every year, and a major limitation was the lack of funds to travel from India accompanied by the uncertainty that prevailed amidst the pandemic. Neuroscience 2020 had already been cancelled due to the pandemic thus, Neuroscience 2021 was a landmark event because it was SfN’s 50th annual meeting.

Being in the final year of my Ph.D. with my work almost reaching completion, I felt this was the right time to present my project in the meeting. Without giving it a second thought, I applied for the meeting. An important point to note here is that being from a third world country, the organizers give a lot of concession in the membership fees and in the abstract submission fees to Indian students.

At the same time, many students are also not aware that the society also grants several awards such as the Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA). TPDA is given to undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows based on their scientific merit and covers the entire cost of travel and registration for the meeting. Apart from this, the awardees get year-round access to professional development workshops and neuronline discussion forums. I stumbled upon this award while browsing through the SfN website and was thrilled to listen to the experiences of the past awardees. The application included an abstract for the meeting, a detailed curriculum vitae highlighting education, awards and publications, a letter of recommendation from the supervisor as well as a short essay on any topic of our choice that is scientifically relevant and has impacted one’s career professionally or personally. My selection as an awardee meant that I can travel to the meeting and meet several other awardees and peers working in my field to make fruitful connections.

Things took a completely different turn when the meeting switched from a hybrid mode to a completely virtual one. Nonetheless, the awardees were given ribbons to distinguish them from others and the cost of registration was still compensated. I still have access to the TPDA discussion forums and online professional development workshops. I miss not being able to meet and interact with scientists in person. Nevertheless, I would definitely recommend and encourage others to apply for such international travel awards because more than covering the travel, they actually help in a researcher’s professional development. For example, in my case, I found several scientists whose work aligned with my research interest and it helped me choose the right kind of work for starting the next phase of my career in the form of a postdoctoral fellow.

I will quote "mind over matter" is an attitude that we scientists develop over years of our educational training while in school and college. Further advanced in life, we are at a junction to go for research or a job (which by the way comes back again after a PhD).

Like any other student after a double Master's, I was standing at the crossroads deciding my future. I learned about the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) fellowship during my M.Tech at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, which at that time I wasn't sure of pursuing because it was an ‘international grant.’

I said to myself, “Shvaita, do you think you have what it takes to even stand a chance at an international level for a fully funded prestigious PhD program?” Gulping down my fears and pessimistic attitude, I started to make myself aware of the necessities of the program. This was a life-changing experience, as I realised that, according to DAAD eligibility criteria, I have everything, even a gold medal from my Master's Program. Gathering my self-confidence and learning to be optimistic, I applied to DAAD Research Full Grant for PhD program in October 2015. Later, I found myself through the first scrutiny of applicant pools, into the interview process at New Delhi in Feb 2016.

My confidence level was boosted as I had made it to the interview, but now I had to get through the interview as well. I started preparing for my interview. Got myself thorough of the PhD project that I had applied for in Germany. Brushed through basics of biology, physics and chemistry, because every answer lies with the basics (another attitude to become a scientist, I guess).

It was the D-day – interview at the DAAD office in New Delhi. There were questions related to my previous thesis work and potential PhD project. To my surprise, I was pretty confident, because of preparations.

In late February, 2016, there popped up an email from DAAD, India congratulating me with the offer of a fully funded PhD program at Germany. I experienced euphoria in that very moment. I had learnt my biggest lesson of life, "mind over matter" is indeed an attitude and optimism is one step close to success. I came to Germany in October 2016 and completed my PhD in Molecular Biology by October 2020, to call myself a proud scientist. I continue to work in Germany.

In retrospect, had I given up even before applying or understanding the eligibility criteria to apply, I wouldn't have been able to do science. The lesson from my story – never give up before trying.

While browsing through the eLife journal’s website, I came across the Ben Barres Spotlight Award web page and was inspired by some of the stories from the 2019 and 2020 award winners. I decided to apply as soon as I knew that there was no age limit and requirement for a permanent faculty position. In addition, this award was open to applications from eLife authors and researchers across career stages. Moreover, the award money provided flexibility in the way funds could be utilised. Requests could be made for purchase of equipments, services, consumables, travel expenses and meetings. Unlike other funding opportunities that require preliminary data, curriculum vitae and a research proposal, here, the applicant is invited to describe how the award would enhance her/his research and career. The applicant is also required to provide a detailed itemised budget of how the funds would be utilised. A major emphasis is on ways in which the funding would potentially aid in making the recipient’s research more reproducible, open and/or inclusive. Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 applicants were encouraged to consider how the funding could aid in working remotely, or networking and communicating online.

I submitted the application in September 2021 and was informed that I was one of the award recipients by the end of October 2021. I am hoping to utilise the award funds for the purchase of a Drosophila activity monitoring system for my laboratory and this set-up will allow my group to reliably record the total activity and impact of diet and sleep deprivation in different fruit fly strains remotely. Over the longer term, these studies will aid in developing newer projects, publishing manuscripts, and building collaborations. I strongly encourage eligible female scientists in India who are looking for small funding opportunities with a fast-turnaround time to apply for this prestigious award. To increase the chance of success, I recommend that the applicants review the stories of the winners from the previous years on how the awards have been utilised for benefiting their research and careers.

A routine Google browsing session and a long chain of hyperlinks led me to Jessica Kendall-Bar’s website. Her science was so amazing, and her art so refreshing that I wrote to her to express my wonder. I wanted to assist this researcher, who was living my dream, at the University of California, and earnestly hoped to learn from her someday. My email was answered almost immediately, and since then I have been interning with Jessica’s team studying sleep in Northern elephant seals.

I learnt fascinating things starting from polysomnography – a method to study sleep – to scientific art and data science. Besides, working with Jessica’s close-knit team has unraveled the rigorous, administrative and human side of science to me. In parallel, a science-writing stint on stem cells with a lab based in Leipzig University in Germany helped me further establish a global work ethic. Around the same time, I became part of an Indo-Dutch collaborative programme getting a chance to interact with Dutch social science students. This international and inter-disciplinary atmosphere gave me a more holistic view of the grand challenges of the world.

Armed with these experiences, which helped me narrow down my area of interest, understand and convey it better, I began making a bunch of graduate school applications. In August 2021, I braced for my application for the Rhodes Scholarship that funds graduate level studies at the University of Oxford.

The COVID-19 pandemic had hampered my practical lab experience, like it had done for most undergraduate students, and I had no academic publication to my name. My coursework felt incomplete, and while I had secured some dream internship projects at fantastic labs in India, I couldn’t pursue them due to the lockdown. Things seemed to be going downhill on the academic front. On the brighter side, the pandemic had blurred the lines between national and international learning opportunities. Students from all corners of the world could collaborate, work, and grow sitting at home, via the internet.

The Rhodes application and interview process spanned over 4 months with a written round followed by three rounds of online interviews. The process forced me to think deeply, look at the big picture of sleep studies – something I was focused on – and introspect on why my academic and research interests matter. It was transformative since it led me to question what makes me unique, how I can make a difference with the skills I had acquired.

In the absence of solid lab work and publications, my only weapon was self-awareness stemming from an introspective mapping of my abilities and a deep thought of the research questions I wanted to pursue. I was lucky to get the mentorship of one of the leading sleep study researchers at Oxford. Through online meetings, we refined the probable research questions and were ready with a broad study plan in case I was chosen to work in their lab in future. This may have been one of the important factors that proved helpful in convincing the interview panel that I was already invested in the research and had a future plan in hand, thus paving my way to be a Rhodes Scholar-Elect, 2022.

If you are finishing your doctorate, have identified a fundamental problem in biology, the answer to which can be transformative and can bring paradigm shift in current scientific knowledge and overall understanding of the field then Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) long term postdoctoral fellowship offers you the best platform to pursue it. HFSP supports high-risk postdoctoral projects with scientific rigor and innovative hypothesis. It does not need any preliminary data (at application stage) to support your hypothesis neither demands prior training in that field. Instead, HFSP appreciates if you aim to expand your expertise and take up the problem that’s significantly different from your doctoral training. The successful fellowship application needs quite a bit of planning due to its rigorous eligibility criteria. To discuss a few:

a) You should have a lab ready to host you and support your proposed research at the time of application.

b) HFSP encourages international exchange and collaboration, so you should not be in the same lab or country for more than a year at the time of fellowship activation.

c) You should have at least one peer reviewed published (not just accepted) manuscript to make the full application.

The fellowship application involves two steps:

a) Fellows need to identify a host lab and submit a letter of intent (LOI) briefly explaining the problem that they want to take up.

b) If accepted (acceptance rate is 15 - 20%), HFSP invites a full application which needs to have details of the problem and your proposed research plans. Prospective fellows must choose their problem and host lab carefully as HFSP evaluates if the host lab is a good fit for the proposed research.

Overall, the fellowship application is a great learning experience. It teaches you to identify problems and come up with right questions, choose the important ones and develop promising strategies to answer or solve them. Below are few things that might be useful to prospective HFSP applicants:

1. Plan proactively. First phase of HFSP applications (LOI stage) opens in March - April. Start searching for a host lab way before this deadline. One lab can host only one HFSP fellow per year.

2. Make a list of problems that you think you must be working on. This will help finding host labs. Every fellowship has some theme or domain of research to support. As pointed before, HFSP supports basic science projects. Make sure your proposed research falls within the fellowship domain.

3. If possible, write all the questions and problems (may be 1000s) that you identify and you think can be proposed for the fellowship. Take every possible critique on it and refine them.

4. Discuss them with the host lab and based on the discussions, choose one to submit as LOI. HFSP allows only one LOI per fellow per year.

5. Read as many times as possible. Read, Refine, Repeat. If you do not like reading your own proposal, it is highly unlikely that the reviewing panel would like to read it.

6. If LOI is accepted, you will be asked to submit full application sometime around September - October.

7. Full applications need two recommendation letters from PhD and one from the host lab.

8. Make very sure referees know about your proposed research. They need to justify why you are a fit candidate for this.

9. Full applications will need your objectives, justification of why proposed research is at the frontier of science and how will this bring change in the field and beyond the field. Take every effort to justify why host lab is good fit for this and what you will learn during this process. Same rules apply here – Read, Refine, Repeat.

10. Lastly, avoid large scale fishing expeditions and claims that what you fish will decide the next steps. Have a sound, valid, rigorously thought hypothesis (learnings from Bob Farese and Tobias Walther).

In 2019, I started my independent research group in human-relevant studies in infection biology, with a focus on wound biofilms, at Savitribai Phule Pune University. We adopted a multi-pronged approach, which included building clinically-relevant, pre-clinical biofilm platforms and developing novel anti-biofilm approaches. As part of this, we were developing an in vitro wound milieu that closely mimicked clinical wound fluid, and could be leveraged for evaluation of potential anti-biofilm therapeutics. In addition, we were also exploring historical wound remedies as anti-biofilm approaches. Wound infections, which in present times are well-known to be caused by biofilms, have evidence of existence since ancient times. Consequently, historical medical practices are replete with plant-based wound remedies, most often based on a combination of ingredients. For this, we were prospecting historical medical treatise, reconstituting remedies with present day practices, and evaluating them for anti-biofilm potential using contemporary scientific assays and analyses. During my reading, I had noted a publication on traditional African remedies as part of wound care practices, communicated by Philip F Builders, National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), Abuja, Nigeria. Non-healing wound infections are a common health challenge to both India and Africa, and employing traditional remedies to treat them is also a mutual practice. However, most often, these composite remedies have not been characterized for their antimicrobial and anti-biofilm effects. This is important to not only safeguard against inadvertent effects, but to also evaluate the potential of bringing these remedies into modern medical practice.

By serendipity, I came across the call for the Africa-India Mobility Fund (AIMF), a joint partnership between DBT / Wellcome TrustIndia Alliance and the African Academy of Sciences. The call was seeking collaborative proposals from investigators in India and any country in Africa, with a focus on exploring common research challenges. With an eye on the grant, I sent an email to Dr. Builders. In it, I described our areas of work, the overlap I could see with his research focus, and a plan to bridge the two for a potential grant application. It was a cold email for an international collaboration; Dr. Builders and I had never interacted before, nor did I know of any common colleagues. I received a response from Dr. Builders the very day; he not only conveyed his eagerness to collaborate but also provided several details of the remedies he worked with, as well as the facilities available at his end.

Soon after, Dr. Builders and I spoke on the phone. After sharing humor on patchy internet connectivity, we discussed the details of the Africa-India Mobility Fund (AIMF) grant, and the possibility of applying for it towards building a collaboration. In the next few weeks, we got our application packet ready with host institute support at both ends, and submitted the proposal. We proposed to leverage the in vitro wound milieu developed in my group to evaluate historical African wound remedies, reconstituted by Dr. Builders, for anti-biofilm potential.

While the AIMF grant is primarily intended to foster collaboration via travel, given pandemic-related delays and border restrictions, we have started our collaborative work in remote mode. In doing so, we have an opportunity to build a unique South-South collaboration, based on research relevant to both India and Africa. To think it all started with reading a paper, and following it up with a cold email!

Being part of the structural biology lab, I always heard that crystallography is more art than science from my fellow researchers. The art here is quite different and yet similar to the art on paper. Several shades and tints of colours give us various forms and expressions on paper, which goes for protein crystallography. The initial days were fascinating to play around with the proteins of other lab mates and learning techniques. Then I found my PhD project protein - Myosin-1b from Entamoeba histolytica. I devoted all my energy and hands - on skills to work on it as a pioneer to establish a different protein expression system than a conventional bacterial system. I trained myself at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and returned to set up the same at my parent organization, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Uncountable trials were done for almost a year, but I was unsuccessful in getting my protein. The demotivation captured me and others too for the expression of this protein in my lab. My supervisor asked me to shift to another set of proteins - p21-activated kinases (PAKs) from the same organism. During these struggling phases of trial and error, almost two years passed! I started to work on PAK proteins but somehow internally couldn’t leave the love for my first protein - Myosin-1b. I decided not to give up on it, unless I found some concrete reason to leave it. While reading the IndiaBioscience newsletter of June 2018, I saw a short-term fellowship named “Newton Bhabha” funded by the British Council and Indian partners - Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology. I never imagined that one day I could be part of it. I checked all the basic details immediately and started working on Newton Bhabha’s application. I approached scientists in UK universities and institutes who worked on cytoskeleton proteins. I was exhilarated after my confirmation from John Kendrick John, Emeritus Professor at MRC - LMB and Folma Buss, Professor, CIMR Cambridge. I would like to make a special mention here of the assistance provided by the UK HE international unit for contacting scientists. They rejuvenated my energy and hope for Myosin-1b in the first online interaction to discuss the project. I could not morph my expression of getting tired while working on a lengthy application, and it seemed like they wanted to enter my brain. From the first question that asked, “please give a summary in plain English of your proposed PhD placement within the context of your PhD. This should be a statement for a non-specialist audience about the research of your PhD project and the purpose of your place visit”, the application form was unique. The result was expected after four months, and I was not sure whether I would make it or not. My attachment to the protein led me to have two-three online discussions, and I prepared all the initial material for the protein expression.

I got selected for the fellowship and landed in Cambridge University for my work.

A drastic difference in work culture and guidance made me more scientifically sound and hopeful. As we already knew, Myosin-1b behaves slightly differently; we were mentally prepared for failures on our way. John and Chris consistently guided my benchwork, we troubleshooted the problems together, and finally, I got the protein. However, it was less than the required amount for crystallization, but I felt satisfaction when I saw Myosin-1b on SDS-PAGE, a technique commonly used to visualize proteins. I cherish all the cake parties and lab meetings by Folma. I think six months rather than four months would have been more fruitful. I have been part of the 36-member family of the Newton Bhabha fellows of that year from different research areas. I helped two-three applicants who contacted me for guidance in the application form, and one got selected. It feels worthy when you can pass it on to coming generations.

My first successful international grant application as a Principal Investigator was the ICMR-BMBF Indo-German Cooperation in Health Research funded in 2015 in the field of liver diseases. The project was written in collaboration with Thomas Weiss, Professor, at the University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany. During this time, I was holding a faculty position in the School of Biotechnology, Gautam Buddha University, Noida, and struggling to build my new lab and career with hardly any peer support or colleagues working in a similar area. The apathetic and mundane microenvironment in the University was very different from my doctoral and postdoctoral days where scientific mentoring and support by colleagues and seniors kept me going and motivated.

I happened to interact with Weiss for the first time at an International Indo-German Workshop on Liver Regeneration in the Institute of Liver and Biliary Science, New Delhi in 2013. He was a person with clarity of thoughts and goals. When the BMBF Indo-German Cooperation in Health Research call was advertised by ICMR, I wrote to him to put forward a joint application in our common area of interest to which he readily agreed. Our individual tasks were clearly defined in the project and after the project was sanctioned, we regularly exchanged emails, had to and fro visits between India and Germany to discuss everything from contradicting data, failed experiments, successful results etc. We had lengthy but logical arguments many-a-times on existing concepts, results, and protocols. Since both my doctoral and postdoctoral training were in India, I was pretty naive to how international researchers think and function. Moreover, Weiss, being much senior to me, initially I was always hesitant to put forward my viewpoints with confidence. But I learned to do this in due course of time and Weiss valued and cared for my perspectives, no matter how different they were from his own opinions. I learned so much from these back and forth discussions with him that this whole three-year project proved an extremely enriching experience for me. It instilled in me the confidence and modesty of not only how to handle scientific criticisms but also how to sensibly submit my altercations and discordances in a collaboration. I discovered that a very crucial element of any alliance is to put aside your ego and respect and pay heed to each other’s viewpoints. Today, when I retrospect, more than collaboration, this Indo-German grant was an excellent mentoring experience for me, especially when I needed it most. Whereas my mentors and teachers helped me to develop my research capabilities and analytics skills, it was Weiss who knowingly or unknowingly accompanied me on the path of being an independent and assertive investigator during my early career days. We produced three publications from this project and even today both of us hold a special place in each other’s life.