Marketing for Scientists

Category: Marketing To Our Colleagues

  • iPosters and Betterposter: How to create a conference poster that people want to read

    Download free templates, or make the switch to digital-only. This article originally appeared in Nature Index. A few years ago, presenting a poster at a scientific conference inevitably meant battling with thumbtacks, rubber bands, and an unwieldly sail of paper with little power to inspire. Now researchers are increasingly opting for digital posters and templated…

  • Two Books to Help You Stand Out in the Scientific Job Market

    This book review was first published in Physics World. The press coverage of this year’s Grammy awards taught me a new term: “producer inflation”. The term refers to the way making hit records seems to require bigger collaborations now than it did in years past, when teams of one or two producers sufficed to create…

  • We’re open. COME IN!

    I’ve never been very good at asking for things or telling people to do things. The other kids were better at it. Can I have the big one? Gimme gimme!  That was never my style, and I bet it wasn’t yours. Now, as a grown up and as a scientist I must regularly ask for…

  • Want to be A Professional Scientist? Ask to Join the Facebook Group

    (This article first appeared in Nature.) Planetary scientist Heidi Hammel was at the telescope when Facebook alerted her to an important new target: a comet had just crashed into Jupiter. “I learned about one of the impacts on Jupiter via Facebook while observing on Keck, and we were able to do immediate follow-up.” It is…

  • Caregiver or Hero—Which One Are You? The Archetypal Roles of Women in Science and Academia

    (Originally published in Nature.) The hero, the outlaw, the caregiver—which one of these roles do you play when you’re at work? The theory of archetypes, originated by Carl Jung, fascinates me as a way to understand works of fiction, marketing campaigns, and also the roles we play in the academic workplace. The theory explains how…

  • What Should We Wear? Advice from Scientists about Clothing and Fashion

    Studies show that how we dress generally affects what people think of our personalities and capabilities. For example, women are more likely to be hired if they wear more masculine clothes to an interview (such as a dress suit).  People who wear conservative clothes are seen as self-controlled and reliable, while those who wear more daring clothing…

  • What’s your Science Maturity Level?

    (This article originally appeared in Nature) I went to a scientific talk the other day that seemed to leave half the audience inspired and the other half frustrated. My frustrated colleagues insisted that the speaker did not present any true “results”. However, he did make some fascinating predictions about what would be discovered ten or twenty years…

  • Interview with Image Consultant Kasey Smith: Part 2

    How is a scientist supposed to dress? I posed this question in an interview with professional image consultant Kasey Smith. My last post contained the first half of our interview, where Kasey introduced herself and explained what image consultants are, and why scientists need them. Here, in the second half of the interview, are some of Kasey’s…

  • How Do Scientists Make Decisions?

    The original version of this article appeared in The Scientist magazine. A group of researchers led by Stanford University neuroscientist Brian Knutson ran an experiment in 2007 to study how shoppers decide what to buy. Their discoveries startled me and left me wondering: how do scientists make decisions? Knutson’s team placed experimental subjects in front of a computer…