Nele Haelterman
Nele Haelterman, PhD, studied neurodegeneration and developmental genetics throughout her graduate and postdoctoral training. During her postgraduate work, she participated in science advocacy and communication programs that heavily influenced her career pursuits and passion to improve academic research culture. She currently helps run a blog for early career scientists (ecrLife) and promote open, reproducible science with Reproducibility 4 Everyone. Nele also advocates for early career scientists through her positions on the Future of Research (FoR)'s advisory board and FASEB's Science Policy Committee. In her current role as Assistant Science Editor with The Scientist, she helps scientists stay up to date on the latest research and technology developments in their fields through ebooks, blog posts, podcasts, posters, infographics, and webinars. For an overview of Nele’s work, you can check out her portfolio.
Can you describe your academic and professional background? What path led you to pursue this field?
I am originally from Belgium, where I obtained my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in biomedical sciences. For my Master’s thesis, I studied a Drosophila model for the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Fruit flies are such powerful model organisms! I was so fascinated by the tools that exist to modulate gene function in flies, that I moved to Houston, Texas and joined the lab of the scientist who created many of them, Hugo Bellen. I feel like I learned everything I know about science in Hugo’s lab. I helped develop a versatile gene editing tool that allows you to convert a loss-of-function mutant into a reporter line to study gene expression and function, I learned how to create and screen through hundreds of mutagenized lines for mutants that showed neurodegenerative traits, I studied mitochondria and metabolism, and I learned how to use the fruit fly to identify new human disease genes.
This was all super exciting, but more and more reviewers want to see Drosophila findings confirmed in vertebrates. So, I decided to switch fields for my postdoctoral studies and joined the lab of Brendan Lee, where I used mouse models of hereditary skeletal disorders—such as brittle bone disease—to study the role of stem cell dysfunction in these diseases.
As a postdoc, I joined two programs that changed the way I see science. The first one was the Genetics Society of America’s early career leadership program. This is a wonderful program that is really focused on helping early career scientists (ECRs) develop the skills they need to advance their careers. I was part of the community and membership engagement committee and, apart from other events, we ran a monthly “Science in a Snapshot” webinar where we invited ECRs to highlight their work.
The second program I joined was eLife’s community ambassador program, which supports early career scientists to develop programs that improve the academic research culture. By this time in my career, I had seen several issues in the way we do science that I didn’t think were right. The ambassador program showed me that ECRs have the power to change this. I joined Reproducibility4Everyone (R4E) and helped develop a workshop to improve the reproducibility of science. I also joined ecrLife’s editorial team to help ECRs shape their ideas into nicely written blogs.
Both programs showed me the power and importance of science advocacy and communication and helped me decide which career path to pursue.
How did you find this particular position, and what was the hiring process like?
A good friend and fellow science writer, Rachel Fairbank, told me about it after she had seen the job ad on the National Association of Science Writers’ website.
The hiring process gave me a good idea of what the job would be like and, although I was nervous, I actually also had fun with it. The interview process consisted of 4 parts. After a pre-screening interview with HR, I had a virtual conversation with the hiring managers. They asked me about my background, scicomm experience, and then told me about the job and its responsibilities. After that, they gave me two assignments. For the first one, I had to pitch 3 stories based on recently published papers I found interesting. For the second one, they sent me a recently published paper along with the transcript of an interview with one of the paper’s authors, and gave me four hours to write a journalism-style article about it.
Can you tell us about your current responsibilities? What is a typical day or week like in your role?
Every day is different! We make quite a few different types of content: we write articles, ebooks and blog posts, but we also organize webinars, and make infographics and podcasts. So, depending on your projects and their deadlines, you will either be writing, browsing for interesting topics, thinking about how to best explain a difficult concept visually, or editing audio for our next podcast.
What do you enjoy about your current job and work environment?
I really like how diverse our workload is. Writing is really fun, but some days the words don’t flow very well. On those days, I can spend some time browsing recently published papers to look for inspiration, or can tackle a smaller task.
As for my work environment, my job is entirely remote, so I work from home. This was a pretty big change from working in the lab, and I was worried that I would feel lonely. But I have to say that I really enjoy working from home. On sunny days, I can put up the table in the back yard and work outside. I can take my bike out for a ride during my lunch break and can take care of dinner before the kids come home from school. But, I do at times miss the “coffee runs” we used to do back in the lab.
What are some of the challenging aspects of your job? Is there anything you wish you had known about your job or industry before joining?
In my first few months, I had a hard time with project management. We juggle a lot of projects at the same time, and I was worried that I would lose track of one and miss a deadline. Luckily, we have a good system in place; we use Trello boards to stay on top of all our different types of content and each has our individual Trello board to manage our own timelines. But regardless of how well you plan, there are still moments when all your deadlines seem to come together, and those can be pretty intense.
Do you have any professional plans for the future? What are some future career paths that could open up for someone in your position, 5-10 years down the road?
If I learned anything from the last few years, it is that one of the key skills you learn during your graduate training is to figure things out and make them work. This is such an incredibly valuable, but underestimated skill, that turns PhDs into professional chameleons who can adapt and thrive in many environments and functions.
To answer the second part of this question, people in my position can grow within the company by developing new programs or initiatives. In addition, strong communication and writing skills benefit nearly every other job type in the STEM field, so I think the possible career directions are nearly endless.
As for me, while I enjoy being a writer, I also care deeply about the advocacy work I do with organizations such as Future of Research, Reproducibility For Everyone, and FASEB to improve the academic research culture and promote open, reproducible science. In the future, I see myself either growing into a position where I can combine both passions and use my communication skills to help change the academic landscape.
What’s changing in your industry? Are there any future trends we should be aware of?
My industry is growing. The COVID-19 pandemic has made people re-evaluate the importance and power of communicating scientific findings to a broader audience. So, if you had any doubts before, now is the perfect time to make the jump to scicom!
What activities, internships, or organizations would you recommend someone get involved with to help them break into this field?
I would recommend ECRs who want to pursue a career in science communication to start by writing a blog post for an existing blog. There are many out there, but I will highlight ecrLife because it is run by and for early career scientists. If you have the bandwidth, you can and should start your own blog. But it takes time and dedication.
You should also check whether your scientific society has a career development program and whether it has a science writing committee. In such programs, you often co-write an article or blog post with several other committee members. For example, the GSA’s Early Career Leadership Program has a communication and outreach committee where members come up with topics they want to write about and work together to flesh them out. Personally, I think this is a great way to see how other people go through the writing process, which will invariably help you improve your own writing.
Finally, there are also institutions, organizations, and media outlets that provide summer internships. First, find out whether your own institution offers science writing internships. AAAS also offers several possibilities for scientists to gain experience with science writing, like the diverse voices in science journalism internship and the mass media science and technology fellowship. Finally, individual science news outlets, like The Scientist, or Drug Discovery News, also often have their own internship programs, so go take a look at your favorite magazine to find out!
Is it common for people in your field to have a scientific/academic background (i.e. have PhDs)? Can you think of any advantages or disadvantages someone with a PhD might experience while pursuing or working in your field?
I think it depends on the organization, but every writer on my team has a PhD.
A PhD teaches you how to multitask, and the coursework that you went through also gave you a decent basis to build on when you have to dive into a field you are not entirely familiar with. As I mentioned above, the process of getting a PhD teaches you how to figure things out and become exports on a topic you know nothing about. This is an invaluable skill for science writers.
Do you have any final words of advice for those navigating these career questions? Is there anything you would have done differently given what you know now?
Most science writing positions will require you to submit two or three examples of your writing. This means you should plan ahead and submit your pitches at least three to four months before you want to start applying for jobs.
