• Question: If you moved to usa or austrailia ,would it be easy for you to adapt their standards ??

    Asked by zmzmzm to Allan, Angela, Diva, Harriet, Nathan on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Angela Lamb

      Angela Lamb answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hi
      the short answer is yes as science is a very international career, we constantly work with scientists from all over the world and the techniques and standards of science are common to most countries. For example in my field we use international standards, which are different materials which have an accepted isotope value. When we use these in our analyses it enables us to compare our work with other laboratories and allows isotope data to be meaningfully compared across the world.

      Scientists often move around the world to work in different laboratories for a few years.

      Hope this helps!
      Angela

    • Photo: Nathan Langford

      Nathan Langford answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Hi zmzmzm,

      Scientists do often move around the world, because it is an international community. Now, on one hand, this is a great advantage of being a scientist, because you get to travel to and live in different places in different countries, but you are right that there can be a lot of things to get used to along the way.

      During my career so far, I’ve worked in Australia, in the US, in continental Europe (in Austria) and in the UK, and there have been different things to get used to in the system in each place. But since I’m from Australia and have already spent time working in the US, if I move in the future to either of these places, I’m sure I’ll be okay adapting to the systems there.

      Cheers,
      Nathan.

    • Photo: Allan Pang

      Allan Pang answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      The standard actually differs from lab to lab, and not really between countries. And usually the standard or expectation from you differs according to the position you are in as well as previous experiences you have.

      But ultimately, wherever you are, the expectation remains the same: You design an experiment, you carry it out, you analyse your data, you publish your report and present it to many people.

      I’m going to US for the first time next month to visit some labs, so I will probably have to check myself how’s the standard over there. 😉

    • Photo: Diva Amon

      Diva Amon answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      Hey zmzmzm,

      I think I would be particularly good at adapting because I’ve worked at the two extremes of standards I think. I’ve grown up in Trinidad, which is a tiny Caribbean island and developing country where not a lot of money is dedicated to science. For the last 5 years I have lived in the UK, working with a radically different standard of not only life but especially science. You adapt quickly and working in the UK gave me more opportunities to collaborate with scientists from all over the world. Also, as the other scientists in this group have said, UK labs are of a certain international standard so once you have been working at that standard it is much easier o move from place to place. As a scientist you have to be flexible as there is a good chance that your during your career you will live in various countries around the world!

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