Scientist & mum of two

Working on my own ideas

Designing new experiments

Thinking, speculating, hypothesizing

Getting first results from a new experiment

Talking about my stuff to people who are interested

Outreach videos, blogging

Mentoring

Preparing visuals, pictures, graphics, making it look cool and approachable

Writing articles, because that's when it all comes together and anyone can use it

Good coleagues, on which I can rely

Spending time with talented students, leading their lab projects

What I do not enjoy in academia

Class teaching

Repeating the same experiment multiple time to get the statistically significant triplicate

Constant rejections from grants, positions, and journals

Overwhelming competition in the grants and positions

Some people can be smart but still be selfish assholes, or some people are just not emotionally capable of any empathy... academia is not an exemption from this rule

Trying to publish my research article since May 2025, with 8 months of additional experiments in between to satisfy the reviewers' comments.

This prize is given to junior researchers under 40 whose work moves the field forward.

You can support my selection by public voting:

https://forms.gle/UToLRFykXbB8RG1M6

This prize is given to junior researchers under 40 whose work moves the field forward.

You can support my selection by public voting:

https://forms.gle/UToLRFykXbB8RG1M6

Goodreads reading challenge finished already in July.

Books are a perfect escape from stress and sometimes too deep thinking about research plans, grant problems, and uncertainty of jobs in academia.

Trying to publish my research article since May 2025, with 8 months of additional experiments in between to satisfy the reviewers' comments.

My latest article was rejected from 5 journals so far. We aim for the high impacted journals so this was to some extent expected. The editors say it's a solid work, but too niche to be interesting to their broad audiences. It stinks to be rejected so many times, but I do not lose my cool. I know it's a solid piece of work, which will get published somewhere eventually.

6th desk rejection today.

7th rejection.

This time the manuscript went out to reviews, but the reviewers comments were so harsh that the editor decided to reject it.

We are now working on extra experiments to improve based on the reviewers' feedback and will send it somewhere else again.

Submitting to a new journal after 9 months of additional experiments, analysis, and rewriting.

Counting cancer cells. Old school. Using a clicker counter.