 Hi everyone, I'm Shane Alsop, E-Life's Community Engagement Assistant and it's my pleasure to welcome you to August's ECR Wednesday webinar. Now if you're unfamiliar, this series aims to give early career researchers a platform to discuss issues important to you and your research career. You can follow us on Twitter at E-Life Community, number the hashtag ECR Wednesday and the session is being recorded and will be made available on YouTube in the near future. So the ECR Wednesday webinar series is usually led by members of the Early Career Advisory Group, however it brings me great pleasure today to welcome Fit Nukala, Adriana Bounston, Louisa F, F Cheveria King, Nimita Pandey, who are not only today's panelists but are also members of E-Life's 2022 Cohorts of Community Ambassadors alongside today's chair, Nick Kapokazinski. So please join me in welcoming Nick and our panelists. Thank you Shane and hello everybody. Thanks for joining us today for our ECR Wednesday webinar on getting involved in global science policy. As Shane mentioned, my name is Nick Kapokazinski and I'm a postdoctoral researcher at the Yale School of Medicine and an E-Life Community Ambassador and I'll be moderating the webinar today. And so we're going to be using both Zoom and Otter AI to provide live transcription services today and you can enable the Otter AI system in the upper left hand corner of your screen if you simply click the custom live streaming service and then select view stream on custom live streaming service. This will open and display the transcript on a separate window and you can exit out of the window to close the transcript. To enable Zoom's live transcript, click the center button or the center bottom toolbar and then you can click show subtitle and you can then turn them off by clicking hide subtitle. If you have any difficulties, let us know in the chat box. Next slide please. E-Life is a nonprofit organization that is operating a platform to improve all aspects of research communication by encouraging and recognizing the most responsible behaviors in research. Today our webinar panelists will discuss science policy, how to get involved and how to effectively communicate your research to policymakers. Following the panelists' presentation and discussion, we will invite questions and comments from the audience. But first let's do some quick housekeeping. And so during the webinar, please remember to be respectful, honest, inclusive, accommodating, appreciative and open to learning from everybody else. Do not attack, demean, disrupt, harass or threaten others or encourage such behavior. And if you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome on any of these webinars, please contact E-Life by email via elife-safety-team at protonmail.com. And we reserve the right to ask anyone to leave and or to deny access to a subsequent webinar. As mentioned, the session is being recorded and we will make it available on YouTube in the near future. If you need help, please send a chat message directly to Shane. And then following the presentation, we'll be relaying your questions to the panelists. And so to ask a question at any point during the webinar, you can type your question into Zoom's chat box and I'll read out your name and question in the Q&A at the end of the webinar. Alternatively, we can enable your microphone so that you can ask your question directly. And now I would like to welcome our speakers. Our first panelist is Vid Nukala, the inaugural Senior Community Engagement Officer at EMBO. And we invite you to share your screen, Vid. Okay. Thank you, Shane, Aleish, Nick and E-Life for inviting me to this webinar. I look forward to the conversations today. My name is Vid Nukala. I come from a small town in India and from an era before computers, internet and mobile phones existed. At the same time, the common thread over my last 15 years of professional career is international science, technology and innovation cooperation. So moving clockwise on the slide, my training in science began during my bachelor's in India, after which I moved to US for my PhD. As a near completion of my PhD in neurobiology, I realized I didn't want to pursue the default academic route. I wanted to stay in science even if not in the lab. And I explored options, medical degree, science journalism, patent law. And ultimately, I settled on science policy as it gave me an opportunity to look at the big picture of research while enabling scientists. Although there were a few postdoctoral fellowships in science policy, I wasn't eligible at that time due to my foreign student status in the US. So to equip myself with the theoretical frameworks and to get the credentials, I joined a two-year program in international science and technology policy to gain practical experience. I served as a fellow and carried out a couple of internships, one of them focused on foresight and governance, other on emerging and dual use technologies. And yet another helped me understand facilitating bilateral collaborations. And a capstone project during my master's on technology update took me to Kenya even. So these two years in Washington DC helped me shape my career and getting that master's degree was perhaps a critical decision for me at least. And moving back to India a decade later, I joined a funding agency where I worked on fellowships to promote brain gain and worked on research integrity policies. Then I moved to a bilateral diplomatic setup at an embassy where I worked not only on science both basic and applied but also health policy. So this included analyzing policies and developments in both countries that would impact the bilateral relationship to organize high-level policy dialogues and delegations. And during this tenure, I worked with governments, industry, academia, multilateral bodies, NGOs, getting a firm foretold as a practitioner of science diplomacy. And after another decade, 10 years working in India, I was ready to step out again this time in Europe. I currently work at an intergovernmental international organization supporting and engaging the life sciences community across 40 countries. And getting the policymakers to hear from the scientific community is an important aspect of my role. Next slide, please. And what did I learn on this journey? As you see, I moved across sectors, I moved across subject areas and I moved across countries and continents. So in science, it could be curiosity-driven or purpose-driven and we spend a lot of time coming up with hypotheses and conducting original research, analyzing the data and publishing in journals or at conferences. But when you move to policy, it tends to be purpose-driven and it could be at the institutional level, it could be at the national or it could be at the international level. You analyze the scientific evidence and come up with policies known as science for policy or you could come up with policies that would in fact impact the science of what and how it's done and that's policy for science. And in both cases, you are looking at drafting a variety of documents, you are looking at coming up with both the analysis and policy options and sometimes even recommendations when it becomes advice. Moving on to diplomacy, this tends to be purpose-driven. Again, the lot of elements of policy carry over into diplomacy, but perhaps some new elements here that is negotiating at the bilateral, regional or multilateral level. And you don't not only look at policy options, but you also have policy positions. You want to know, you want to be clear on what you want to go in for these negotiations. And the critically important element is how to navigate the socio-cultural and economic context of the countries or the communities that you are interacting with. And coming to community engagement, things are almost flipped over here. You start with understanding what's the socio-economic cultural context that you are operating in. You try to learn the needs of the scientific community. It's a very service-oriented approach and response. You try to build, nurture, and empower the community. And in doing so, you also leverage the knowledge interests and skills. So these are sort of very top-line perhaps differences or similarities across these four areas that I have sort of did the boundary spanner. And now are there any mantras? I think there are four that worked for me. If you look at the circles, I think the first step before changing current course is self-reflection. This requires one to pause and take stock of their career trajectory thus far to identify one's interests and match them with their strengths or seek opportunities for additional knowledge and skills through continuous learning. Honing on how to communicate in a clear and simple way to a diverse audience is critically important here. The second is be pragmatic and carry out due diligence about the job market, about what you deserve, what's out there. Getting job as a researcher is easier than in policy and diplomacy. There are fewer opportunities and so you need to be aware of that limitation. There are additional barriers if you want to move into policy and diplomacy, especially such as security clearances, visas. Some of the positions are open to only citizens or permanent residents. So these are the very practical matters that one needs to be aware of, especially if you're crossing countries. Third is networking and volunteering. Seek out organizations and people whose work you're interested in and inspires you. Not because they'll offer you a job, some of them may become your collaborators or mentors. Offer yourself not as a potential employee but as a resource. And the last month, I would say is take calculated risks, be curious and be willing to move out of your comfort zone. Again, whether they are subject sectors or countries. So my last key message is strain from the default path can be unsettling and yet exciting bringing with possibilities. After all, the world is large enough to carve and make a mark for oneself. Thank you. Happy to discuss today or later. My LinkedIn contact information is on this slide. Thanks. Thank you, Vid. That was great. Our next panelist is Adriana Bankston, the chief executive officer and managing publisher of the Journal of Science Policy and Governance. I will hand it over to you, Adriana. Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me today. If you'll go to the next slide, please. So my story will be a little bit more US focused but hopefully still useful and hopefully you'll see there's a common throughout my career to really support early career researchers in science and in policy and will aim to provide some useful advice as well. So moving from left to right here, in terms of career exploration, so I obtained my bachelor's in science from Clemson and biological sciences and my PhD also in biomedical sciences from Emory University and then did a postdoc at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. So again, all my training was in the US. During the postdoc, I started looking for opportunities for career exploration and there really weren't too many being in Kentucky and the small postdoc office there. And so I actually started a seminar series at my university, which got me interested in different career options for trainees. So that's one lesson here. There's a resource that you need that is not there creating it really will give you a lot of skills. And then also nationally, I got involved with organizations that really worked on training early career scientists. One example I'm showing here is the National Postdoc Association or NPA, which really looks at policies for postdocs. And so started to develop an interest in training the next generation and a little bit of policy against through the Kentucky Academy of Sciences, trying to look at what was there in terms of local options. So, so far this was a good sort of lesson to cultivate both local and national interests in the particular area. So moving on from these experiences, I became interested in how we can improve policy to really support early career scientists. And of course, I was still in the lab and looking for a way to transition. So I got involved with this nonprofit called Future of Research, which addresses academic systemic change. And through them, did advocacy for increased postdoc salaries. So had a project research project looking at postdoc salaries across the US, we published and went around to universities to talk about that. And it was a really great way to look at sort of this issue of postdoc pay more broadly. But we also organized a number of symposiums and meetings for early career researchers and published on these topics, including mentoring and other things. This experience really was pivotal in my transition and solidifying my interests in academic policy change and what we can do to think about institutional change to support PCRs. And so again, the lesson here would be to sort of take a leap of faith and think about what you're interested in. And that could be a good direction as you're thinking about leaving the lab if you're interested in this area. So the next thing sort of building on this, the middle point here is how do you build your skills. So now knowing really that I was interested in policy related to academia and looking for a way to actually transition this into a career. So I again looked at organizations that I was already already involved with. So given the NPA, I got involved with their advocacy committee. So again, another tip, if you're already involved with their organization, try to find out options for communications and policy that they may have in addition to research opportunities. The other sort of big experience here was with the American Society for Cell Biology. So again, this was my sort of scientific discipline. I went to the meeting, presented my research and started getting involved more with their policy areas and then joined their public policy committee, which is really instrumental in learning how policy actually works and seeing how a society does that. So I contributed to projects again related to postdoc policies, wrote policy statements, contributed to a number of projects, attended advocacy meetings, and also had some leadership roles as well, and then really was useful for connecting with leadership in the society as well. And so this really, as I was transitioning through this process of solidifying my interest in policy, starting doing more networking with professionals in the field, and then also developed really a strong interest in training the next generation in policy. And this is sort of where the journal fits in, and we'll talk about that. But I think sort of from this section, I would say seeking opportunities to gain the skills that you'll need in policy positions is helpful as you're transitioning and thinking through how to gain them. So moving on, the fourth bullet here is really, again, another big step. Now knowing that I was interested in policies around academia and the workforce, my sort of official transition, I guess, into the field was through a policy and advocacy fellowship with the Society for Neuroscience. And this is where I really understood how things work. This position was very much focused on advocacy. I learned a lot of basic skills, again, events, writing policy documents, contributing to a newsletter, and also reviewing applications for one of the training programs and so on. So this was a really big sort of plunge to shift into this field was very daunting, but really what I needed to do to kind of step out and make this commitment to the field. And then lastly, to my current position. So I currently work for University of California and advocating for the system at the federal level with Congress, the administration and federal agencies, which is another big role that I stepped into and learned how to navigate it. But here again, a few examples of what I do include advocating for federal funding for research, organizing advocacy events, meetings with legislative staff, writing letters and other documents. And also, we have involved trainees in a number of our advocacy events and also engaged with federal agencies to discuss grant opportunities. So this was another big decision that I took on this role, not really knowing how I would do it and sort of learned how to do it on the job. That's another lesson, so something else to consider. So that's all to say, kind of how I've come to my current role, happy to talk more. But I want to transition now to tell you a little bit about the journal, as that was a part of my role and also as a CEO, if you'll get to the next slide. Thank you. So on the left side here, I'll just give you a brief background about the journal, Science, Policy and Governance. So this could be a good stepping stone for you in policy. JSPG is an international open access and peer review journal. We publish policy work from early career authors from every corner of science and technology policy in a variety of formats. You can submit from anywhere in the world. We were established about 10 years ago and provide opportunities not only for publishing policy research and writing, but also a forum for debate and discourse. So we really try to get published ideas out there and discussing what the next generation is publishing. And with that, in addition to being a journal, we're also an outlet for professional development and policy. So prior to submission deadlines, we organize a number of webinars and writing workshops and policy that you can sign up for to help prospective authors in preparing their submissions. We post all of our recordings on YouTube and so you can view past trainings as well. We also have additional opportunities to get involved besides publishing, which are through the editorial board and also our ambassador program that we started this year. You can learn more about that on the website. So to give you just a brief flavor of some of our activities, here's our latest issue that we published this week on innovations in science diplomacy. And we currently have a call for papers open on digital health and also more opportunities for publishing coming in 2023 for different issues. So stay tuned for that. You can also see here the associate editor opportunity, which is still open until September 4. Another way to learn about policy writing and editing and play a role in the direction of the journal. So I encourage you to apply to the editorial board. On the right side, sort of the flip side of this is we have opportunities for published authors, as I said, to talk about published work through presentations to partners. So you can see here a presentation that was given by authors to the British embassy staff conference panels, which I'm not showing the podcast that we have. We started this a couple of years ago to provide another model sort of medium for folks to talk about published work. And it's now on multiple platforms, something else you can subscribe to to hear from what our authors are doing. And we're trying to ramp up our media engagement to really get either universities or other outlets to promote published work. So I'm showing one article here from Northwestern about graduate students who published in GSBG and highlighted their published work here. So that's a nice article to look at. We also have a newsletter that you can subscribe to for future updates. And I'll share some of the links in the chat after this. So happy to talk more about the journal as well. I just wanted to give you a little background. But my last slide is really sort of lessons learned, I guess, some recommendations. If you can go to the next slide, please. Thank you. So through my story, I am a bit already touched upon some of this and I suspect we'll have a lot of common advice here. But my I always advise trainees to explore options early. Don't wait until your postdoc. Even though I did that and you don't also don't have to do a postdoc. But explore early. Find a policy area that you're interested in. Look for opportunities and organizations that are involved in that working on those issues so you can start building your brand and reputation. Get involved in both local and national organizations. Again, this worked well for me, gives you different types of skills. And joining committees, groups and organizations, as you've sort of seen through my story, is helpful, especially if you can be a leader in some of them, and that will get you noticed throughout different areas. Also seek to gain a versatile skill set through these experiences. So one way to do that is to look at which organizations can give you different skills or learning things, events, writing advocacy, etc. And don't be afraid to explore new opportunities and positions that you might feel excited about even if they seem a little scary because you'll really grow into it. That's really probably one of my top pieces of advice. Networking and informational interviews can go a long way. I think anybody who's transitioned is happy to chat about their story and that's that's a resource. And then ultimately, and I'll leave you with this, develop your story and path and policy. Everybody has a different story and a different reason why they're getting better involved in the field. They have a different way of getting into it. So I told you mine. So now go build your story and I'm happy to chat with any trainees that want to reach out about your path or your interests. And then you can find my contact on the slide and also JSPG, our Twitter and website as well. So thank you. Thank you, Adriana. That was great. Now please welcome our next panelist, which will be Luisa F. Escherveria King, a researcher at Corporación Universitaria del Caribe and internationalization advisor at Sena. Thank you. Can you please go to the next slide? So I wanted to start my presentation just saying that I am a social scientist. When I began my career, I just thought that I really wanted to get involved with academia. When I started working at academia, I was just, I was without a PhD. I was just starting my career really, really from the bottom and also teaching a foreign language at the university because I come from the foreign languages background. And when I started my career at the university, soon I got the possibility to start working at the international office. For me, it was very interesting because since the beginning of my studies, I studied abroad. I always have been working internationally. So for me, it was pretty natural to start working at the international office of that particular university at that point of my career. I was starting my career. And after a couple of years, I also got the possibility to manage that international office. So I became a manager at a very young age. So I think that possibility also really changed my perspective to have so much responsibility at a very young age to really try to internationalize the university from a regional perspective. Also, it was quite a challenge about my formation and training. I just wanted to say that I started linguistics, translation and cultural studies in Germany at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mines. And I have a master's in linguistics and a PhD in education, my PhD. I did it later in my career when I was already working as an international officer for a really quite long time. I wanted to say also that this topic about policy advice is really interesting when you see it like in a broader way because when you start your career, when I was started, I really didn't know that I wanted to do a PhD. That came just along the way. After being involved in the university, I got a possibility to go to Bogota and start working as an internationalization advisor at our Colombian Ministry of Education. That possibility really opened my mind a lot because in that particular position, I had the chance to really advise also many universities to participate in many international key spaces. That really made me understand that as a professional, I just didn't want to work at a single institution. I just really wanted to serve many institutions and also the government. That was for me clear at that point when I began working at the Colombian Ministry of Education. I also had the possibility to join SENA, that's the institution where I'm also working at this point. This is a government-led institution for vocational education in Colombia. We are present in all Colombia. As you could see from the beginning of my career, I was always involved also in the field of education, tertiary education, higher education. I think that was also something special because sometimes when you begin your career, you don't know what you're going to become, but for me it was very special to start working in one of my passions, which is higher education. One thing I also wanted to mention is that I always take chances. If I see an opportunity, I just go and get it. I had many opportunities for continuous learning and courses and scholarships during my career. I had the possibility to go to a course to Israel, to India, also to Germany with the DAD. What I also can say is that it's really, really important for your career and so that you have also a global perspective from a particular situation or a problem is that when you have the possibility, of course, to try to apply to those scholarships and really participate in international courses, also to build a network because when you really are interested in these topics about science policy, you really have to have a network globally so that you can have also a broader impact. During my career, I was also pursuing my PhD at the same time. I didn't leave my career to do my PhD. That's something which is also very common in Latin America. In Latin America, people usually study what they are working and I also did that. After pursuing my PhD, I was always thinking during my PhD about alternative careers, not just to be a professor at a university. I just thought that that would be for me not enough. I really want more and I started doing consultancy work. Many of the people that advise policy in a country such as Colombia, they are academic consultants. That's how we call it. So I started doing consultancy work at the beginning just at universities and also like university networks. But afterwards, in the year 2020, I began to advise also our Colombian Ministry of Education officially in the topic of internationalization of higher education. Right now, I am also working in the first Colombian policy for the internationalization of science technology and innovation and science diplomacy in Colombia. This has been also a very interesting journey because after finishing my PhD, I began also actually doing research. After doing research, you also see all the bias, all the situations, all the problems that we have in a country such as Colombia. You really try to solve these problems. In order to try to solve these problems and also to engage and to influence agendas, to influence a policy, it is important to really become a leader in the topic that you are researching and also to become a leader in associations and networks. That was something that I really want to to deliver in this speech just to really engage, engage in different networks, share with different people from other regions of your country, internationally, globally, and start to share your experiences with them because you are going to be, this advocacy situation really pushes your career. That's what I want to say. I think you learn a lot from other people and other people will also learn a lot from you. Can we go to the next slide, please? I have here also some key recommendations, as I was saying, do advocacy and scientific outreach. I mean, maybe at the beginning, it looks like more work, but do so is really rewarding in the end because you can influence in different agendas all those values and elements of science that you really want to defend and support. I have, for instance, my own values that I want to defend and you have others, so try to engage and really change the perspective by engaging. I also think that it is really important to try to engage in the public sector of your country. I mean, if you really want to advise in the field of Colombia, for instance, Latin America, national policies, you really have to try to engage to the public sector because if you haven't worked in the public sector and at a national level, it is a little bit difficult to really influence those policies and agendas. So please try to engage also with the public sector. I also wanted to say that it's quite important to become a leader. Sometimes you see topics or areas of interest, but no one is really working on that topic or you have people that are not really interested in that, so I just also wanted to encourage you to really become a leader, to see areas of opportunity, try to connect the dots, establish links, train yourself also. I am also a person that, as Adriana just said, I have learned a lot during my actual job. I was not trained as a consultant, of course not. I just really learned that by doing. So please, when you see the opportunity, just get it and do your best and you are going to see that you're going to learn a lot doing that. And I also recommend to attend seminars and trainings on a public policy advice. I think that's something which is quite interesting and you're going to learn a lot. Adriana, for instance, does a lot of those workshops, so you can really also engage on those workshops and seminars and you're going to learn also other people that are like you that also want to learn a little bit more about the topic. So that would be also great for your career. That would be my presentation. Thank you very much. And I'm happy to hear your questions. Thank you, Luisa. Our final panelist today is Namita Pandy, postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, India. Hello, everyone. Thank you, Nick. And first of all, I would just put this disclaimer that I'm recovering from COVID. So kindly bear with my coughing in between. And thank you for your patience. I would request the Shane to kindly move to the first slide. Okay, so after listening to Wade, Adriana, Luisa, I don't have much more to say. Maybe I would sound very repetitive at a lot of point. But like Luisa, I have my love and hate with science right from my childhood. So I was super curious as a kid and my adren curiosity to know the hows and ways of nature kind of pushed me to with science. And I don't know when I fell in love with science. So I got fascinated with my elder brother's book, who is a chemical engineer. My father was a mechanical engineer back home. And but unfortunately, nobody was happy about me taking up engineering. So here comes the gender angle to it. And I come from Bihar, which is a very small, it's, it's one of the backward states in India. And education was not very freely accessible. Though I came from a middle class, so preliminary education was very much there. But becoming an engineer was not no, no, a big no to it. But I was a rebellious kid to be very frank. And I thought, let's denounce science, let's not study science, let's hate science, forget science forever. But here comes what I would say by chance or by choice. I started studying economics. And right next to my department was the science faculty. And I made friends in science departments. And during my cafeteria discussions and, and even beyond that, I got to know more science than people knew in the classrooms. And then and why I started up doing science activism right in my college days. Be it related to climate change, be it related to air pollution, be it related to HIV advocacy, and science policy and advocacy got into my brain in a very subconscious way. I think more from the academic point of view, I started more from the civil society backdrop. And engaging with civil societies and communities working on science society interface was my first kick towards science policy. I believe there was so much of calculation, as Vid said, about calculating risk, about thinking about mobility, about visa, about the career aspirations you have, because science policy in India as a discipline existed nowhere. So where will I learn science policy and the theories and models? So I went back to the community. I went back to a lot of professors. In fact, I started exploring science in my own stream. So I was doing economics. I started studying evolutionary economics, which has so much of inspiration drawn from biology. And I ended up doing PhD in science policy. So the learning over here is no matter where you start, I think having the right kind of guidance and choosing your godfather or godmother is one of the very important element. So do focus on finding the right mentor for yourself. That is very important in your career. And as I'll move further, I might explain a little more about it. Now, the third section, which talks about science policies, hey, this is a universe full of opportunities. Unfortunately, very few get a chance to explore it, exploit it, and make good out of it for themselves and for the society. I would suggest it is important to be very open minded when you begin exploring this whole arena of science policy, expose yourself to different perspective interest needs, be it region, be it global, national, local, be it different networks, associations of different teams of different sectors. I think working with different associations and being a part of it, I think most of us have been talking about network building and discussing about elements like how we create more of a community of science policy. So that is very important. And at the second point also reflects on the fact that it's important to collaborate. And when you collaborate, it's more about cultivating and open to co-learning and co-creating. I think this point comes very relevant for me because after finishing my PhD, I was quite directionless. And I got a project from FAO and one of the think tanks in New Delhi was doing this project and I needed money because I had finished my PhD and I had to work. So I jumped into the project. I started doing science policy research and to my surprise, this one project opened so many opportunities for me, that I got exposed to the right kind of stakeholders, the kind of people who work in the area of similar interest. And this helped me to also identify my present postdoctoral fellowship, which is supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and which gave me a direct access to work with the public sector, with the government at national level and work with one of the ongoing policy making process, which is the fifth national policy. We are still in the process and it's under the cabinet approval right now. And I was fortunate to work on a theme on gender inclusion, which circles back to my disenchantment of science. But this is what it's about chances and choices you make in life. So now I also believe that this also made me realize you cannot really be running like a horse in a race. You have to diversify your work portfolio. I started my PhD with internationalization of innovation, looking at tech clusters. Now I work on gender and science, science, diplomacy, inclusive innovation. And I think inclusive innovation is very important, particularly from people coming from the global south. And so is grassroots innovation. The discussions around that have so much of relevance. And I can see many of our participants are from the global south as well. And I think they should definitely work in these areas because these are unexplored, but very, very relevant for India, for any of these developing countries. And the policy making particularly because I believe science policy, as much as it depends on advocacy, as much as it depends on the kind of policy making we do, it also depends on the kind of evidence we create for these policies. So please invest yourself in trying to create the right kind of evidence to make these policies. Next slide, please. Shane. Okay, so quick suggestions. And these suggestions nobody give to me. So I never followed them. But I believe that these are very important suggestions. And wish someone would have given these suggestions to me. One is, of course, start early, as Adriana said, and I think Louis also touched upon the fact that please try to identify your interest and try to build upon that. And you have this amazing platform of E-Life community exploited. And I think you will find right kind of peer groups, right kind of mentors. Don't become a frog in the well. I was one of the frogs in the well. For the entire PhD, I thought I'll read, write, read and write without reaching out to scholars without connecting them, connecting with them. And I believe this was not right. I think it was very important to connect with different scholars, practitioners, the relevant communities which are very important for the area of interest. Please ask questions, even the stupid ones. Don't hesitate to reach out to people. I think people are very welcoming and open to listen to you. Find your tribe, the kind of work you want to do. Find people who have similar interest and objectives. And I think this would help you to take a leap in your career and do something great in science policy. Keep yourself updated. And it's very important to keep moving and learning. Read, reflect, discuss, deliberate. These are very important points. And I believe the whole arena of science policy is so dynamic and unpredictable that if you lose onto a point and if you are somewhere stuck in 2020, and here we are in 2022, the debates are transforming in seconds these days. Please keep yourself updated. And as I said, be passionate about what you do because this is such a fascinating multi-disciplinary and complex millionaire. I believe there's so much to offer and contribute. There's no wrong framework, no wrong model. You have to contextualize it. You have to just figure out how to put it. You can start from your home. The beauty about doing science for society through making smaller changes. And I think that is how you should start for. And policies, as I think most of us have been talking about. I think impacting policies or even who would also matter a lot how passionate you are for the subject and how all these elements of being in the right community, doing the right kind of research, and how you are trying to engage with the different stakeholders around. As Luisa said, collaborate, meet, go, be a part of different discussions, be a part of different communities. I think that is one way to reach out to the larger community of science policy and be a part of that. And I'll leave my contact details on the slide. And there's a tattoo which is on my leg, which is a TNT. And it just reminds me of how at what point I started and where I am right now. And there is never to look back now and go on and on. Thank you so much. Thank you, Namita. That was wonderful. And thank you to all of our panelists today. We're going to move into the Q&A in just a moment. I believe we've got about seven minutes left on the webinar, so I'll try to be quick with this follow-up announcement here. But I want to let everyone on the call today know that we've actually planned a follow-up science policy in action event for September 26 at 3 p.m. BST, which is the same time as this event. And we've organized that because of the large interest shown by the ECR community in science policy. And so we'll be joined by four other panelists, Naomi Wallace, Hannah Genobdar, Shannon Koslovich, and Emily Myers. And we'll be discussing how all of whom they all work in various science policy-related fields. They're all also friends or colleagues of mine. And so I'm really excited to give them an opportunity to share their career paths with you and some of their work and experiences. They are all also recently graduated PhDs. So they definitely will be able to kind of, I think, bring that ECR perspective to the community. And so with that, oh, and I believe that Shane is actually going to drop a link to the registration for that event in the chat. And then with that, I'm going to move on into the Q&A. And so let's see. I think the first question here, it's from the early career advisory group. I don't know who specifically. And this question is, I think, is directed towards the panel generally speaking. But they want to know kind of what a typical day working in science policy looks like. And maybe everyone could just share kind of a quick thought about what their day looks like and maybe how that's changed throughout their career a little bit. I imagine it changes quite a bit depending on your role. I can go just very briefly. So it all depends on the context, the setting, and the role you're in. And it could be any of the following things. This could be drafting policies, looking at scientific evidence. This could be analyzing policies and see whether they're working or not and what needs to be tweaked and evaluating policies. This could be communicating policies. This could be negotiating policies. So it just depends on which context you are in. So I know that's not a very specific answer. But I think it depends on where you are and what you're setting out to do. Luis, I see you have your hand raised. Would you like to go next? Yes. In Colombia, for instance, as I was saying, we are working in our internationalization of STI policy and science diplomacy. And for that, we go to different places of Colombia and we gather with people. We are collecting data, for instance. That's something which is also part of the job. Meetings, many meetings also with the ministry, of course, and our ministry of STI. Also analyzing data. Also meetings between the teams so that we can be so that we can all agree on what we are going to be proposing. So it is different. And for an academic consultant, that's usually how the work looks like. It's very like on the field and meetings and data analyzing and stuff like that. So if I can add to that. So for me, it depends on the time of year and also wanted to point out that there's a difference between policy and advocacy as well. So my job is very much focused on advocacy, which is pushing priorities of the university with different constituencies, strategies that go into that and who you reach out to when you're trying to push specific policy and so on. We do a lot of it through advocacy events, either meetings with legislative staff, different offices, other universities, other higher ed organizations that are pushing similar topics. Writing priority documents, of course, and the following legislation. So that's again specific to my role that we do follow all the bills that are going on and moving around in the federal level as well. So I'm happy to chat more, but that's just my specific activities. Adriana, I'm wondering maybe you can expand on that a little bit because the second part of this question is actually related to what the most important or rewarding change in policy that you've had the opportunity to bring about what that might have been and kind of how long it took to go from envisioning that goal to seeing it happen. Yeah, so there's two things I'll mention. One is I mentioned this in the introduction, but engaging trainees more in our advocacy efforts and that's really paid off during the pandemic. We organized the panel with grad students and postdocs of the system with legislative staff talking about their experiences and how the pandemic impacted them and that really did lead to some legislative language down the road to really help them. And I think there's a lot more interest in the pipeline and what the research system will look like post pandemic and all that kind of stuff. So just for one event, the other major thing which again is a long process and will tell you about how long the legislative process takes, but you probably if you've seen the recent bill that was signed into law last couple of weeks ago, I guess, Chips and Science Act includes a section on graduate education, different programs for grad students and postdocs. So that was language that we actually drafted probably about a year and a half ago or so. It was in a different bill. It's a long story. The bill got attached to a number of other ones and eventually got into Chips, which passed and now is the law, which is really exciting. So I actually wrote a section for the bill to provide postdocs with professional development opportunities and funding. So if that all goes through and the funding goes through, we'll see next year, that'll be a program that will be implemented and that'll happen. So it takes a long time now to go too deep into the legislative process because it can be convoluted, but it's nice to get to this point. And just to see that your ideas are incorporated is a big deal. So hopefully we'll see that actually implemented. Well, I think because we are at time, we're gonna wrap it up there, but I encourage everyone to reach out to our panelists if you have any other questions. I think that they've all shared various forms of contact information throughout the webinar. And yeah, thank you all for being here and thanks again to all the panelists.