キャリアニュース2019年６月５～12日

It seemed risky to try something new midway to my tenure review. Since I started my dream job as an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college, the gist of the advice I heard and read was to stick with what I know, and then I could branch out after tenure. I didn't necessarily disagree—it made sense that I could contribute most in my formal area of expertise. But as I chugged along on my research using the same old tried-and-true benchtop assays, my excitement about the work was fading. I needed something new to inspire me again. ![Figure][1]</img> ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER > “Expertise … can also mean the willingness to move outside of your comfort zone.” I was intrigued by big data projects, long touted as the future of my field of microbiology. But I thought of myself as computer illiterate. Computational biology was intimidating, so I had steered clear of it. But I knew that my field was changing, and I could either get onboard or be left behind. “If I don't try

Bradley Miller is more likely to be hired than José Rodriguez. Zhang Wei (David) is more competent than Jamal Banks. And both Miller and Wei are more competent and hirable than Maria Rodriguez or Shanice Banks. These postdoc job candidates are fictional. But the differences in how they're viewed based on name alone—despite identical CVs—by a sample of professors are real. That's according to a recent study that unearths evidence of racial bias in biology and a combination of gender and racial bias in physics, highlighting both the pervasive nature of various biases in science as well as important disciplinary differences. “This is a really, really important study,” says Corinne Moss-Racusin, a psychologist at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York. In 2012, Moss-Racusin published a similar study, which found that biology, chemistry, and physics faculty members who reviewed applications for a lab manager position favored applicants named John over otherwise identical applicant