Science Diplomacy Roles

Lessons learned from global collaboration As a young faculty member, I envied faculty from Asia, Europe, and further afield. They had high status and large PhD programs, yet did not have the publications required for tenure at my home institution in the United States. I was envious because I did not yet understand that we were doing fundamentally different jobs. Over the past two decades, I have visited and worked with schools across Asia, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand. What once evoked envy now reflects something more useful: different systems, different constraints, and different definitions of success. That shift changed how I approach global collaboration. A few lessons. First, teaching anchors the profession everywhere. Teaching cycles, grading structures, and program demands determine when work can happen. If you ignore this, coordination will fail. Second, service is no longer cleanly divided across systems. In the past, US scholars emphasized editorial roles and external visibility, while scholars elsewhere often carried heavier administrative responsibilities. That distinction is fading. Many faculty now juggle editorial work, institutional leadership, and external engagement at the same time. Effective collaboration starts with recognizing that everyone is managing multiple roles. Third, definitions of research success differ. Rankings have globalized expectations around top journals, but local systems still reward different outputs. Policy reports, industry engagement, grant capture, and societal impact are core activities in many contexts. If you screen collaborators only on journal lists, you will miss strong partners with complementary strengths. Fourth, industry access varies, and you should not assume it transfers. In some countries, access to firms and data is embedded in the role. In others, it is harder to secure. Global collaborators can expand access, but only if expectations are made explicit early. Fifth, coordination is easier and harder at the same time. Remote work, shared tools, and AI reduce friction. At the same time, time zones, institutional rules, data restrictions, and geopolitical pressures introduce new constraints. Successful collaboration now requires more structure, not less. Finally, PhD training models differ in meaningful ways. Some systems emphasize independence; others emphasize close supervision. These differences shape how students work, communicate, and contribute. If you ignore this, frustration is predictable. If you understand it, you can design better collaborations. I no longer assume that one model is superior. But I do pay close attention to fit. Global collaboration is not just about expanding your network. It is about expanding how you understand the work itself. #academicjourney #collaboration

It took me a long time to be able to define, rest in, and identify my career path within science. My roles were often framed around partnerships or international collaboration, yet what I was doing on a daily basis was working at the boundary of institutions, disciplines, systems and ideas rather than simply managing relationships. Then in 2010, the UK Royal Society and the AAAS released a seminal report on science diplomacy. That report helped define the conceptual underpinnings of the field. The 2025 revision simplifies this framing and calls for greater conceptual clarity about both theory and practice. For me, the 2010 report was important because it recognised the need to professionalise science diplomacy. It highlighted the need to strengthen the capacities of scientists so they can operate at the intersection of science and international relations. It also recognised the existence of professionals who work as boundary spanners. That recognition shifted my own professional identity. It gave me language for what I was already doing. I began seeing more clearly how trust, mutual respect, relational practice, consistency, and shared understanding were central values. They were shaping how I built partnerships and understood my role within them. Later, academic grounding on science advice added further depth to that professional identity. It gave me language and tools to understand, in a more rigorous way, the types of organisations I was working with. It helped me to hold science-policy tensions and to navigate differences in language and approach across scientific disciplines. As such, I refer to myself as a boundary spanner working at the intersection of science advice and science diplomacy, using these mechanisms to support international scientific cooperation. Stepping back to the system, I have often wondered why this career path is not more visible or deliberately enabled within scientific institutions. If boundary spanning is so central to the practice of international scientific cooperation, why is it not more clearly recognised and intentionally supported? The 2025 revision of the science diplomacy report makes an important shift. It recognises that science diplomacy is no longer primarily about soft power. At a time of fundamental global change, scientific cooperation cannot be assumed. Science diplomacy becomes the mechanism that deliberately enables and sustains it. In this context, science diplomacy is not peripheral to institutional work. It is core to it. Funding agencies, academies of science, professional societies and scientific think tanks are boundary organisations where science diplomacy enables the intersection of disciplines, science, policy, practice and cooperation. The question is no longer whether this work exists. It clearly does. The question is whether it is seen and named, and whether the professional identities that sustain it are understood.

When I started my research career, I thought there was one right way to land a position overseas. After moving across India, Germany, Finland, Czech Republic, US, I have learned there are actually four major routes, and they work the same whether you are applying for a PhD or a postdoc. 1. The Direct Approach: Email the right supervisor. Still the fastest route, still the most underrated. PhD: professors with open projects or advertised RA roles. Postdoc: PIs with active grants or recent papers that match your skillset. 2. The Fellowship Route: You bring the money; you pick the lab. Prestige + independence in one move. PhD: DAAD, Commonwealth, Fulbright, Chevening, CSC, Erasmus Mundus, Rhodes, Gates Cambridge. Postdoc: MSCA, HFSP, EMBO, Humboldt, Fulbright, JSPS, Branco Weiss. 3. Structured Programs: Formal cycles, panel interviews, real cohort experience. PhD: MPI IMPRS, EMBL PhD, Crick PhD, Pasteur, ETH, Cambridge/Oxford DTPs. Postdoc: EMBL, Crick, Carnegie, Max Planck, HHMI, Junior Fellows schemes. 4. The Vacancy Route: Clear scope, funded day one. You step into an existing grant. PhD: FindAPhD, EURAXESS, university job boards, PhD-specific project ads. Postdoc: Nature Careers, EURAXESS, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Science Careers. These aren't competing strategies, they're a portfolio. The strongest candidates I have seen try all four in parallel. Each one sharpens how you articulate your science. And honestly, that's the real win, regardless of which path lands first. Except these 4 major strategies some other ways that works too are: Conference & Workshop Networking Supervisor Referral Collaboration-to-Position Pipeline Social Media Direct Outreach 🙂 Feel free to reach out for more information.

🟪 One Plant, Many Countries: Why Collaboration Matters A medicinal plant may grow in one country, be studied in another, manufactured in a third, and finally reach patients around the world. That journey reflects the reality of modern botanical drug development. No single laboratory or nation has all the expertise needed to transform a traditional remedy into a globally accepted medicine. Scientific discovery is only the beginning. Successful botanical drugs require expertise in botany, phytochemistry, pharmacology, toxicology, clinical research, manufacturing, regulation, and commercialization. These capabilities rarely exist within one institution. When researchers, companies, and regulators work in isolation, promising discoveries often remain trapped in the laboratory instead of reaching patients. From the perspective of the Global Botanical Drug Innovation Network (GBDIN), collaboration is the most valuable resource in botanical innovation. By connecting scientists, clinicians, industry partners, regulators, investors, and policymakers across borders, GBDIN helps accelerate knowledge sharing, reduce duplicated effort, and build stronger development pathways. Global partnerships also improve access to diverse plant resources, advanced technologies, and international regulatory experience. The future of botanical medicine will not be built by one country alone. It will be built by a worldwide community that shares ideas, expertise, and a common vision. One plant may start the journey, but global collaboration is what turns it into a medicine that benefits the world.