A menu of short, opinionated talks on how science actually works — skills, publishing, open science, statistics, integrity and evolution. Most grew out of blog posts. They run short by design, because the discussion afterwards is the point.
Why a balanced skill set beats a spiky one. The weakest part of your work is the part people remember — and you rarely know in advance which skill will turn out to matter.
What actually distinguishes work that lasts from work that merely lands well? Leads naturally into publishing, preprinting, and why impact factors are a poor proxy.
Openness is not charity. Sharing data, tools and preprints widens who your work reaches — and that reach is what builds an independent career.
A personal favourite, and reliably the most argued-about. When statistical ritual replaces experimental judgement — and the case for when one replicate really is enough.
Delivered each year to first-year PhD students. Authorship, data handling, post-publication review, and the incentive structures that make bad science profitable.
A 24/7 café that ignores lab walls, borders and career stage. What scientists gain from being visible online, what it costs, and how to do it without losing the plot.
Hardware versus software as a way into evolutionary thinking. Reading and editing the genetic language lets biologists work like software engineers — and hack living systems.
Your shortlist
Send this shortlistThese talks carry no speaker fee, for any institution, anywhere. But if your department has a budget for visiting speakers — or you simply found the session useful — a donation to GetGenome is very welcome.
GetGenome is a registered charity in England & Wales (no. 1201069) that gives researchers equitable access to genomics. Scientists deposit an organism of interest, get the genome sequence back along with training in how to analyse it, share the data openly, and join a network of alumni. Sequencing, analysis and training are provided free to the researcher. So far it has supported over 100 scientists across 20 countries, and its GGPlasmidSeq call offers free plasmid sequencing to researchers in more than 100 low- and middle-income countries.
Donations pay for sequencing runs, reagents and training — the things that turn a good question in an under-resourced lab into publishable data.
Donate to GetGenome About GetGenomeUK taxpayers: GetGenome is Gift Aid registered, so every £1 you give is worth £1.25 at no extra cost. The donation form doubles as a Gift Aid declaration.