Frances Brodsky believes that writing her three mystery novels set in the world of bench science has improved her scientific writing. “I love making up titles for my books and chapters,” she says. “One of the best ways to train someone in the lab to focus on their project is for them to come up with the title of a paper that they want to write. That tells them where they're going. Also, when I interview people, I ask them: ‘What is the title of the thesis you plan to write?’​​​​​​​”

Brodsky, a cell biologist at University College London, writes under the pseudonym B. B. Jordan. Her books feature Celeste Braun, a virologist in San Francisco, California, who uses her scientific expertise to solve mysteries and fight crime. “Sitting down to write these novels, my scientific writing became markedly better,” she says. “The exercise of fiction writing helped me put my work into a narrative.​​​​​​​”

In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series on creativity in science, Brodsky says the discipline of writing a novel has also taught her perseverance, adding: “When you start a writing project, you have to stick with it to get it to the end. Sticking with something and having faith that it will work out is a really good quality to have.​​​​​​​”

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Brandon Brown “fell into farming” after tiring of city life during the COVID-19 pandemic and now tends more than 150 fruit trees alongside his research into HIV and public health ethics at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. “I had to look at farming the same way that I look at my academic career, and to take it one day at a time with my eyes towards a goal,” he says.

Brown says it took him a while for the realization to dawn. “My PhD taught me that the work is never done, and there’s always a new research project to pursue, more students to collaborate with, more policies to work on,” he says. “And since research builds on research, the fun never ends.”

Mornings spent outdoors also gives him time to think about work priorities. “I have lots of free time to think as I do the farming, and many times I write down notes as I’m working, because ideas and kind of reminders and goals and deadlines pass through my mind,” he says.

There are other benefits. Brown says he now falls asleep to the “beautiful” sound of howling coyotes, alongside possums, racoons, skunks, squirrels, lizards and gophers.

This is the fourth episode in a six-part series about creativity in science. Previous episodes featured a researcher who draws parallels between her research and sewing, another whose pursuit of baking and fermentation revealed fresh career opportunities, and two researchers who follow the concept of “day and night science” to distinguish between routine tasks and reflection.

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Baking bread during Covid-19 lockdowns provided Chantle Edillor with some career inspiration. “I knew I wanted to do something different and an exploration in sourdough presented an opportunity that I felt uniquely able to pursue,” she says.

In 2022, after completing PhD research into metabolic diseases at the University of California Los Angeles, Edillor began a postdoc there, where she researched the anti-inflammatory properties of fermented foods.

She now works as a fermented food scientist at Microcosm Foods, a non-profit research organization that maps connections between fermented foods, microbes and human health, a role she combines with assay development at the Astera Institute, a similar non-profit based in the Bay Area, San Francisco.

In the third episode of a six-part podcast series about creativity in science, Edillor says fermentation techniques re-ignited a childhood interest in cooking: “I have early memories of sitting and watching the Food Network with a metal bowl full of egg whites in my lap, holding a whisk and attempting to make stiff peak meringue, but also to understand how proteins capture air to create volume and texture.”

Edillor’s culinary and scientific creativity extends to adding kombucha to leftover dinner party wine to make red wine vinegar, and making miso from blue tortillla chips. “Because the chips had been deep fried and fat does not necessarily ferment super well, it had this off flavour, kind of oxidized fat. I​​​​​​​’ll not be commercializing that anytime soon.”

Summing up her career to date, she says: “I​​​​​​​’m a human geneticist masquerading as a yeast geneticist, masquerading as a microbiologist. There are certain areas of science that are less competitive and more collaborative. Those are the spaces I like to occupy.”

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