In 2023, researchers from many career stages and disciplines met at a field school in the Arctic to probe floating sea ice. It’s an example of the kind of interdisciplinary training experience that authors of a new Perspective in Nature Microbiology wish more early-career researchers could access.
SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Muratore and co-authors argue that the field of microbiology must prioritize such interdisciplinary advancement of early-career researchers, who typically receive short contracts, race for publications, and find limited opportunity for learning new methods. Otherwise, future research leaders will not be prepared or incentivized to integrate sophisticated microbiology findings (including, crucially, DNA and RNA sequencing data) into complex Earth-scale models. Such models offer hope for predicting the rapid changes facing our climate and planet.
The paper emerged from a working group held at SFI in August 2024, in partnership with the National Science Foundation’s BioGeoSCAPES Fellows. The authors make several concrete suggestions, including connecting early-career researchers, providing them mentorship, and creating more field schools, laboratory exchanges, and other interdisciplinary collaborations.
Read the paper “A call for early-career teams in interdisciplinary microbiology research” in Nature Microbiology (August 25, 2025) at DOI: 10.1038/s41564-025-02097-2