I am following Martin’s proposition…
1. What is your blog about?
It’s a sort of a window of transparency over a weird scientific environment, the Italian science jobs and funding market. Every now and then, I post news about job and funding opportunities.
2. What will you never write about?
Stories involving real people, for which I was left disgusted, pertaining funding and assignment of positions, including tenure, where the best did not win.
3. Have you ever considered leaving science?
No, but I am happy to explore science communication as a complementary activity.
4. What would you do instead?
Well, had I never undertaken this road, I would definitely by a jazz trumpeteer by now.
5. What do you think will science blogging be like
in 5 years?
Videos and audios easily updated from cell phones, but I cannot really imagine what other technologies will bring. This whole thing is just moving so very fast.
6. What is the most extraordinary thing that happened to you because of blogging?
Found a part time blogging job, was interviewed on a national radio and ended up in the national daily press, as well as Nature, of course!. Will tell grandchildren one day. Also, I traveled to London to attend Science Blogging 2008 and I have met with several extraordinary bloggers, in a single day. Bliss.
7. Did you write a blog post or comment you later regretted?
No
8. When did you first learn about science blogging?
Some time in 2007
9. What do your colleagues at work say about your blogging?
Most of them know by now, but they are not yet the types of people who fish for news in the blog-sphere. But I do have several readers at work who are real aficionados, including some seniors.
10. Are you able to write an entry to your blog that takes the form of a poem about your research?
Mmmm this is a hard one. It’s not about my research, but on my Italian blog I have created two characters, two young italian university students in the year 2034, and through their dialogues I imagine how science in my country will be in 30 years time.
Could you give an English-language summary of what Ester Ofila and Libero Mobile are saying in the blog post at #10?
Why not…and thank you for asking.
In the last story, Ester Ofila and Libero Mobile are sitting in the garden of a University Campus which does not exist yet, and it’s located in an area whether few, today, would ever imagine becoming a place of Academic Excellence. That’s my very point: with the help of these two characters, I am trying to go beyond the troubles that Italy is facing today and I imagine that after a necessary period of negativity, Italian Science will experience a Renaissance. And what a Renaissance that was…
Libero Mobile and Ester Ofila discuss the dimension of the brain drain which Italy faced, due to the proposed huge cuts and university reforms that are being considered by the present (2008) Government. The country became essentially devoid of italian scientists. But then, with foreign financial assistance, the system got into resurrection mode.
I am going to translate a tiny bit for you:
[…]
Of course, Martin, I do this for fun, and to let the anger and frustration of these days go away. No one is going to stop one’s dreams.
Have a great Sunday, Massimo
Thanks a lot. This sounds scary and hopeful at the same time. Hopeful for those aspiring scientists currently in kindergarten, but a little bit too late for our generation.
Martin,
at the beginning of the same story, Ester Ofila explains to Libero Mobile the dialogue that she had while hiking with her dad, the day before, on the Aspromonte mountain range. Her dad was a scientist who just achieved tenure before the system collapsed. In a way, a privileged individual, but also a scientist doomed to live in isolation. He lived a very sad scientific life, but was thrilled to see what opportunities were offered to her daughter now.
Ciao!
Massimo
This is an interesting approach, Massimo, to a highly frustrating situation. To think past it to the scientific environment you would like to see in Italy. Why, though, would foreign countries put money to build research centers in Italy rather than in Greece, with its currently much more modest basic research programs? I recently reviewed applications to the Georgian National Science Foundation. When is it too much of a luxury for a nation or even a continent to underwrite local research institutions and have to resign themselves to a permanent brain drain? No one is seriously suggesting to perform every kind of research in Malta, for example. Even if there are proportionally as many smart young researchers coming out of this country as there are out of Germany.
I’m glad Martin asked for a translation, Massimo, and thank you for obliging. Writing “future dialogues” blog entries seems like a very original and positive way to vent about the science situations in Italy. It’s also interesting to me because, like your character Ester, I have a scientist father. ;-)
Well, Heather, you bring a very fair point. And who knows how further ahead these countries will be in twenty years’ time. They may well have out-performed those countries which we now label as places of scientific excellence, and they may well be the place worth investing in. If that’s the case, then Italy (at least, in my stories) would be doomed, and the only reason for opting for an investment in Italy would be the same ol’ reason…good weather (unless global warming leads us astray) and good food, but may be in 30 years time all the best Italian cooks will be in Georgia…
Hi Kristi. Good luck to you then…hope you’ll get what you deserve, just like Ester.