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Opinion: Microbiology needs interdisciplinary early-career teams

Opinion: Microbiology needs interdisciplinary early-career teams
Early-career researchers in microbiology met at SFI in 2024. Credit: Daniel Muratore/Santa Fe Institute

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 in Nature Microbiology wish more early-career researchers could access.

SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellow Daniel Muratore and co-authors argue that the field of 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 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.

More information: Arianna I. Krinos et al, A call for early-career teams in interdisciplinary microbiology research, Nature Microbiology (2025).

Journal information: Nature Microbiology

Provided by Santa Fe Institute

Citation: Opinion: Microbiology needs interdisciplinary early-career teams (2025, September 3) retrieved 2 October 2025 from /news/2025-09-opinion-microbiology-interdisciplinary-early-career.html
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