A career in science communication

When Sarah Everts was a biophysics undergrad at the University of Guelph in Canada, she noticed a pattern. Every summer, she would start her lab project with oodles of enthusiasm only to see some of it wane towards its completion. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t like it,’ Everts recalls. ‘I was just ready for a new project.’

She faced a similar dilemma during her chemistry masters program at the University of British Columbia. During this period, Everts decided to try writing – and found she loved it. She began contributing a science column to the graduate student magazine at the institution, and after finishing college did contract science writing and grant writing. She then worked in broadcast news and acquired a master’s degree in journalism. ‘It was not so much a eureka moment that I realised science journalism was my jam,’ she says. ‘It was more a slow realisation that I loved science, but I had a short attention span for research.’

In 2006, Everts started a full-time position with the American magazine Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), which sent Everts to Berlin in 2007 to cover science and technology across Europe. She stayed there until 2018. ‘It was a wonderful experience to learn a new language and navigate a new system,’ Everts recalls.