How I Became a Science Diplomat

After I got my Ph.D., I realized that I wanted to make a difference outside of the lab. Then I learned about science diplomacy.

Marga Gual Soler at Plaza de San Francisco in Old Havana, during the U.S.-Cuba Neuroscience Meeting in December 2015.

When I finally finished my Ph.D. program after 11 years of training for a research career in the biomedical sciences, I couldn’t help feeling that something was missing. I grew up convinced that science was the best tool we had to improve the world. But my research, though immensely intellectually gratifying, wasn’t making much of a positive contribution to society. Spending all of my time inside a dark microscopy facility firing multicolor lasers at petri dishes didn’t seem to bring about much change (except to the tiny cells in the dish). What was the point of all this, I wondered, if no one outside of the building understood or appreciated the value of what I was doing?

Most people who leave academia feel a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty, but for me, it was liberating. In the year that followed, I conducted an experiment: inserting myself in places where scientists traditionally aren’t present, including a mind-opening internship at the United Nations and a leadership program designed to empower the next…