If you’re anything like us, you probably believe(d) that a scientific career is a pretty straightforward thing. That you can think of it as a pretty straight “line” starting with your studies, going into your masters, PhD, postdoc, junior professorship, tenure track, etc. The thing is - like most things in life - this does not always work like that. Sure, that’s kind of the standard path, but there’s a lot of opportunities for side-entering and side-leaving.

In today’s episode, we talk to Iris Beirith, who has a completely different story to tell about how she ended up doing her PhD in pancreatic cancer research. Iris is a super energetic person with a positive mindset and a question in mind that she asks herself again and again, and that is: “why not?”

And you know, with this question as a tool, Iris has gone from being a semi-professional dancer to founding her own dance school, participating in a weightlessness experiment, doing 2 masters at the same time and finally doing her PhD in pancreatic cancer.

As you can see, the range of topics we cover with Iris is pretty wild, but there’s a unifying theme and that’s how we chose the word of the episode “positive pro-activity”

So come along and listen in for this episode of “the imPerfect Scientist”, we believe that this one can be really inspiring if you’re the kind of person who tends to doubt yourself and think you might not make it. Because, you know, “why not?”