A career makeover can allow scientists to explore their passions.Credit: Getty
Nick Sheron starts most days by strolling across his six-hectare farm with his two golden retrievers, Daphne and Phoebe, surveying the sheep that graze the land between autumn and early spring. From time to time, he yanks trapped ones from gaps in his fences. “They’re very good at getting their heads stuck in things,” he laughs.
Sheron, a liver physician, left a full-time academic role at the University of Southampton, UK, in 2019 when he and his wife Lisa bought a sixteenth-century longhouse in Devon’s Otter Valley — 150 kilometres west of his former workplace. They now grow apples and onions, brew their own beer, harvest honey from “fierce British black bees” (Apis mellifera mellifera), and rewild their meadows with yellow-rattle plants (Rhinanthus minor), which sap nutrients from grass and allow rare wild flowers to flourish. Sheron also has a chicken called Rowena, “who likes human company and follows me around all day”.
Careers advice from scientists in industry
In between brewing beer and building a pizza oven from the farm’s clay, Sheron continues to work as an adviser on alcohol policy to the UK Department of Health and as a visiting professor at both King’s College London and the University of Plymouth, UK, studying the link between cheap alcohol and the continuing increase in liver-disease mortality.
“We haven’t regretted the move at all,” Sheron says. On the contrary, “it’s absolutely fantastic” now his days are no longer spent staring at a screen, he says. As well as his visiting professorships, he expends his passion for science on growing, winnowing and selling in-demand yellow-rattle seed for others to buy and use to rewild their own green spaces.
Sheron is just one of many scientists who quit academia to reinvent themselves. Some opt for ‘science adjacent’ roles, while others embark on a completely different career path, often applying many of the skills that they acquired as working scientists. Many feel liberated from the stresses of academia’s ‘publish or perish’ culture, and say that they feel freed from the tedium of delivering the same lectures year after year.
People start their own businesses or non-profit organizations; travel to do independent research or conservation work; and mentor others in their fields, hoping that they will have a greater impact on the world this way. Although taking the leap and leaving academia might be daunting, many say that they feel satisfied and have continued to learn as they pursue their passions in the wider world.
Nick Sheron now starts his mornings walking among the sheep on his farm in Devon, UK. Credit: Nick Sheron
Turning science into business
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