The Ins and Outs of Polar Sciences: a new APECS BE webinar series

On December 17^th 2025, exactly one year exactly after my own PhD defence, Nature published a captivating “career feature” titled: “I’ve earned my PhD — what now?^[1]”. In this feature, a recently graduated chemist describes his struggle envisioning his future career path after earning his diploma. The article struck a sympathetic chord with numerous young academics who, just like him, enjoyed their time in academia but feared that their future job titles would be limited to  “researcher” or “professor”. APECS Belgium is committed to showing that polar sciences can lead to unexpected careers both inside and outside of academia. Therefore, we have started a monthly webinar series that highlights the stories of current and former polar scientists with unusual professional journeys. During these 30-minute webinars, we invite our speakers  to reflect on their careers, tell us about their favourite polar adventures, and share how their career choices shaped their current skillsets.

On Monday January 12^th 2026, Dr. Marie Cavitte joined us for our first webinar. After pursuing a PhD in polar radars, she felt burnt out and sought a position outside of academia. For a short while, she worked as a climate consultant, but she quickly realised that she actually did want to stay close to the research world. She then returned to academia and completed two postdocs at UCLouvain. During this period,she also dedicated a large amount of her time to translating climate change science to the general public. While she did not realize it then, this dedication would quickly lead her to become a key communicator of her department, and soon afterwards, she got the opportunity to complete a 5 months internship at the European commission. Later, she got hired by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) as a valorisation manager, where she is currently working at the interface of academia, outreach and science-to-policy. What now feels like a “dream job” is the result of a highly non-linear path, during which she constantly questioned her aspirations and redefined her goals.

If you, too, want to explore the great diversity of jobs within polar sciences, or simply be inspired by our amazing speakers, we warmly welcome you to our monthly talks  “The Ins and Outs of Polar Sciences”. From January to June 2026, every second Monday of the month at 12:30, you can join us online.

We are looking forward to seeing you at our next webinar on Monday, February 9^th, where Dr. Ilaria Crotti, scientific project officer at the European Commission, will talk us through her career journey.

Please note that the title of the seminars may change

Written by Cécile Davrinche

^[1]Lizak, M. (2025). I’ve earned my PhD — what now? Nature, 649(8099), 1331‑1332. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03489-4