Jessica in Panama, holding a lizard she worked on, a slender anole (Norops limifrons). Photo by Stuart Dennis.

Postdoctoral fellowships are not only an essential step to getting a real job, but they can also be a great opportunity to travel and work in fascinating places. So as I was finishing up my PhD in Biology at the Australian National University I looked around for opportunities to travel overseas. One of the first grants I applied for was the Australian Academy of Sciences’ grant for young researchers to visit the United States. These are ideal for short term visits (up to 6 weeks) to establish contacts, visit laboratories or in my case undertake a short research project. This trip also kick-started other international postdocs in South Africa and Panama.

Apart from a couple of international conferences this was my first visit to the United States. I lived in Davis, which is a smallish city north of the capital of California, Sacramento. I lived in a share house with two other science graduates and one lonesome chook. Davis is a University Town. This phenomenon is not so common in Australia but in the United States many “towns” (we would call them cities) are University towns. In places like Davis most people living there work or study at the university. Most university towns normally try and produce a community feeling and promote sustainability and an open-minded environment. This was certainly the case in Davis, most people rode bicycles to and from work or study. The campus was literally covered in push-bikes (I like using this term for bicycles because the Americans had no idea what I was talking about). The community atmosphere also was evident in the Farmers Markets every Saturday where you could pick up locally grown vegetables and a great breakfast burrito.

Another thing I was struck by while working at UC Davis was the opportunity to go to seminars from leading researchers and hear about the most current research in these labs before their work is

A lion at Kruger National Park in South Africa

 published. Although Australia has a good ability to attract leading scientists, we do suffer somewhat from the tyranny of distance and I felt that there was greater opportunity within the United States to make contacts and get previews of current research and new ideas. Seminars and symposia provided a foot in the door and then when you returned to Australia you could maintain these contacts for possible collaborations in the future.

The trip funded by the AAS was a great opportunity to get some research experience outside of Australia and make important contacts. The trip definitely helped me secure my most recent position at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. It really helps to have a well-known scientist as a referee and I think that people overseeing the grants tend to look more favourably at referee reports from people they know or have heard of.

After my time in the US I lived in Johannesburg for almost a year to complete a postdoc at the University of Witwatersrand with Dr Mating Whiting. Despite Johannesburg having the reputation of being one of the most dangerous cities in the world I had a great time there and survived unscathed. Obviously there are a few adjustments I had to make, like getting used to the 8 foot electrified fence around my house and the real threat of car jacking. What is probably less known about Johannesburg is its vibrant atmosphere and wonderful people. South Africa is a fascinating place where many different cultures come together, including the Kalahari bushman, the Bantu people which gave rise to the famous Zulu warriors, the Afrikaaners with their Dutch/German ancestry, the English and more recent immigrants from India and other parts of Asia. Despite its bloody past, South Africa now boasts a democratic and open-minded government, and most of the South Africans I met celebrate their cultural diversity. In many respects it is more progressive than the Australian government; nearly fifty percent of the government is made up of women and there are eleven official languages in South Africa.

In addition to the cultural diversity you have of course the biological diversity. As a biologist I was in heaven. I visited many National Parks including Kruger and came face to face with lions, leopards and elephants, albeit from the safety of my car. For my research I travelled to the North West corner of South Africa to the Orange River, which forms part of the border with Namibia. The Augrabies National Park is named after the spectacular Augrabies Falls, which means place of great noise. Although the park does not contain any of the big carnivores or elephants, I would often see baboons, vervet monkeys, giraffes, zebras and a huge diversity of antelope species during my day to day work with the lizards. The lizards themselves are also a big drawcard; they are colourful and tremendously abundant at many of the falls look out points. They race around effortlessly on the smooth granite rocks that fall away into the deep gorge. For my research I studied populations in less precarious and less populated places upstream of the falls. Although I can say less pr

A group of lizards Jessica studied in South Africa, called Augrabies flat lizard.

ecarious, to slip into the river at my study site could be certain death as only about 60 metres of impassable rapids separate you from the 100 metre drop over the Augrabies Falls.

After completing the postdoc in South Africa I moved to Panama and took up a one year postdoc at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). To go from the Kalahari dessert to the Tropical Rainforests of Central America took some getting used to, as did learning Spanish. Panama also has a fascinating cultural history that began with the invasion by the Spanish conquistadors and more recently to the construction of the Panama Canal. It is actually thanks to the canal that much of Panama’s rainforest still remains and is protected. For a single ship to transit the canal requires 52 million gallons of fresh water to be released from the storage lake (Lake Gatun). If the canal’s catchment is deforested the canal would overflow in the wet season and dry out in the dry season. The rainforests reduce erosion and ensure that the water levels remain relatively stable throughout the year to keep the canal functioning. The protection of these rainforests provides a tropical research haven and the STRI has capitalised on this. Few institutes are actually situated right in the middle of Tropical Rainforest and in terms of infrastructure and research services STRI is the best. The research I did in Panama was again on lizards in the heart of the rainforest.

I am currently working at CSIRO, but my plan is to return to Panama and continue my work with these fascinating little lizards and improve my Spanish. For young scientists I would highly recommend doing some postdoctoral research overseas. You get to meet wonderful people, visit interesting countries and they call it work. I would also recommend considering the Australian Academy of Sciences’ grants to kick-start your first international adventure.