Time for something new: From university to freelance work
- Details
- Stephan Matthiesen
- 2017-11-01
On the 31st of October my contract at the University of Edinburgh came to an end, and I will work mainly freelance in future. Since 2006 I have worked at the School of Geosciences at the University as scientific project manager in different climate-related research projects, but I also worked freelance translating and editing scientific books.
The "Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Feedback Programme", for which I worked as project manager, has now been concluded successfully. This research programme comprised three individual projects which investigated the processes that are involved in the exchange of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, in the oceans and in the terrestrial biosphere. It involved more than a hundred colleagues at a dozen research institutions across the UK. An exciting aspect of my work was to enable the cooperation of researchers from different subdisciplines which traditionally had very contact to one another. Public engagement activities were also a fascinating part of my work.
In my time at the university I could contribute to four big projects: ABACUS (Arctic Biosphere and Atmosphere Coupling at mUltiple Scales, 2006-2010), BORTAS (Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites, 2009-2014), EarthTemp (Research Network for Surface Temperature, 2011-2015) and the Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Feedback Programme (2013-2017).
Additionally, I have been working as freelance translator, editor and author (for more details, see the [German] website Science-Texts). In future I will concentrate more on this work. With each book that I worked on I learned many interesting facts and gained new insights, and hopefully my contributions will help readers feel the same.
I will miss all the friendly colleagues and the good atmosphere at the university. At the same time I also look forward to new challenges and the freedom to follow some of my hobbies more intensely beside my paid work.
- Last Updated: Saturday, 24 November 2018
