Carla Dominguez
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, (EFE).- Idaira Pacheco (La Orotava, 1990) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kyoto (Japan), and has experienced sacrifice, loneliness and waiting as a scientist, a “very romanticized” profession. in which he claims to have been “lucky”, after seeing how many of his people have not been able to continue on the same path.
Like so many other women dedicated to science, the doctor in analytical chemistry does not fully assimilate her achievements, while saying that her career and future “generate stress” in a way that she sympathizes with the impostor syndrome.
Idaira Pacheco exercises her postdoctoral period at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences, at the University of Kyoto (Japan), where she works with “light materials” for the detection of contaminants such as drugs, preservatives or ultraviolet filters.
Currently, the philosopher’s stone of Shuhei Furukawa’s research group finds its base in gels, to obtain a ductile and porous analysis material that meets the main desire of the scientific team: to achieve precision through lightness.
The group in which Pacheco works is international and transversal, which means that, in addition to having a European, Asian and American presence in the laboratory, it has the contribution of undergraduate, master’s and postdoctoral level students.
For the woman from Tenerife, Shuhei Furukawa’s group lives apart from the exhaustion and machismo that still persist in the Japanese scientific system, “fortunately” thanks to the fact that their boss is a “very European” Japanese.
“Other colleagues, foreigners, have suffered machismo in the laboratory. They have not taken their proposals seriously, ”says the scientist, who adds how in her institute“ among the 14 research groups that exist, there is only one woman who is the group leader ”.
The scientist says that “they are trying to change this culture through the creation of exclusive places”, but the scientists who access them confess that they “feel bad” because “they think they are there because of their sex”.
Another of Idaira’s “fortunes” in the Asian country has been the working day, “where it does not suffer demands or work more than the hours established by contract”, however, it knows experiences of research groups that work up to 15 hours a day .
Idaira recounts “the prestige” of her profession in Japan, but feels that this social and institutional perception has its embryo in the economic factor, which, naturally, promotes huge postdoctoral contracts and guarantees for project financing.
Japanese scientific culture also prides itself on ethics. The woman from Tenerife, who in 2018 did research at an American university, recounts how the first course she took there dealt with sexual harassment, a fact that “contrasts” with the training in research ethics that she did once she arrived in Japan.
Despite the obstacles, the exacerbated discipline and the loneliness of the Asian country, which “have taken their toll” and led to the abandonment of her career, the doctor appreciates that the bureaucracy that resides in Spain does not exist: “I only investigate, I don’t filler, no papers, no bills.”
Idaira Pacheco took a flight to Japan without a return ticket in July 2021. Her future is “uncertain”, and her profession, she says, “a relay race”, with the difference that the next to relieve her will always be herself.
Her passport to Asia was the scholarship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), a 2-year postdoctoral contract that she resigned as soon as she arrived, “thinking that with the Spanish help, Margarita Salas, she would earn more”: 3,500 euros gross per month
To appreciate the contrast between the contract of a Spanish researcher, in national territory, and that of a Spanish researcher abroad, Idaira exemplifies that “while a colleague, also in a postdoctoral period, in Mallorca charges 1,600 euros, she, with the Japanese offer, I won 3,000”.
With the full Japanese allowance, he covered basic and secondary expenses; However, once the Spanish woman received a higher salary, a reduction was applied due to taxes.
Despite the reduction, Idaira is grateful; However, she tells how Japanese inflation also exists and takes a toll on her economy.
When she goes shopping, a simple apple costs her 4 euros, and on the last days of each month, she confesses to being “in a hurry”.
The Margarita Salas Aid allowance, which guarantees you two years abroad and one in Spain, began to receive it in January 2022, but she will soon give it up “by resume,” she says.
“When your contract ends, you’re lost,” laments the scientist, who sees asking for more scholarships while enjoying others as the only solution, that is, “always think two years ahead.”
This is what she did with Margarita Salas in Japan and, now, with the European Marie Curie scholarship, which will take her to Holland (Netherlands), to research with Professor Helder Almeida Santos at the University of Groningen.
There he will use synthetic chemistry to diagnose non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) early and without biopsies. A disease with a prevalence rate of 25% of the world population.
The scientist is afraid of change, but she will need it because she longs for job stabilization “at home” which, for her, has two names: the Ramón y Cajal (RYC) and Juan de la Cierva grants.
Pacheco warns against “the excessive romanticization of researching abroad”, while sharing what led her abroad, which was not desire but pressure.
“In Spain the publication system has gone crazy,” says the researcher when asked about the temporary suspension of employment and salary of Rafael Luque, the scientist from the University of Córdoba who published excessively and signed works with other institutions foreigners.
For her, “it is in universities with few resources where you are drowning, because you do not publish in prestigious magazines”, a reality that forces personal work to be made visible more by quantity than by quality.
Analytical chemistry now lives a very different reality, because “at Kyoto University, publishing one article a year is very good” because they publish in “big journals.”
Next month, Idaira and her co-worker will submit a paper revealing an industry innovation in analytical chemistry to Nature Materials, a specialist extension of the Nature Publishing Group. From there, deadlines and reviews await you that will confirm whether or not to publish.
In any case, the scientist is concerned about “the void” of this last year. She has no published articles and she fears that, when her resume is evaluated, invisible and slow work will not be valued, which are key elements where there are resources. EFE