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  • CAREER FEATURE

How a hobby can boost researchers’ productivity and creativity

A regular pastime can ease mental stress, improve work–life balance and help scientists to reach innovative solutions in their work.
  1. Julia Rosen

    1. Julia Rosen is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon.

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When Audrey Kelly isn’t catching toads and analysing their DNA to study how species hybridize, she makes bread. Kelly is a fifth-year PhD student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and she learnt to bake from her father before she moved away for her undergraduate programme. “It’s kind of like a science experiment,” she says, “but you get to eat it at the end.”

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Nature 558, 475-477 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05449-7

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