Eight months into my postdoc, I am in Berlin, diligently learning German and managing my research schedule at the Berlin Natural History Museum and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. Walking past the museum's collections of pickled frogs, I realize that I'm a long way from the University of Utah, and even farther from the physical-chemistry research I completed as an undergraduate.

In a quest to link my PhD chemical-biology training with my desire to be a research scientist at a natural-history museum, I designed a two-year postdoctoral project. It focused on the investigation of the peptidic toxins of venomous marine cone snails and turrids. My short-term posts include the time in Berlin, two field expeditions to Panama in association with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and a museum internship at the Paris Natural History Museum. I'm working with a global network of research scientists to expand my training in peptide chemistry and acquire knowledge in neuroscience, taxonomy and systematics.

Together with the Utah Museum of Natural History, I created a series of educational programmes and exhibition pieces to inform high-school students about the biodiversity of cone snails and turrids, as well as the chemical biology of their toxins. I owe my scientific freedom, in part, to the postdoctoral grant funding from the US National Science Foundation's Discovery Corps Fellowship (DCF).

Tantamount to a Peace Corps for scientists, a DCF offers recent PhD candidates and mid-career scientists one- or two-year grants that support both their scientific research and a service-oriented outreach project that demonstrates different aspects of science to a larger lay audience. It allows scientists and engineers to venture beyond the lab. For example, Joseph Fortunak, a chemistry professor at Howard University, Washington, is expanding his research by working with Nigerian scientists and industry to promote 'green chemistry' education and to manufacture microcrystalline cellulose from elephant grass and other biorenewable resources.

In general, DCF awardees attempt to translate laboratory achievements into an expanded set of professional skills and a programme that serves society. Such opportunities help reinvent the humdrum of lab work and construct new routes to success.