Women in Chromatography: Rethinking Early-Career Scientist Training

“People stay in a field when they can see a future for themselves in it.”

— Kinjal Bhatt, Senior Scientist, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine

“You're never too old for something new.”

— Ina Varfaj, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Perugia

Asked to name one change to how the field trains and keeps its early-career scientists, Kinjal Bhatt and Ina Varfaj both pointed past the lab bench toward exposure, mentorship, and permission to fail. Bhatt would push early-career scientists toward the broader field much sooner. Technical skills are already well taught, she says, but careers are shaped as much by people, conversations, and opportunities nobody planned for—the mentor met at a conference, the introduction to someone whose work you admire. She'd encourage young scientists to stay curious about different paths, from academia to industry to entrepreneurship, arguing that retention isn't only about producing better-trained scientists but about helping people build confidence that a meaningful career in analytical science is possible for them specifically. Varfaj takes the same idea from the failure side: don't be afraid to try, and don't treat a mistake as evidence you're not a good scientist. She recalls breaking a chromatography column during her PhD and feeling terrible about it, until her mentor told her that if you never make mistakes, you're not really trying. Her broader point is that failure needs to be made visible—failed methods, broken instruments, changed career paths are normal, not signs of falling short—and that science, done well, isn't a solitary pursuit. Both close on a similar note: reaching out to others, before you need something from them, is part of how a field keeps people in it. Bhatt points specifically to small, low-stakes gestures—a message to an author whose paper you admired, a comment on LinkedIn—rather than only reaching out at the moment you need a job or a postdoc.

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