Young doctors and researchers increasingly run into the same questions: why publications matter, how to land an international grant, whether AI can be brought into scientific work, and whether a doctor should bother with social media. We covered all of this in today's interview.
Anastasiia Zuieva, an expert at the Scientific and Educational Centre of Scientific Publications, spoke with Islam about his journey, the typical mistakes grant applicants make, real-world scenarios for using AI and the logic behind personal branding in medicine.
Islam Salikhanov:
- doctor and researcher from Kazakhstan
- PhD candidate in Switzerland – holder of a doctoral grant
- founder of an online medical English school
- science populariser and active author on social media
In the past, the path of an early-career researcher was long and arduous: libraries, paper journals, months of correspondence with editors. Today the picture is different – grants are searched for online, and the process has become far more streamlined. AI helps polish a paper in minutes, and a doctor's personal brand can take shape on social media faster than their first publication appears in print. But along with these opportunities, new problems have surfaced: where does AI genuinely speed up the work, and where does it strip away its scientific value? Is it even possible to build an international medical career without publications? And where should someone submitting their very first grant application begin?
In this interview you will learn:
- What pushed Islam to choose medicine?
- What turned out to be the hardest part of the road to a Swiss doctoral grant?
- How much does the research topic itself affect an application's success – and how should it be framed?
- What mistakes do newcomers most often make when applying for grants?
- Is it possible to build an international medical career without scientific publications?
- At which stages of the publication process do young authors need the most support?
- Where does artificial intelligence genuinely help a researcher, and where does it become a threat to the quality of an article?
- What do social media give a doctor professionally?
- Where to start building a personal brand if you are a practising clinician?
- Islam's candid answers in the lightning round – on the trade-off between scientific freedom and a grant, on early success and on going "your own way"?
Enjoy the watch!
This interview is not so much about medicine as a profession – it's about the modern researcher: how to find resources, build a reputation, work mindfully with AI and avoid getting lost in the publication funnel.
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