A PhD student helped to lead a campaign to get Canadian graduate students and postdocs their biggest pay rise in 20 years.
On 16 April 2024, Kaitlin Kharas was one of a select few people ushered into an office across the street from the Canadian Parliament and given a sneak peek at the latest budget.
It was, perhaps, an unusual source of excitement for a PhD student. But Kharas had waited a long time to see the contents of those stuffy, bureaucratic pages: the biggest pay rise in 20 years for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers across Canada. The budget included huge boosts to both the number and value of government scholarships. “There was absolute excitement and giddiness when I saw those numbers,” she says. Read more in Nature.