Brittany Trinh returns to The Social Academic featured interview series. We talk about how her thinking on websites for professors, scientists, and researchers has changed. We also talk about how her life has changed now that she’s back in grad school (and what that means for her online presence). Plus, hear about our Team VIP Day service for research lab websites. Read Brittany’s bio.
In this interview
Meet Brittany
Jennifer: Hi everyone. It is Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic. I’m here today with my friend and one of my business partners, Brittany Trinh. We’re talking about personal academic websites, research lab websites, websites for academics. Brittany, would you say hi and introduce yourself? Or, reintroduce yourself since you’ve already been a guest on our show?
Brittany: Hi everyone. My name is Brittany Trinh. Yeah, I feel like the last time I was on your show was maybe in like 2020 or something like that. It was a while ago.
Jennifer: Oh my goodness. It’s been that long and we’ve been friends ever since. I mean, Brittany, you were at my wedding this summer. I can’t believe how time has flown by and your life has changed. You’re back in grad school. Tell me about that.
Brittany: Yeah, so I was working and running my side business as a website designer at the time when we’ve met. Since then, I had started grad school in 2021. I am now a PhD candidate in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Jennifer: Amazing. I really like how you reached out and introduced yourself to me in the very beginning. I felt like there wasn’t a need to be in competition with each other. It was so nice to be able to have someone to talk with about something that we both care about, which is having an online presence when you’re a scientist or someone who’s in academia. And also, we’ve been able to work together and partner together on some fun projects.
Brittany: When I first started getting in the online space and I heard about you. When I saw you at first, I was kind of thinking like, “Oh, we are kind of competitors in a sense that we have similar services” and things like that. But after I thought about it and kind of learned more about the space, I figured at that time we had slightly different audiences. You were still more targeting professors and people who were further along, whereas I was trying to target with graduate students and earlier career. But obviously since starting grad school, a lot of my side business web design stuff has kind of been put on the back burner. I’m still kind of working on it here and there, and I love collaborating with you as of late. So that has been a really good kind of easing back into the web design business.
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Online presence as a graduate student
Jennifer: That’s really fun. And I love hearing about your grad school experiences on social media. What was it like to start sharing that part of your new lifestyle in your online space that was kind of different from how you were showing up before?
Brittany: When I was showing up before, I was mostly just sharing a lot of tips and information on Twitter at the time. That worked for some time. But once I got to grad school, I thought, first of all, I don’t want to just be known for websites anymore. But I also had to take a break because I wasn’t really sure about my scientific identity yet because I just started grad school, and even though I had worked in industry for some time, starting grad school made me feel like a beginner again. And actually it took me probably the last three-ish years or so to finally feel a little bit more confident about posting things on social media regarding grad school.
Because for me personally, I just didn’t really want to be just a PhD influencer. There’s a lot of PhD influencers. I follow them too because I like their contents motivating and things like that, of course. But there’s just certain aspects of it that I didn’t really align with. And, I didn’t want to create that type of content. It took me a really long time up until maybe last year to finally figure out, “Oh, actually I still do want to talk about some things about grad school and about being a scientist, being in STEM and all that. But it just looks a little bit different than how a lot of people are currently doing it.” That’s because a lot of people are also science communicators, so they’re communicating their research, which is great. But for me personally, that wasn’t exactly something that I wanted to do.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s so interesting because the way that I see websites is part of science communication. At least for scientists, it’s a way to communicate who they are and what they’re doing. And that’s something you’re so great at. It’s totally okay that it’s not an interest of yours when it comes to the other areas of your life. That’s so interesting to me. I’m curious if you’re open to it, would you share with me what aspect of influencer life maybe didn’t appeal to you? Because there may be people who are listening to this who are considering the same thing and hearing your thoughts might be really helpful for them.
Brittany: Yeah, I guess for me, a lot of it was just hearing the over romanticizing the lifestyle was one thing that I wasn’t really a fan of, especially without context. I love the aesthetic. When I was in high school, I was obsessed with study aesthetic and everything. So, I get it. It’s very appealing to see that type of content. But I think that when you create that type of content and you share that without sharing the context in which a PhD program happens. I guess what goes on in a PhD program, it can be a bit deceiving to say the least, or just a little bit. I don’t know what the right word is, but I just didn’t feel like that’s something I wanted to do. I think that it’s a good thing that they’re inspiring younger people or anybody who wants to pursue a PhD. I think that’s good to be a source of inspiration. But I think that for me, I didn’t want it to just be an aesthetic look like a lifestyle.
Jennifer: Yeah, I absolutely understand that. And what’s interesting to me is that if I came across your channel and didn’t know that you didn’t want to be an influencer, I would think that you’re quite realist in what you share about your PhD life. And, you even have a podcast about what it’s like to be in grad school. I think that there’s a difference between influencer in terms of the intention of creating partnerships and brand deals and maybe even gaining a certain type of following for being an influencer in that space. And then also just having influence over a space because you are more open about sharing your story. And I think that your openness is really refreshing because you do share maybe some of the negative experiences too, some of the struggles and some of the highlights. It feels very real every time I check out your social media stories. Yeah, I don’t know. That’s so refreshing for me. What was that like for you to decide to actually start posting about these things?
Brittany: That was kind of hard, actually. For the first two years, I think the way I described it to people was that I felt like I was kind of ‘in a shell.’ I was very withdrawn because a lot of my PhD struggles took up a lot of my mental capacity. I just really didn’t have the desire at all to show up and to be seen, and honestly, to be that vulnerable to so many people online and to show them I’m struggling. Because a lot of people, again, like I mentioned, were set up the aesthetic. Everyone looks like, “Oh, they’re having such a good time in their PhD, they’re accomplishing so much. Why don’t I feel that way? Why am I not doing X, Y, Z?”
What I realized recently was that I guess I could go through those times, but I didn’t have to share it in real time. I can still share it now, which is what I’m learning to do right now, which is part of this project I’m working on for my podcast. I’m trying to write a series or make it episode, whatever series of episodes of all the different struggles I’ve kind of gone through. And sharing my thought process through that and what I did, what I wish I did differently, so that hopefully people who listen to the podcast or future people who encounter the podcast can learn from it. And can see, I wouldn’t say the bad side of things, but just these are things that people don’t want to openly talk about. And I think that it does take time to get over it so that you have fully processed it in a way that you can talk about it in a more meaningful way than just, I guess venting about it. Because I never really want to come off that way, even though in real life in the moment, I’m just like, “Oh my God, this was so stressful. Why are things like this?”
But when I talk to other people, younger students and things like that, I have to actively reframe it in my mind. How do I make this useful or helpful to them? Or what can I take away from it? How can I improve through this experience? Which has been happening a lot recently.
Jennifer: You’ve been doing more mentoring yourself, haven’t you?
Brittany: Yeah, a lot of mentoring in terms of in the lab. I’ve had four undergrads so far, and I have two right now. And then I also do some mentoring for first year students. So when they come in, they have a lot of questions about how do I join a group? How do I talk to a professor? Which group should I join and what are things I should look out for and stuff like that. Whenever I give advice, I always preface it with, this was my experience, because I never want to come off as I know everything. I’m just being like, I’m just sharing my experience, and you can take away what you want to take away from it. Honestly, I feel like that’s the same approach I have for my podcast as well.
Beyond Your Science, a podcast for grad students and early career scientists
Jennifer: So who should subscribe to your podcast? What’s it called, and where can people find it?
Brittany: My podcast is called Beyond Your Science. It’s available on Apple Podcast and Spotify. It’s really for any graduate student or early career scientist who wants to explore the intersection between science, creativity, and entrepreneurship. And so those are some of the core pillars I talk about on my podcast. Grad school is just a part of it for now just because I’m in it, but that’s not giving advice on how to get into grad school or anything. One thing I really would love to focus on more in the future is kind of small businesses in STEM, just because I think that’s a really niche area that we don’t really hear a lot about when we’re in grad school. In grad school, we hear about becoming a professor or going to industry, and we also actually hear a lot about people going into startups and entrepreneurship and stuff.
But at least on the grad school level, I haven’t really heard a lot about people choosing a small business route after grad school. But because of getting to know so many academics on online over the years and seeing where they’ve gone, a lot of them have started their own businesses and things like that because of the flexibility, the freedom to do what they would like to pursue their own ideas. I think those are all things that we as graduate students, we really value. And so I kind of want to show more people that this is a possibility for you if you could consider it. Yeah.
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How Brittany’s thinking about academic websites has changed
Jennifer: Oh, that’s so cool. That’s really exciting for me to hear. And that’s kind of the first time I’m hearing about this too. So I love that you shared that. Now, I’m curious, how has your thinking about websites changed since our last interview? It’s been a while. I know we’ve worked on websites together. Overall, how has maybe your thinking changed over time?
Brittany: Oh my God, that’s such a good question because let me tell you, when I first started, I had just gotten out of undergrad and I was starting my job. I was trying to convince grad students to create websites for their work. And at the time when I started four years ago before coming to grad school, I was just really baffled. I was like, why don’t you want to create websites for your work? Why aren’t you proud of your work? Because you’re doing cool stuff and you’re super qualified. But no amount of me encouraging them could really get them to change anything. So I would just be like, “Oh, well, whenever you’re ready, this information is here for you.” But now that I became a grad student, I understand why.
Jennifer: Oh, wait, wait. Tell me a couple of reasons why. Because there’s definitely grad students listening to this that are like, ‘I think that might be me.’
Brittany: Yeah. Okay. Because I have my website and my website has all my website design stuff, my podcast stuff. But for the longest time, I didn’t really want to talk about my research at all. I didn’t want to share it with people.
Jennifer: What’s your research on?
Brittany: My research is focused on polymer chemistry specifically. Right now, I’m learning or developing a method to make more make up this polymerization more environmentally friendly. Before that, I was learning about how polymers can be made stronger and tougher for high impact materials, aerospace equipment, military equipment, things like that. So I’m just really interested in polymers and how their mechanical properties are useful. But now, right now I’m mostly focusing on how to synthesize polymers in a more eco-friendly way.
Jennifer:
I love that! And I love the environment, so that’s my favorite. What about that felt like you wanted to hold it back or hold that part of yourself back from sharing on your website, and have you shared it?
Brittany: I think it was because I just didn’t really have the tangible result to show: because I didn’t have a paper. I still don’t have a paper. I’m a fourth year student PhD candidate. I have no papers. It just reminded me of that Pride and Prejudice quote, “I’m 27 years old and I have no prospects.”
Jennifer: I love it. We’re both readers. We both love classical music. Brittany and I are good friends, and there’s so many reasons why.
Brittany: But seriously, that’s the reason why I feel so, I don’t want to say ashamed, but just a little bit hesitant to be like, ‘This is my research.” I haven’t published anywhere. I maybe presented at a conference, but that work is unpublished and I don’t know if that will be published anytime soon. All those reasons combined. Plus, just the way that just by the nature of the PhD experience. I just naturally feel more inadequate than before. Imposter syndrome, right? All those reasons combined makes me not want to own up to it. I guess at least professionally, it’s easy for me to just say, “I’m a Graduate Research Assistant, because that’s what I am on paper. But to be like, “I’m a scientist.” I don’t really know about that.
Jennifer: It feels like a stretch, even though that’s not true. You’re mentoring future scientists already [laughing].
Brittany: I’m doing science, more science than a normal person does. Even if I don’t feel that that way, I am already doing it. That’s kind of what I had to tell myself. Yeah.
Jennifer: So did you put it on your website?
Brittany: I finally did put it on my website.
Jennifer: Oh my goodness.
Brittany: Yeah, because I was like, oh, my bio has nothing about chemistry. So it’s just in my bio, it’s like a little blurb. It says, Brittany is a PhD candidate in chemistry. Her research focuses on synthesizing high impact polymers in a more eco-friendly way and leveraging their tough mechanical properties into industrial applications.
It was really hard to condense what I do into a couple of words that are easy to understand. On one hand, it felt like I was oversimplifying, but on the other hand, I was like, I’m not going to go into the details. If someone was really interested, they could ask. But that was also really hard because I was like, it makes it sound like what I do sounds really, I don’t know, noble and great? But I don’t feel that way on the day to day. You know what I mean? At least I assume a lot of graduate students probably feel some type of way about their research.
Jennifer: Oh my goodness. Professors feel that kind of way about their research. Let me tell you, that feeling of being unsure about how you’re talking about your research and the things you care about most? That doesn’t go away when you become a mid-career researcher or a senior researcher, and you might even struggle to talk about it the way that you feel when you’re retired. So I think that it’s something many people struggle with it. And I love that you shared what you wrote with us because it sounded great.
Brittany: Yeah. I used your tips from a previous podcast interview, I think with Dr. Echo Rivera.
Jennifer: Ooh. For anyone who is listening, we do talk about how to write an amazing conference speaker bio. That’s great for academics writing any kind of bio. So I hope you’ll check that out.
Updating her personal website
Jennifer: Now, your online presence has changed as your new life experiences and goals have popped up. One of the things that you did was redoing your website, and you just talked about adding in that bio. What prompted you to want to redo your website? I know as a website designer myself, that’s a project I’ve been putting off for so long. I need to do it. So what prompted you to do it?
Brittany: Yeah. For the longest time, I had started with all my services about website design or workshops about website design. And then as I was realizing I don’t really have the capacity to do this anymore, I started making those pages hidden. I didn’t want to highlight that anymore. And then just throughout grad school, I realized I don’t really know if I want to just leave it open for website design right now. So I kind of want to just make it very clear that I’m trying to build my personal brand instead. That my personal brand still includes website design tips, but that I’m not actively soliciting new clients.
And I think that has really helped because now on my website, it’s just me featuring my podcast, which is my main mode of sharing and building my personal brand through the podcast and also LinkedIn newsletter. Then also kind of just repackaging some of the things I already had, some of the resources I had so that it’s still useful to people, but it’s more organized. I finally did that a couple months ago. And I also did a podcast episode where I talked about the process of me deciding to do that. But again, it was also something that I had put off for the longest time too. Because school, life, all the other things that come first.
Jennifer: Exactly. Sometimes we have to prioritize all the other things, and it’s okay to put off the thing with your online presence as long as you need to. I love that Brittany made that list because what she was ready, she knew what she wanted to do.
Check out my guide to how to update your personal academic website.
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Best Personal Academic Websites Contest returns in 2025
Jennifer: Now we have done, since we last did our interview, two annual Best Personal Academic Website Contests. It was so fun to be able to share some amazing websites from grad students, postdocs, early career researchers, people who were in research labs. Oh my goodness. There were just so many people who were curious to submit to this contest. Would you be open to doing another one with me next year? What do you think?
Brittany: Yeah, I love doing it. I love seeing how people show their research, show themselves through their websites. It’s very interesting to see how people interpret also website tips and then implement it on their website too. And I think also because we do it with Owlstown. Owlstown is [a website builder] made for academics. I think it’s really fun to see how people still are able to customize it to their own needs.
Jennifer: Brittany and I are both designers, and so we’re thinking about every little detail, but for so many people, all you need is a website. And it is totally amazing that Dr. Ian Li has created Owlstown, a free academic website builder that you can easily make your website in. What is it? Like 15 minutes? I mean, it’s really fast. We did it on that call.
Brittany: Yeah, it’s very fill in the blank type of [website design]. That’s what I told this to the grad students in my department too. I was like, if you guys need a website, just use this. It’s so fast and easy. You don’t need to think about the design.
Jennifer: Even if you do eventually want that fully designed website in the future, if you know it’s not on your list this year or next, I mean make an Owlstown website, it will create a stronger online presence for you like today.
Brittany: Yeah. And I also met Ian, around the same time I met you or reached out to him around the same time. I also had to test it out for myself before I recommended it to people. When I tested it out, it was in its early stages, and even in its early stages, I was like, wow, this is really good. And then over time, he started developing more features and things and I was like, sold. This is so good now.
Jennifer: Right? I love how responsive he is. If you have a question about it or a suggestion, some kind of feature that you want to see, if he thinks it’ll help people, he’ll try and make that feature happen. It’s so cool.
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Research Lab and Research Group Websites
Jennifer: Now, research lab and group websites, that is something we’ve been teaming up on for VIP days where professors get a done-for-you website in one day. I mean, seriously, we gather the materials in advance. We have a Planning Meeting. We talk about things like website aesthetics and colors and stuff and what you want. But then Brittany and I, and my husband, Matthew, we team up, we create the website for you in just one day. Oh my goodness. Brittany teaming up with you on this has been amazing. It’s been so transformative. I’m honestly shocked by how much we’ve been able to get done in one day.
Brittany: Yeah, me too. I think it’s really nice to work in a team like this because before I had just been working on my own. I think the workflow of gathering all the content beforehand helps so much. Because then you know what needs to go on the page, and it just makes everything go by so much faster.
Jennifer: Exactly. Now we can totally work together. If you’re looking for that bigger done-for-you research lab website [Strategic Website Design service]. Brittany, and I may still be able to help with that, but Team Website VIP days is what I recommend for most research labs, especially if this is going to be your first website. It’s not like a redesign. So we only have a couple days left in 2024, but please reach out about the new year. We would love to work with you and help your research lab or group. Brittany, what should people know about their research lab website or group website? Do they need one? Who should consider this kind of service?
Brittany: If you are a professor who’s actively recruiting students, you definitely need a website. I remember even when I was looking for groups and such, or even students now when they’re coming in and they’re looking at professors, they check the website. They go and see when was it last updated? Are students graduating? Is your group still active? Because the student is trying to prepare as much as they can to know about the professor so that when they meet the professor, they can talk about the research or ask about active projects and how they can get involved. Or, talk about what skills they bring to the table and things like that. But it’s going to be kind of hard for them to do that if there’s no website. Or, if you just have a very broad research statement on your faculty page or something.
The other thing is that students may be interested in the general area of research, but they may not know exactly what the research work entails. Maybe some people will be like, “Oh, just read the papers.” But in all honesty, a lot of students when they’re coming in, they’re very overwhelmed with enrolling in classes, teaching classes, looking for a group, acclimating to their new city. Trying to also parse out which papers are relevant to current projects at the moment is also very difficult. I really advocate for professors to have this on their website: a very clear or recently updated Projects page with publications that are most relevant or recent so that the student can easily pick out. “Okay, let me read the update on this and see where, what they’re doing right now, where could I fit in,” and things like that. So definitely professors of any age that wants to get students interested in their work. And, especially younger professors. I think now a lot of younger professors are, they’re trying to build a personal brand and everything in addition to the research.
Jennifer: This is a great use of startup funds. You can pay with your university monies. So please don’t hesitate to reach out if you are interested in having a VIP Day website for your research group or lab.
Jennifer: Brittany has been so much fun to have you back on The Social Academic podcast. Is there anything you’d like to chat about or add before we wrap up?
Brittany: No, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed working on the VIP days with you because it lets me still be a part of the helping academics with their websites, but kind of more on the back end of things. That just helps me as a graduate student right now because I’m just not able to do the front facing stuff at the moment.
Jennifer: Yeah, we’re perfect partners on this. And Dr. Makella Coudray, whose research lab website we did recently. We just had a workshop with her research group and she said that she now feels like her online presence is a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s a 10, and her website is a huge part of that. It makes her feel really good about her research and it makes her lab really excited to help share it. So I’m just so proud of the work that we’ve been able to do together so far, and excited for all the work to come.
Brittany: Yeah, me too.
Jennifer: Brittany, thank you so much for coming on today’s show.
Brittany: Thanks for having me, Jennifer.
Check out this throwback to our interview together back in 2020.
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Bio for Brittany Trinh
Brittany Trinh is a Vietnamese-American website designer and chemist. She helps enterprising scientists, science communicators, and academic entrepreneurs create a website that integrates your creativity and expertise. Brittany knows when your website reflects the awesome things you do within and beyond STEM, it helps you forge your own path.
She hosts the Beyond Your Science Podcast, where she talks about integrating science, entrepreneurship, and creativity within and beyond STEM, from her own experiences and interviews with other scientists and small-business owners. Listen to the Beyond Your Science Podcast.
Brittany is a PhD candidate in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on synthesizing high-impact polymers in a more eco-friendly way and leveraging their tough mechanical properties into industrial applications. She received her BS in Chemistry with a minor in Psychology from the University of Houston. Follow her research on Google Scholar.
When she’s not in the lab, she’s probably playing piano or violin, watching slice-of-life anime, or cooking some kind of noodle.
Read testimonials about working together on your academic website project.
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