By Paul Smaglik
Category Archives: Faculty
Building skills through a gig
Some researchers are providing short-term services such as writing science news articles and consulting on industry products to bolster their skills outside the lab. These side gigs can be valuable for career development, says Josh Henkin. (See related story here.)
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Mentoring: A powerful tool
By Virginia Gewin
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A free mentoring toolkit that helps female Middle Eastern scientists around the world to find and support one another is available online.
Rana Dajani, a molecular biologist based at Hashemite University in Zarqa, Jordan, developed the toolkit to inspire female researchers to build the networks they need to support, collaborate and advise one another as they move forward in their careers.
The number of female researchers in Middle Eastern countries varies wildly. A 2016 report found that women represent around 35.5% of total researchers in the 57 Organisation of Islamic Cooperation countries. Still, the numbers of employed women in some Middle Eastern countries are much lower. In Jordan and Algeria, just 12% of women work and in Saudi Arabia, 14% are employed.
Dajani built a mentoring network in Jordan in 2013, pairing 10 mentees with 10 mentors. From that experience, and with funding from the US National Academies of Science and the US National Science Foundation, she created ‘Three Circles of Alemat’, a three-year project to develop and test the mentoring toolkit. Working with female researchers from 17 universities across the Middle East, she and her team created a low-cost method to improve personal and professional success for both women and men. The final phase of her mentoring project, Three Circles of Alemat, brought together a cross-regional group of female Middle Eastern scientists this year in Boston, Massachusetts, at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference.
The mentoring toolkit is available for free through the website of the Society for the Advancement of Science and Technology in the Arab World. Another organization, 500 Women Scientists, a network of 19,000 women worldwide, has also adopted the toolkit. “We did not want to provide a centralized forum for mentors to find mentees because it is costly,” says Dajani, who is spending this year as a fellow at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writing a book about women redefining success. “Rather, we wanted people to take control and start their own creative forums.”
Virginia Gewin is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon.
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Video: How did you cultivate mentors?
Ten tips for finding an effective mentor
The faculty series: What does it take to be a mentor?
Adios to academia
By Virginia Gewin
US science and engineering PhD students are losing interest in academic careers because their career preferences change throughout their training, finds a study – not because of limited faculty-job availability.
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ERC grants competition opens
The European Research Council (ERC) in Brussels, an independent funding body supported by the European Commission, has announced €1.86 billion (US$2.2 billion) in four types of 2018 grants for early- and mid-career principal investigators (PIs).
Applications for two grant schemes open on 3 August, including ‘Starting’ grants of up to €1.5 million for up to 5 years for PIs who earned their PhD within 2-7 years ago; and a new collaborative programme, the ‘Synergy’ grant, which will fund 2-4 PIs in a cross-disciplinary project. The Synergy scheme, which awards up to €10 million for 6 years, was piloted in 2012 and 2013. The deadline is 17 October for Starting grant applications and 14 November for Synergy applications.
Applications for ‘Proof of Concept’ grants will be accepted starting in September, and for ‘Consolidator’ grants starting in October.
The 2018 grant programme will collectively fund about 900 PIs and is estimated to support 6,000 PhD students, postdocs and other lab members. ERC’s grant-success rate is 10-15%.
To apply for a Starting grant, click here . For a Synergy grant application, click here. Good luck!
- Here’s a bit of related reading and listening material.
Maximise your chances
Starting grants
Gender gap in US science PhD degrees persists
It’s no surprise that the number of PhD degrees in scientific and related disciplines conferred upon US students has leapt by half in the past decade — from about 18,000 in 2006 to more than 27,000 in 2016 — according to a recent report. But “Snapshot Report – Science and Engineering Degree Completion by Gender,” released last month by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center in Herndon, Virginia, shows that the proportion of women who earn those degrees has stayed stagnant — at a dismal 39%.
Credit: CORBIS
Academic housekeeping: Women’s work?
Margeret Thatcher at work as a research chemist in 1950.{credit}Christ Water/Getty{/credit}
Despite recent strides toward gender equity in academia, US female faculty members continue to perform more uncompensated service than do male faculty members, according to a new study in the journal Research in Higher Education.
Stepping up for hope
What did the March for Science do?
Scientists across the United States are just now returning to their labs after a weekend of marching, waving signs and, in many cases, wringing out rain-soaked lab coats. The steady rain that fell Saturday, 22 April, on the March for Science in Washington DC didn’t dampen participants’ enthusiasm for standing up for “science that upholds the common good and for political leaders and policy makers to enact evidence-based policies in the public interest,” to quote the March for Science website’s mission statement.
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But now that the march is over, scientists have to face some important questions: What message did they deliver, what comes next and what does it all mean for their careers? Continue reading
Sexual harassment: A continuing struggle
The US scientific community is still searching for a solution to the toxic issue of sexual harassment.
The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in Washington DC are conducting a study on how sexual harassment in academia influences the career advancement of women in the scientific, technical and medical workforce.
Women aren’t failing at science — science is failing women
Women in science face considerable barriers to success. Why?
Female scientists are often more productive than their male colleagues but much less likely to be recognised for their work.