{credit}image coutsery of Dorota Bijos and Babett Steglich{/credit}

Introducing Dominika Bijos, one of the London Naturejobs Career Expo journalism competition runners-up.

Dominika Bijos loves communicating biomedical research. After earning her BSc in Italy and MSc in the UK, she worked in research labs across Europe. From DNA in the cell nucleus she moved her research interests to the smooth muscle in the bladder. She is now writing up her PhD thesis at the University of Bristol, UK,  maintaining an international and interdisciplinary peer mentoring network and enjoys presenting research in comics and short presentations. She organizes a yearly meeting for early career researchers in urology, where she promotes interactions, networking and mentoring. @DBijos

—-x—-

In May my colleague Stefan thanked me when he received a fellowship from the prestigious European Molecular Biology Organization. At the time, I didn’t understand why – he did all the hard work. When I asked him, he told me that I had been his informal peer mentor: I pointed him towards the opportunity, helped him through the application process and provided feedback. And of course, I was there to cheer him up and keep his mind on other things during the long wait. At no point did I even consider I was being a mentor.

It made me think about what it means to be a mentor and how you become one. The core idea behind mentoring is to provide help and advice to those who need it on how to reach long-term career goals successfully. Continue reading →