Monthly Archives: July 2012

Beginnings – How to write your first grant proposal

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Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”.

Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.com’s Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de, Scitable and Scientific American’s Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse interpretations of beginnings – from scientific examples such as stem cells to first time experiences such as publishing your first paper. You can also follow and contribute to the conversations on social media by using the #BeginScights hashtag.   

Faye is a civil engineering professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who studies river ice processes and dynamics.  She has served on, and chaired, grant selection committees for Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grants program and for Canada’s International Polar Year research program.  Faye has a few blogs you might want to check out: “Help for New Professors” provides (often humorous) advice to early career academics and “The Art of Scientific Writing” provides much needed advice on technical writing to graduate students in science and engineering.  Check out Faye’s “River Ice Photo Blog” for beautiful pictures featuring the weird and wonderful world of river ice.

Many thanks to Nature for inviting me to write a guest post for the “Beginnings” series.  I’ve been asked to offer advice to young academics who are facing the daunting task of writing their first grant proposal.  This is a broad topic and, to a great extent, the specific approach is highly dependent upon the agency you’re targeting with your application.  In that context, it’s critical to read the instructions they provide.  Apparently, ~80% of people don’t do that. Amazing! However, beyond that, there are some general tips that apply universally and that’s what I’ll be focusing on today. Continue reading →

Beginnings – 6 Ps for putting on a performance

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Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”.

Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.com’s Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de, Scitable and Scientific American’s Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse interpretations of beginnings – from scientific examples such as stem cells to first time experiences such as publishing your first paper. You can also follow and contribute to the conversations on social media by using the #BeginScights hashtag.   

Jonathan Lawson is a first year Wellcome PhD student at the University of Cambridge, working on cytoskeletal organisation in the Carazo Salas lab. He is also an enthusiastic science communicator working with the Cambridge science magazine, BlueSci, getting involved in volunteer outreach programmes and sporadically writing on his own blog. Over the last year he has organised academic events for the other graduate students of Jesus College, Cambridge with the goal of encouraging others to talk about their academic interests. Find Jonathan on twitter as @clearsci.

In the beginning there was the word. But the word is no good unless you can talk about it, and so we invented conferences. Conferences lead to debate and research, which lead to more conferences. And this is good.

But, conferences don’t just happen, they must be carefully organised, speakers need to be invited and schedules laid out, you need programmes and resources, funding and advertising. This is one of the exciting tasks I chose to take on during the first year of my PhD at Cambridge:  organising my first conference. Continue reading →

Beginnings – Dos and Don’ts for first time Networkers

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Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”.

Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.com’s Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de, Scitable and Scientific American’s Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse interpretations of beginnings – from scientific examples such as stem cells to first time experiences such as publishing your first paper. You can also follow and contribute to the conversations on social media by using the #BeginScights hashtag.   

Pursuing an academic career in Palaeontology, Jon began university life as a geologist, following this with a course in biodiversity and taxonomy. While preparing for a PhD in vertebrate macroevolution at Imperial College, he is currently working on policy at the Geological Society. He blogs at https://fossilsandshit.wordpress.com/, tweets as Protohedgehog and co-runs an impending podcast series called Palaeocast.

It’s that time. You’ve been holding it off for as long as possible, but now the inevitable is upon you. You have to attend your first conference. You have to meet and be scrutinised by your peers, while convincing them that you are someone of value to the research community. Your first conference can break you as an academic, or you can leave so richly fulfilled that all you want to do from now on is attend them. The key is picking the right one. Larger international conferences can be a bit overwhelming. You want something a bit more chilled out, a bit more intimate, and a bit cheaper if possible. Break yourself in nice and easy. Continue reading →

Beginnings – Writing your first science paper

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Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”.

Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.com’s Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de, Scitable and Scientific American’s Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse interpretations of beginnings – from scientific examples such as stem cells to first time experiences such as publishing your first paper. You can also follow and contribute to the conversations on social media by using the #BeginScights hashtag.   

 

Michelle Wynn is a PhD candidate in Bioinformatics at the University of Michigan, working under the supervision of Sofia Merajver and Santiago Schnell .  Her thesis work involves the use of systems biology methods to understand the dysregulated signaling and metabolic networks associated with breast cancer development.  Her long-term goal is to direct a multidisciplinary research group that operates at the interface of theoretical and experimental cancer biology.  She hopes to defend soon.

In graduate school first-author publications are especially important because they represent a key milestone in the transition from trainee to independent researcher – something we all work very hard to achieve.   In October of last year I published my very first first-author research paper.  It was a lot of work and took far longer to write than I anticipated.  I know first-hand that preparing a manuscript can be very difficult and stressful – especially the first time.  I learned a great many things throughout the writing and submission process.   Below, I have listed three of the most important things I learned in the hope that they may be useful to others.

Continue reading →

Beginnings – Bunch of Fives – Why Blogging is Great, and Tips for Starting

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Thursday 26th July saw the launch of SciLogs.com, a new English language science blog network. SciLogs.com, the brand-new home for Nature Network bloggers, forms part of the SciLogs international collection of blogs which already exist in German, Spanish and Dutch. To celebrate this addition to the NPG science blogging family, some of the NPG blogs are publishing posts focusing on “Beginnings”.

Participating in this cross-network blogging festival is nature.com’s Soapbox Science blog, Scitable’s Student Voices blog and bloggers from SciLogs.com, SciLogs.de, Scitable and Scientific American’s Blog Network. Join us as we explore the diverse interpretations of beginnings – from scientific examples such as stem cells to first time experiences such as publishing your first paper. You can also follow and contribute to the conversations on social media by using the #BeginScights hashtag.   

 

Suzi Gage is a PhD student based at the University of Bristol. She’s researching cannabis and tobacco use, and their relationship with psychosis and depression, using Children of the 90s, a birth cohort based in Bristol. In her spare time she blogs, sings, knits, tweets and reads. Her blog, Sifting the Evidence, can be found here. 

I’ve always enjoyed journalism and writing; at school I edited the school mag one year, and I was a music journalist for Pi, UCL’s magazine while studying there, despite being a scientist at heart. Once I left Uni though, the opportunities for writing somewhat disappeared. I started working as a Research Assistant in Bristol, and the thought of journalism left me somewhat. But when I started my PhD, I realised I wanted science communication to be a big part of my studies. My topic of research (cannabis and mental health outcomes) is likely to generate some media interest, so I wanted to be as good as possible at explaining my science. But it was taking part in I’m a Scientist Get Me Out of Here that really showed me the value of science outreach. The scheme involved a lot of science writing, as all questions are answered in text form, but I was speaking to teenagers, so a completely different scientific language was required. Continue reading →

Points of Science: A Cultural Proposal

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Joshua Fouts is an anthropologist, photographer and writer whose work chronicles the cultural intersections of science, technology and art. He is the creator of “Points of Science,” a global initiative to make science education accessible to all, and executive director of Science House Foundation, an international New York City-based NGO that seeks to spark the imaginations of kids worldwide to the excitement of science and cultural collaboration. You can follow Joshua on Twitter @josholalia.

Late this May I found myself sitting on a corrugated metal bench in an aluminum skiff, traveling up the river Amônia in the middle of the Amazon forest. I was in Brazil’s state of Acre on a trip to deliver microscopes to a group of indigenous people called the Ashaninka. Already, I could tell that the journey would be equal parts brutal and inspiring. Continue reading →

Placebo for Psychogenic Illnesses: Why “It’s all in my head” does and doesn’t matter

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Karen S. Rommelfanger, PhD has over 10 years experience as a movement disorders neuroscientist. She now is the Program Director of the Neuroethics Program at the Emory Center for Ethics and is a Fellow in the Scholars Program for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Research in the Department of Neurology in the School of Medicine at Emory where she conducts research on placebo therapy and psychogenic movement disorders.

She is the Neuroscience Editor-in-Residence at the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience and manages The Neuroethics Blog, and founded Neuroethics Women Leaders.

If a belief in a sickness makes you unwell, why not treat with a belief in getting better?

Placebos are generally defined as inert substances thought to have no medical value, such as a sugar pill that is believed to relieve patient medical symptoms through the expectation of getting better. Placebo effects can be elicited by a number of other things such as vitamins, antibiotics for viral infections, and sub-threshold doses of prescription medications.  The act of simply taking medicine or thinking that medicine might work can impact patient outcomes. Continue reading →

Top Recommendations from Top Women in Science

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Dr Seirian Sumner & Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, (Institute Of Zoology, Zoological Society of London). 

Why are there still so few women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathemathics (STEM)? School girls are as excited as school boys about science, so the potential is clearly there. Yet we still do not routinely see female professors dominating examination panels, research institute directorial boards or the Royal Society fellowship community. Why is it so?

Clearly, the lack of women in science can be sourced from the loss of trained and skilled young women from STEM careers. The main highlighted reasons triggering their departure include fertility choices, stereotypic behaviours in the scientific community and work-home balance, as career progression in these competitive jobs is associated with a long working week and strong disincentives to have children. Women also tend to find the culture of male-dominated STEM departments and the scarcity of female role models off-putting. A report by the Royal Society of Edinburgh recently pointed out that the lack of part-time opportunities, the perception by the scientific community that part-time working is not compatible with a science career, the demand for high geographic mobility, the expense and availability of flexible childcare support, and the difficulty to re-enter the STEM sector after a career break are important reasons triggering the decision to leave. Continue reading →

There is no “normal”

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Dr. Chris Gunter is the HudsonAlpha director of research affairs. She earned a bachelor’s degree in both genetics and biochemistry from the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. in genetics from Emory University.  Her research was centered on human genetics and genomics. Chris has also earned publishing experience at several journals, including editorial positions at Human Molecular Genetics and Science, and as the editor for genetics and genomics manuscripts at Nature. Upon starting to publish genome papers at Nature in 2002, Chris told her boss that if they ever got the platypus genome published, it would be time to move on. She started at the nonprofit HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in 2008 and coordinates research activities in genetics and genomics. She creates and maintains an academic environment and communicates HudsonAlpha’s research in a variety of different formats and public venues.
Chris also holds adjunct appointments at three universities, is an editor of the blog Double X Science, and currently serves on the Program Committee and as the chair of the Communications Committee for the American Society of Human Genetics. For probably too much info, see her @girlscientist on Twitter. Continue reading →

Science Mentoring: Strongest Advocate Strongest Critic – A Guide to Mentoring

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The latest Soapbox Science mini-series focuses on the role of mentors in science. Tying in with this year’s Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting, where almost 600 young scientists have the opportunity to meet each other and 25 Nobel laureates, we’ll be looking at the importance of supportive relationships and role models. We’ll hear from a mix of mentors, mentees and projects set up to support scientists and we aim to explore not just the positive examples of good mentoring but what can happen when these key relationships are absent or break down. For more discussions around this year’s Lindau meeting, check out the Lindau Nobel Community site.

Dr. C. Gita Bosch has twenty years of academic leadership experience (PhD, MD/PhD, Post-baccalaureate and undergraduate research education) and seven years of laboratory biomedical research. As Associate Dean at both Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (where she led the effort to create and establish the Graduate School) she has served as the Minority Student Advocate for over twenty years. She also served on an Advisory Group of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) to look at health disparities in biomedical research and the biomedical workforce in the US. And for almost twenty years, she has been working with various organizations that work with underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students such as the ABRCMS (formerly NMRS), SACNAS and MHPF. She also currently serves on External Advisory Committees for Post-Baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP), Minority Access to Research Careers Programs (MARC) and Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (RISE). As an elected member of the Steering Committee of the GREAT Group, AAMC, she founded and chaired the Gateway for Aspiring Biomedical Scientists Committee which created and launched a resource website for trainees at all levels. She also has a long history leading professional development workshops for undergraduate and graduate students. She has also served as a consultant with the Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity at Case Western Reserve University to help guide the preparation of a Diversity Strategic Action Plan for the University, and to the Association of UNCF/Merck Fellows (The AUMF) to help launch a professional association of African American biomedical scientists established as a national presence.

If you’ve been inspired to try mentoring yourself, here is a guide to help you along the way! Continue reading →