Academia
Christine
Crumbley
2011: The Year of Scandals and Retractions
I read the news online daily and follow several science news organizations on Twitter. I’ve really enjoyed Nature News & Comments’ focus on retractions this year. I’ve learned a lot about the causes for retractions and the frequency of such events. An article with some really informative g...
Christine
Crumbley
Working Holidays & Resolutions
As a graduate student, it seems there is always work to do on holiday breaks. Last year, I only took a couple days off to spend with my family because I had to return to the lab to finish the suggested experiments for a publication. It was strange being in the lab because there were only a few peopl...
Kate
Sleeth
Very Superstitious
While I am a very practical and logical person (well, aren’t all scientists?!). There is one area where I am a little quirky. There are certain experiments where I am very superstitious, and I will always adhere to it so I don’t jinx the whole thing!
Richard
Gardner
Academic networking, a key step in your career.
One of the most overlooked aspects of career development by postdocs and grad students is networking. In business, effective networking is absolutely essential for developing the trust and relationships that can open up new opportunities. When you are recommended by someone whose opinion I trust, th...
Christine
Crumbley
Enriching Your Graduate Student Experience
Today, I went to see David Baltimore speak. He has a paper coming out in Nature about vectored immunoprophalyxis, a new technique developed in his group to try to use gene therapy for vaccination against HIV. It was a really exciting talk!
Richard
Gardner
The Beginning
Hi and welcome to my blog. I’d like to thank Bio Careers for the opportunity to lend my thoughts and opinions to career-related issues encountered by today’s bioscientist. My hope is to provide some new perspectives on what it’s like to transition through the ranks of academic science, and exp...
Jason
Sherwin
How do you actually fund the research?
There’s a joke in the research world that you don’t submit a research proposal to NIH until you’ve already done the research. When I was a rookie in the biomedical research world, and I was told this cinema vérité version of things, I thought in typical naïveté, ‘but how do you actually ...
Kate
Sleeth
Scientific Integrity
The Hippocratic Oath is historically taken by doctors swearing to practice medicine ethically. There is no such oath that we scientists swear, but we are expected to perform research responsibly and to publish scientific truth. As we cannot know everyone within our area of interest, gene...
Christine
Crumbley
Effective Presentations
As I’ve started receiving replies to my inquiries about postdoctoral positions and discussing the replies with friends, a common thing for interviews is to present your research. We shifted the conversation from the request for a presentation to what makes a presentation interesting and effe...
Mandy
Kendrick
Done with the Bench?
Done with the bench…or do you just need a change of scenery instead? At the end of graduate school, I remember thinking, “I am tired of doing research; can I really handle a postdoc?” My graduate work entailed using the model plant Arabidopsis to investigate the molecular cascade of event...