Academia

Virginie
Adam

Recognition

Over the summer, I have been finishing some work in the lab for one of my main projects. While I spent about a year making and optimizing vector constructs for my experiments, the second phase of my project, assessing them in vivo, went a lot faster. Within a few weeks, there was strong evidence the...


Eric
Wong

Career Commentary #1: The Person Behind the Desk - An Often Overlooked Key to Success

April 21st, 2010. Did this day have any significance for you? My guess is that unless you were brought into this world or blissfully wed on that day (in which case belated "Happy Birthday" or "Happy Anniversary" wishes go to you), it probably didn't have any real importance, but April 21st, 2010 was...


Kate
Sleeth

The Ethics of proceeding with caution; don’t run before you can walk

I was saddened when I read articles in Nature reporting investigative results that patients in Texas have received unproven stem-cell treatments.  As stated in a previous blog article, I believe that stem cells could eventually be a cure for a wide range of diseases and am therefore supportive ...


Sayali
Kale

What are you – An Intern?

“Trade places with me. No seriously.”   –InternTalk #101 If you are somewhere in the world right now making a mark, you probably started as an Intern. They didn’t give you the director’s job out of college, did they? Or did I miss a job fair? Or maybe you sailed your way out...


Christine
Crumbley

Life After Thesis Defense

I am a little behind in my blog posts because I became overwhelmed with my thesis defense. The big day finally came, and I was able to present the work I’ve done over the last several years since arriving at Scripps Florida. I was very fortunate that my family lives fairly close, so my mom, sister...


Jason
Sherwin

Giving a presentation on touchy subjects

This posting is about giving a presentation on touchy subjects. Everyone knows that academia is high on ego. And it’s understandably so: we have invested our lives into what we do. There’s no way to “not take it personally.” It’s our work, it’s our time, it’s our life’s work. So...


Meghan
Mott

Careers In Traditional Academia: Outlook Bleak

As postdocs, we toiled away our early 20s in graduate school working 50+ hours a week in research labs and teaching as a necessary rite of passage on the career path to academia. We justified our meager stipends, long hours, and general dissatisfaction in life with the promise of a brighter, better-...


Kate
Sleeth

CIRM: A Publically Funded Institute

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is an interesting experiment into publically funded research.  It was born from a state referendum in which Proposition 71 was passed on November 2, 2004.  It is a state agency which was provided $3 billion in funding for stem cell ...


Richard
Gardner

Revising and troubleshooting … two sides of the same coin

One of the most important aspects of successful science is in the revising of talks, manuscripts, and grant proposals and in the troubleshooting of experiments. If you think about it, revising and troubleshooting are essentially the same process with one applied to improving communication and the ot...


Meghan
Mott

Alternative Careers for Science PhDs – Part II: Regulatory Affairs

Postdoctoral fellowships provide budding scientists with the advanced training necessary to prepare us for the next step in our careers. Traditionally, these fellowships are geared toward a future in academic research. For most of us, however, as I described in my first post, our career paths will l...