Public recognition

My former student was on TV yesterday!

Well, not the real TV. Just the fancy flat screen monitor mounted high on a wall by the elevators in my building. The TV appeared a few months ago and originally featured reminders of upcoming talks, bake sales and other fundraisers, and the occasional social event. However, The Powers That Be recently decided to add announcements of published papers and grant awards to the programme listings: just top tier journals and grants over a million dollars to start with, but they've now expanded the initiative to include all papers (including my postdoc lab's new review paper) and multi-year grants.

I think this is a great idea, especially in a large multi-department building where it's impossible to know everyone. My awesome, friendly, super-social postdoc department already did (and I think still does) something similar: when your paper got published, or your abstract was accepted for an oral presentation at a conference, you printed a copy out (abstracts on colour-coded paper according to the date of the presentation) and gave it to one of the secretaries, who would ceremoniously staple it to the Wall of Honour. It could then be appreciated in all its glory by your respectfully jealous* colleagues, and by bored visitors waiting for someone to find the PI they'd come to see.

Other departments in our building seem to have similar Walls of Honour in place. However, my current department (not known for being particularly social) doesn't do anything other than get its papers onto the new screen downstairs. Some of the PIs I work with provide champagne and nibbles to everyone involved when a paper gets into a top tier journal, and occasionally when they get a big grant, but those occasions are rare and there's no formal recognition of smaller achievements. I'd be tempted to try and correlate lab sociability with public recognition of success, but the institute where I did my PhD was even more awesome, friendly, and social than my postdoc department, and they didn't do anything special either.

Although, thinking back, maybe that was because we all knew each other so well that we always knew when someone's paper had come out because they'd buy the first round on Friday night...

How does your lab / department / institute recognise milestones such as papers, presentations, grants and fellowships? Do you think there's any association with how social your department is?

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*depending on the journal / conference

More drunk dancing scientists

Ecogeofemme wrote a nice post this week that touched on the social aspects of conference attendance. I've always been pretty outgoing (well, since I left high school anyway) so I've always initiated lots of conversations, and I've had a grand old time with the people I've met at some smaller meetings. However, not every conference is conducive to meeting new buddies. This particular drunk dancing scientist anecdote concerns the latter type of meeting.

During my first year in my PhD lab, my postdoc buddy (PDB) and I went to a small-ish meeting at the University of Warwick. We soon discovered that lots of labs had registered en masse, and were hanging out with each other being cliquey. We still had fun, but PDB was failing in her PI-assigned mission.

You see, a rather distinguished potential collaborator was in attendance, and PI wanted PDB to approach him to try and initiate a collaboration. This was quite intimidating for a first-year postdoc, but she gave it her best shot. Unfortunately, he was always surrounded by his own clique of fellow bigwigs and we couldn't get anywhere near him. We contented ourselves by trying to guess which one of the bigwigs was Ed Southern, who was billed to talk on the last day.

The last day and the obligatory conference social came around without any success. They'd chosen a ceilidh*, which suited us quite nicely, coming as we did from a Scottish lab. At one point, PDB had gone for a rest and a drink of water while I stayed on the dance floor. The callers started to arrange us into two concentric circles, women on the inside and men on the outside. As they walked us through the dance moves we learned that after rotating the two circles in opposite directions we would dance a short set with the person facing us, kiss them on both cheeks, then spin around again until we met a new partner.

Tee hee! We would have to kiss boys!

So the dance started and I kissed my first couple of drunk dancing scientists. Then I saw PDB falling about laughing. When I came back round to face her again she started to gesticulate wildly to my right, where my next few partners were lined up. I suddenly realised that I was going to have to kiss David Lane.

Yes, the David Lane. Professor Sir David Lane, who discovered the p53 tumour suppressor gene.
Well, I was mortified. PDB could not stop laughing as I kissed this science god, blushing bright red as I am prone to do.

But my biggest embarrassment was still to come.

Back in the lab, PI wandered in. "PDB, did you make any progress with Professor Bigwig? Does he want to collaborate with us?"

PDB: "No, I didn't talk to him. But Cath snogged David Lane".

The look on PI's face was priceless. It took a long time to live that one down.

*PDB had a ceilidh at her wedding reception. By the time the wedding book came around to our table we'd all had a lot to drink and all I ended up writing was "I'm the only English person at this table and I bet I'm the only one that knows how to spell ceilidh".

scientiae-carnival

My idealistic inner teenager is proud of me

There was a local conference this week that was highly relevant to the research being performed in my new department. And I got to go! It was the first time in a few years that I've been able to attend conference sessions and actually feel like I belong there. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. No more standing at booths trying to keep an eye on the free pens!

One thing that really struck me at the conference is how relevant my new job is to the treatment of real live patients with actual diseases. My PhD and postdoctoral research were in basic science with no immediate application to human health, so this isn't something I'm used to. But my new colleagues are a mix of scientists and physicians, and the group as a whole is involved in several clinical trials.

It might sound strange, but this realisation was quite a revelation for me. I mean, this is why I got into my field in the first place. My grandma died (indirectly) from a tumour when I was 15, and my idealistic teenage self wanted to go into research in order to find a cure for cancer. I ended up working in 2 different cancer research centres, but never on anything clinically relevant. This new job is my first real chance to feel like I'm involved in something that can actually save lives. I may not be doing any research myself, but I think my 15 year old self would be proud.

I'm a specialised generalist

Another month, another conference. This is June, so it must be clinical immunology in San Diego.

As a postdoctoral researcher I used to go to one major meeting per year, usually the American Society of Human Genetics. That was when I could justifiably consider myself to be an expert in my field, with a deep understanding of a narrow area. I got to give two oral presentations and got some great feedback on them. I could attend sessions where I understood the vast majority of what was being presented, and even ask an occasional question when I dared.

These days I go to lots of different conferences, and have a more superficial knowledge of a much broader area. I definitely feel less connected than I used to, a feeling epitomised at a recent dermatology meeting where the speaker obviously said something very controversial that elicited a collective gasp of astonishment from the audience. It went right over my head.

The advantage of my new broader scope is that I get to read about subjects that I just wouldn’t have had time for when I was immersed in my own speciality. I scan lots of journals’ tables of contents, read various abstracts, subscribe to New Scientist, and hang out on scientific blogs whenever I get the time. This means that when a friend starts to ask me about a scientific item they saw on the news, there’s a better chance that I can reply “oh yeah, I was reading about that last week”, rather than “ooh, sorry, that’s really not my field”.

I think I’d like to maintain most of the breadth of knowledge I’ve started to accumulate, but gain some more depth. I’m working on incorporating that goal into my current job, while this blog is part of my extra-curricular attempt to stay in touch with the latest original research.

I’m trying to be a generalised specialist.

Career advice for aspiring scientists

I freely admit that I am a huge geek. I knew from a very early age (around 15 or 16) that I wanted to be a professional geek, also known as a scientist. As soon as I realised that there were people out there actually researching the things I was just starting to learn about in biology lessons, I wanted to sign up to join them.

Unfortunately, my school’s career advice went something like this:

Adviser: What’s your favourite school subject?

Me: Biology. We’ve just started covering Genetics and I love it. I want to get a PhD and work in a genetics lab.

Adviser: So you like science? Have you considered being an engineer?

Me: I don’t want to be an engineer. I want to get a PhD and work in a genetics lab.

Adviser: There are lots of good careers in engineering.

Engineering was pretty much the only science-based career (not including medicine) that the career adviser had heard of. The work experience that the school organised for all 16 year-old students saw me chopping onions and cleaning pans in a café. It wasn’t until I went on to study genetics at Newcastle University that I started to meet other people with the same career goals as me.

When I was still working in the lab here in Vancouver, I took part in an outreach programme called Let’s Talk Science. I talked about bacterial genetics, antibiotic resistance and the spread of diseases to a local high school class. I also got to judge the school’s annual science fair, which was great fun. The students were, almost without exception, very enthusiastic and open, and had lots of questions for my colleagues and me about careers in research. I wish programmes like this existed everywhere – I would have loved to be involved when I was a student.

I’ve also come across groups of local high school students at a couple of different conferences. They come to the booth, ask lots of questions, and take away posters, other literature and free pens. The last group I spoke to had all volunteered to attend and were having a great time quizzing exhibitors and poster presenters about their work. A few of them said they were considering careers in biology, so I gave them my card – hopefully they will receive better career advice at school than I did, but if not, they’ll have a real live scientist to contact.

If you’re a student in an area that runs science fairs and lets you attend conferences, I say go for it. Take full advantage of all those opportunities, even if you’re not sure you want a research career.

If you are being told that you should be an engineer or a doctor, but you want to see what else is out there, hang in there! I went to school in the pre-internet era, but there are now lots of excellent career advice sites out there. My favourite is published by the journal Science.

Good luck!

Drunk dancing scientists

I’m attending a conference this week. Yes, I am one of those people who stands at a booth trying to make sure that I get something back for all the free pens I give away. At this conference that means simply talking to delegates to see what kind of work they are doing; this is our first venture into this particular field and it’s primarily an information-gathering exercise.

I was going to post about the conference experience as seen from an exhibitor’s point of view. However, a sore head puts that task beyond my current capabilities. The reason for this minor incapacity is the infamous conference social event.

The conference social is an interesting experience. The best ones I’ve been to were as a PhD student, at small meetings when my boss was thousands of miles away and I’d had the chance to meet lots of other delegates. These days I travel with colleagues and have to be on my best behaviour*, which gives me an opportunity to observe that fascinating species: the drunk dancing scientist.

Last night’s affair was an open air seafood buffet (with open bar) at a pedestrianised shopping area just off Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills. It was one of the better conference socials I’ve ever been to, no doubt due to big pharma sponsorship. The wine was flowing, people were mingling, and a live band was playing.

How to describe the dancing? The professorial types letting their hair down and flinging their embarrassed junior colleagues around the dance floor… old friends at their annual gathering, all dancing like Elaine Benes… the crowd of young, social PhD students whose bosses are thousands of miles away…

Any of these people can take a free pen today, no questions asked. You can’t put a price on that kind of entertainment. Besides, I’m probably not up to detailed conversations about science this morning. Thank goodness for a later start today – a true sign of well-planned conference social.

*Yes, my best behaviour still sometimes results in a sore head.