This week as we practice giving and inspiring future generations on ‘Red Nose Day’, CSG saw various initiative stirred by members’ enthusiasm to help and educate young PhDs in their career choices. Let’s have a look at what kept CSGians busy this week.
Lessons from nature
Nature has always inspired science since ages. This week while scientists from ICRM-NITM demonstrated ‘bergenin’ from plant sources to curb tuberculosis bacteria, IISC scientists have taken nanostructure lessons from insect wings and sharkskin to make titanium orthopaedic implants bactericidal. A global warming threat was also reported, as the ‘failsafe’ protection of Global Seed Vault was flooded after the deep permafrost entrance tunnel showed signs of melting.
From generation to generation
Encouraging the young minds towards research-based careers, the India HRD ministry plans to launch a project to confer the status of ‘Institutions of Eminence’ on government and private research institutions for India to gain global recognition. Further, the ‘Mentor India’ initiative by NITI Aayog works at grass-root levels calling professionals to mentor school students by sharing their career stories, skills and insights. This week we also had Parthiban Srinivasan share his experiences about his career trajectories in varied fields with Abhinav Dey on Facebook live.
An apt example of ignited young minds was seen as International Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition 2017 saw a promising project iFLOAT from undergraduate IISCians. The innovative idea aims to bring down cost to producing recombinant proteins by helping optimise yeast bioreactors. The project is been funded from various sources, crowd-funding being one of them.
Story of the week
This week the PhD scholar Precilla Veigas from Canada inspires us to dream higher and narrates her story of how irrelevant life problems are as you chase your dream while fighting Cancer. The Canadian university held a special convocation for the terminally ill graduate applauding her vigour and strength as she dedicated her doctorate to her daughter. Another mother-scientist narrates her story of how she managed to pursue two passions in life: Science and motherhood
Resources to help your research
Here’s a user-friendly resource to analyse Cancer transcriptomics data and one to help you with scientific writing, while Sci-Hub is an upcoming venture to provide public access to millions of research papers.
CSG: the new Hogwarts
CSG this week has come up with two new initiatives. The CSG Data science platform by Pawan and Anshu is a venture to empower PhDs to help them get a flavour of the ‘quantitative real world’. Interested CSGians please sign up by participating in a poll and are requested to submit a ‘Statement of Purpose’ to csgdatascience@gmail.com by June 5th 2017.
Another CSG initiative is to compile a list of lawyers initiated by Naz and Richa Tyagi with pros and cons of hiring them. This should help PhDs/Post-docs applying for green card and find the right sources of help.
CSG plans to have an Annual CSG Meet-up in Boston on 19th August 2017 are underway and suggestions are welcome to make the event useful for career development.
Resume roadmap
Top interviewers share their insider tips to get hired by elite pharma companies while LinkedIn finds a better way to explain parenting breaks. Google to launch a ‘Google for Jobs’ portal for job searches and here’s a guide to consulting for fresh PhD graduates. For fresh PhD graduates willing to experiment with consulting, please consider joining the CSG Consulting Club.
Opportunities
While Novartis plans to generate around 350 jobs in high-end biologics, let’s have a look at some opportunities posted by fellow CSGians.
- Science Communication Conference 2017 in India
- Art of Science Communication summer internship by American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
- BIO Talent Connect at San Diego with Merck as the major hiring company
- Consultancy jobs at UNICEF
- MSL Jobs: Respiratory Medical Science Liaison
- Biomarker Scientist position Genentech
- EM facility manger in London Imperial college
- External Innovation Lead, Immunology and MSL job : Sanofi
- JRF/SRF/RA position at National Institute of Plant Genome Research
- Postdoctoral position at Rutgers University
- Post doctoral fellowship in neuroscience
Good luck to aspiring job applicants. Lookout for more opportunities on our Facebook page.
So here’s wrapping up this week and wishing you a yet another productive week ahead.
About the cover image
‘Paving the way for generations to come’ is a snapshot of the Enchanted Forest , Scotland 2017.
About the author
Nisha Peter is a recent PhD graduate from Genome Damage and Stability Centre,UK and is now working as Research Fellow at Sussex Drug Discovery Centre,UK. Her research interest involves cell biology (I’ve spend a lifetime admiring mitotic cells during my PhD!!) and oncology. She works for Club SciWri as a freelance writer to pursue her love for “words”. Apart from being bench scientist she actively participates in science communication events, enjoys teaching, globetrotting and experimenting with music.
