Tag: academia

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Studying worms – a Nobel calling

Professor William Campbell with Professors Celia Holland (front right) and Yvonne Buckley (front left). Back row L-R Professor Holland’s parasitology research group: Dr Peter Stuart, Gwen Deslyper, Maureen Williams, Rachael Byrne and Paula Tierney

 

“Parasites are not generally regarded as being loveable. When we refer to people as parasites we are not being complimentary, we are not praising them. We tend to think that a parasite is the sort of person who goes through a revolving door on somebody else’s push. This is unfair. It’s unfair to real parasites… It is time for parasites to get a little more respect!”                                                        – Professor William C. Campbell during his 2015 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

In 2015, Prof. William C. Campbell, a Trinity Zoology graduate, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for his discovery of ivermectin. The drug can be used to treat a wide range of parasites, but is most widely known for its effectiveness against river blindness. In 1987 the pharmaceutical company Merck enabled the free distribution of the drug to developing countries.

This Nobel Prize, which Prof. Campbell shared with his then colleague Prof. Satoshi Ōmura, is an important accomplishment not only for the Professors themselves as the cherry on top of their careers, but it is also important for the wider academic community.

This Nobel Prize is of importance to what Prof. Celia Holland described as ‘the international worm community’. This community has been struggling for many years to get recognition and funding. This prize therefore finally highlights the importance of parasitic worms. A lot of these parasites are often, despite their wide prevalence, classified as ‘neglected tropical diseases’. Neglected tropical diseases mainly affect the poor communities and are often forgotten in research and in the ‘public health agenda’. It remains to be seen whether some parasites will ever be able to shake their neglected status, but this Nobel Prize and associated international attention could be a great step in the right direction.

Hopefully, other pharmaceutical companies will take note of this prize. Giving away lifesaving medicine should be celebrated. We all know of the negative press pharmaceutical companies have gotten such as the recent price hikes in epi-pens. However, we tend to forget and ignore when pharmaceutical companies go to great lengths to help those in need. I see this prize also as a celebration of Merck for showing how it can be done differently. Because, really, what is the point of us producing any medical research if it doesn’t translate into affordable medicine?

During Prof. Campbell’s visit to TCD, the provost announced a new lectureship position in parasitology in honour of Prof. Campbell and the work he has done for the international worm community. Needless to say that this position would not have existed without Prof. Campbell’s Nobel Prize. Parasitology is a struggling field worldwide and every lectureship position is one to be valued and celebrated. This lectureship shows the commitment of the university to parasitology and will reinforce Trinity’s leading role in parasitological research within Ireland.

Additionally, this is an inspirational story for a lot of people. The story of ivermectin is a great motivation for parasitologists like myself. I work on a parasitic nematode called Ascaris, which infects 800 million people worldwide every year. Much like river blindness, it is also a neglected tropical disease, and as is often the case for these types of diseases, there isn’t much interest or funding going around. So it’s great at the start of my PhD to see that this type of research can also be honoured and valued.

I’ve read interviews of Prof. Campbell where he said that this prize meant the end of his retirement. I’m sorry to hear that his well-deserved retirement has been shaken up, but Prof. Campbell took one for the team and is promoting parasitic worm research to whoever wants to listen, just as he did before, only now he has a broader audience.

Author: Gwen Deslyper (seen charming Bill at 1:49 )

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Formally informal conferences

 

BESMacroNetworking

One of my favourite parts of working as a researcher during the summer (aside from quiet campuses with less students around) definitely has to be the “conference season”. Indeed, I don’t need to convince many people that conferences are one of the lively and exciting parts of doing science that rightly mix traveling, networking (and sometimes drinking) and learning about so many new things (and sometimes hangovers).

One of the problems though is that they can sometimes be overwhelming. It’s hard to find a balance between the right amount of networking (how many friends/collaborators do I want to meet and how many new ones do I want to make) and the right amount of learning (which talks do I want to attend and how much can I get from them). Although everyone has their own technique to deal with these questions, it seems to me that it boils down to the number of people attending the conference and the objectives of the conference organisers. One solution is to aim conferences towards a more manageable size with a clear emphasis on networking and learning.

One such conference is the annual BES Macro conference! As has became a happy ritual over the last 4 years, I was awaiting July with impatience for this year’s one organised in Oxford by Natalie Cooper and Rich Grenyer. As a disclaimer though, I do not consider myself as a macroecologist at all (most of my work is on macroevolution methods). So why do I go every year? I don’t even know what macroecology is! Well one of the first points is that this conference covers a vast array of topics, this year reaching far beyond the classic bird species richness heat maps with presentations on microbe populations in tree holes and sampling biases in the fossil record! The second point is because I think this conference contains all the ingredients that I think make a good conference:

First, mix different career levels:
For early career scientists like myself it can sometimes be a bit intimidating to mainly hear talks by “veteran” scientists. In fact I often think to myself just before giving a talk, how lame mine will be in comparison to the other people. Not that mixing different career levels makes my talk less lame (!), it has at least the benefit of making me feel better. It also has the undeniable benefit of making it easier to network with the big wigs if you spoke in the same session as them. At BES Macro 2016, each session was a good mix of every career level making it much more casual. Even the plenary speakers ranged from Professor Tim Blackburn to About-to-be-doctor Hannah White!

Second, make most of the talks short:
People have mixed feelings about lightning talks: from the speaker’s point of view, when you have exciting results it can be frustrating to convey your message in 5 minutes. Also these talks are sometimes more difficult to write than a classic 10-15 minutes one! However, from a listener’s point of view, think about how much more you absorb, on average, from these extra 5-10 minutes that make a classic talk? On a couple of talks: probably much more; on 2 days or more of conference: probably not that much! Besides, if 5 minutes was not enough and just peaked your curiosity, it makes an excellent opportunity to network (“Hi, I really enjoyed your talk. About that, [insert your burning question here]?”).

Third, add a nice dose of transferable skills:
Another point of conferences that can be negative is that you chain-listen to many many talks all day long. That has the benefit of giving a good overview of your field of research but can also make you slightly sleepy! One solution to break this continuous rhythm of talks is to do it with discussion sessions that can either be about transferable skills or about big questions in the field. For example, at BES Macro 2016 we had an excellent discussion session on reproducibility and another on the classic “What is Macroecology?” question.

And finally, don’t forget to add some rants:
What makes a good conference lies also in how much you feel part of the field of research covered by the conference. One way to convey that is to be part of or at least listen to the “hot” debates shaking the field. In this conference for example, we had two “official rants” by Shai Meiri and Adam Algar on what is going wrong in macroecology (but still how much cool work is done).

And of course, the main ingredient is the attitude of the people towards the conference. As Rich Grenyer put it in his welcoming introduction: “this conference is formally informal.”

Hope to see you at the next conference!

Photo credit: Thomas Guillerme

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Making the most out of a post doc interview

Making the most out of a post doc interview

(Even when you don’t get/want the job!)

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So you’ve just finished your PhD and sent out a frantic flurry of post doc applications, amidst all of the excitement, you’re invited to interview; how should you proceed?  Below are some of the things I learned from my first post doc interview recently:

 

A couple of weeks ago I embarked on a new first for me; my first interview! I grant you that it is unusual to be having one’s first interview at the age of 26; I had worked, but never interviewed in the formal sense, with a panel of strangers. There seem to be three broad classes of post doctoral jobs advertised; a) those advertised by a particular lab, usually with a particular person, where you are interviewed directly with the person you are hoping to work for. b) Grants like IRC or the Wellcome trust where you write a proposal and often, while a panel reviews this, you never have to actually interview in person. c) The kind I’ve just done; where a centre or department gets money and so you are interviewed by a panel from the department (and university in general sometimes), but not by the person you are applying to work with. With some trepidation I accepted the interview. I wasn’t sure at this stage that I actually wanted the position if offered but decided to take the opportunity to interview for experience alone at any rate. Here are some of the things that I learned and would advise (though remember, this is an n=1!):

 

Before the interview:

 

  • If the position is somewhere that you need to fly/travel to, arrive a day early if you can. This will relieve some of the stress of any travel delays and help get you in the zone
  • If the person you would be working with is not actually going to be on the panel try to arrange a meeting with them before the interview (day before if possible). This gives you the chance to meet if you haven’t done so before but also get their opinion as to the position. I got lots of great tips when I did this about what the panel may be looking for but also some valuable insights.
  • Tying in with the above, if you can visit the building it is going to be in beforehand, particularly a university, it really helps to get a feel of the place, the workspace and see whether this is somewhere you would enjoy spending your time.
  • Meet the other candidates! I know that this is perhaps a little controversial and may not work for everyone, but I ended up meeting some of the other candidates going for the job while I was there and found it really useful for a few reasons. Firstly, and mainly, it helps to remind you that these are people too, also nervous, which certainly made me feel more comfortable, knowing others were in the same boat. The other big reason is that it enables you to meet people at a similar stage and potentially with similar interests to you, which is always nice!
  • Try not to fret too much about whether you want the job until/if you’re offered it! This is something I really struggle with but the truth it, you owe it to them to give a good interview, particularly if they are paying for you to come over, but after that, then it is entirely up to you and you can pick and choose. It is you that you have to put first and if that means that after all you don’t want the job, that’s ok!
  • Do your research! It certainly helps if you already have a connection to the place but doing some research on both the department and the people in close proximity; who work on something similar or complimentary to what you are proposing. It helps for this to think outside the box too; I referenced a Prof in Physics even though this was a biology post.
  • Chat to the admin staff, it is usually they who have gone to the effort of timetabling the whole affair and booking rooms for you, so make sure to thank them and also ask what it’s like to work there. They have nothing to gain/lose in this so they will be very honest!

 

During the interview:

 

  • Be friendly! Whatever the outcome of the interview or your decision, these are potential future collaborators and leaving a good impression will mean a lot.
  • Take a moment to respond to questions. A moment considering your response can come across more confident than leaping into an answer before they have finished asking.
  • I was always taught that in a conference presentation, when asked a question, to answer the room rather than just the questioner. Certainly make them your primary contact but being sure to address the room as well. I think this works for interviews too, ensuring to engage the whole panel in your answers, I think this speaks to your communication skills and also just generally keeps everyone together.
  • Name drop to wazoo! Talk about the people in the department or School that you might work with or seek advice from, talk about other people already in your network that might not be in theirs and how you might get them to contribute for seminars etc.
  • Where will you be in 5 years? The dreaded question! Be honest here; in my case I had just submitted my PhD corrections the week before (a point one of the panel chuckled at during the interview…), so I did not have the grandiose expectation that I would be in a faculty position running my own lab in five years time, and I said as much. I think this can quickly be turned into a positive saying that this is an exciting time where you can see what you like and build up skills so that in five years you might have in mind the research themes that you want to develop for when you are going to look for a faculty post.
  • After the interviews there was what I described to myself as an “awkward mingle lunch”, where members of the faculty and candidates had the chance to mingle over muffins. At first I thought this was a terrible idea and was tempted to run away but actually it turned out to be really fun. Everybody was more relaxed and you could get a little insight into the social atmosphere of the place, see if you think you’d be a good fit.

 

Good luck!

Ps. I did get offered the post and decided to take it! 

 

Author:  Dr Deirdre McClean (@deirdremcclean1)

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3 years as a PhD student

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I arrived in Ireland October 2012 with the purpose of undertaking a PhD supervised by Natalie Cooper on Primates evolution. Looking back, the start of the whole endeavour seemed really stressful to me (new country, new customs, new language) and the project just as frightening (what do I do?, where do I start?, will I be able to do it?)… What happened after was way below my expectations: these three years were anything but stressful and frightening!
OK, even though not everything went smoothly and it had to take the best of the personalities (that are thankfully common sights in Trinity College’s Zoology Department) for dealing with some ups and downs, here is my top 5 list of personal thoughts that always improved the two aspects of my PhD: the working aspect (the research) and the “social” aspect (feeling relaxed and enjoying it).

Be ready to change your PhD

As I mentioned in the first line, my PhD was supposed to be on Primates evolution. In the end, the world “Primates” is mentioned only once (and that is, buried in a sentence about several other mammalian orders). Of course, sometimes the PhD is a Long Quiet River if everything goes well and you keep your highest interest in the original topic. However, sometimes it changes completely! And this should never be a problem! The PhD should be allowed to evolve just as much as yourself (or more pragmatically: your field) evolves into these three or four years.

Failure happens to everyone

Another major part about the PhD (and about the scientific endeavour itself!) is that it will fail. More or less often and more or less dramatically in each case but failure should just be part of the process. As a early career researcher, you can learn a lot from the mistakes and the success of others. However, I found that there is nothing much more personally instructing than the trial and error. I already mentioned how my biggest PhD disaster led to my most positive development.

Stay open-minded and curious

Writing the thesis or even just doing the lab/computer work for the PhD can narrow your mind and highly decrease your sanity. I found that the best way to avoid that was to try as much as possible to make the PhD only priority number two and put all the other things (seminars, meeting speakers, chatting/helping colleagues, etc…) before it. It has two advantages for the PhD: (1) you don’t work on it 24/7 and (2) everything you learn outside of it will actually be super useful for the PhD. In the Zoology Derpartment, we were only a couple of people doing macroevolution surrounded by ecologists. Yet, I think my work benefited heavily from the influence from these people.

Don’t rush

One thing I found nice with the PhD is that before you even start – before day one! – you already know the final deadline. OK, at day one, the handing in date seems far away (3 or 4 years away actually!) but that leaves you plenty of time for doing awesome research, writing it down as papers/chapters (and even trying to publish them before the deadline) and going to the pub or to other non-PhD recreational events…

Chat with your colleagues

Finally, I found that I gained so much just by chatting with my colleagues. And by colleagues I mean my fellow PhD students of course but also with the post-docs and the staff. I always found a long term benefit to both PhD aspects, whether it was talking about the latests video games during working time (I’m not only looking at you @yodacomplex) or having heated debates about species selection during coffee time.
I know much of these tips worked for me but might not apply to other people. In the end their is only one ultimate tip: make your PhD a hell of a good time!
Photo Credit: Thomas Guillerme
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Money Walks and Talks in Academia

Buzz_Tweed

As junior academics spend longer in their career, sooner or later, they start to realize that money matters more than anything when it comes to dealing with University Administration. Some will have this formalized in their tenure track agreement, but others will more blindly wander into it as promotion looms, and ask they get involved in developing plans for new hires in their department. Being wiser to this reality earlier on in my career might have helped me make different decisions along the way, or at the very least temper my idealism with a more natural cynicism.

 

For many academics, money (even one’s salary) is a secondary thought to research and teaching.  But obviously, these professional activities require money for them to function and often require substantial amounts for them to be done to a high level. You would be forgiven for thinking that where this money comes from is irrelevant and that its what you do with the money that counts, not just getting it.

 

As part of the economic crash that befell Ireland (and pretty much everywhere) sometime around 2008, the government accelerated is cut-backs to the 3rd level education sector. The latest figures I have heard kicked around my institution is that the government provides directly only about half the amount of money that is required to educate our students. This is an enormous shortfall to make up and doubtless troubles the sleeping patterns of our Provost and his administration greatly. Among the various options to bolster the funds are the usual suspects of international students (though in reality, although their fees are high, the government don’t supplement their place with additional funds, so its not really all that high when the money hits the red line), wealthy donors and of course overheads on research grants.

 

Different countries and institutions administer overheads differently, but generally there is some mechanism by which the university gets a percentage of the grant into a separate account to the research project which they can do as they wish (sometimes with conditions).  In Ireland, these might as much as 30%, but equally could be 0%. These overheads might be split, with some going to the PI that won the grant, some going to support PhD scholarships and some going who knows where in the black hole. Deans like big grants, because they come with big overheads, and this is where the trouble starts.

 

During a meeting to discuss the possible recruitment of a new senior academic in quantitative ecology, I was rebuked for naively pointing out that the person in question would be somewhat immune the current economic as their infrastructure demands were modest.  If you do expensive research, the financial benefits to the institution are larger than if your research involves a few computers for example. Dig up the cricket pitch, knock down the Arts Block and install a particle accelerator and name it after someone wealthy*. This is why disciplines whose research is cheap, and individuals who have low costs, face an uphill battle in gaining attention and reward for their work.

 

Money begets more money too. As well as PIs in receipt of grants receiving a portion of the overheads (not always the case even within my institution), some are then given additional monies from our national funding agency (as is the case for SFI who will give anyone with an Advanced ERC grant moving to Ireland up to €1million to smooth the transition!), but they are also rewarded indirectly with staff appointments in their research area (I suspect mostly as an easy decision that doesn’t need much thought beyond “there’s gold in them there hills”).

 

For my part, the grants I have held to date have not provided overheads of any note and I have benefitted indirectly from the grant successes of others, with my students accessing scholarships, stipend awards and travel expenses (though some of these funds come from philanthropic donations too). The reasons these grants don’t come with overheads are that the funding agencies in question argue that the PhD student fees they pay are there to cover the bench fees and associated costs for the student.

 

The most frustrating part is that all the research and teaching outputs in the world don’t make up for inputs in the form of cold hard euros. A recent internal missive from our institutional Research Office berating us for slipping down the world rankings by a whole 7 places, seemed to forget that many of the members of the academic community who contributed to our top 100 placement through hard-fought teaching and excellent research papers, books and other outputs, did so on a shoestring budget with innovative vim and vigour, in the face of cutbacks to our research, teaching and personal incomes.

 

We should all celebrate with our colleagues when they get the big grants as we all benefit from their success, and we collectively need the money to make the academic world go around. Those who win these grants need to remember that not every can and will be able to land these treasured grants and that they themselves were to some lucky on the day. Those running our institutions** need to remember that the success of any activity will ultimately be valued on its outputs and not who won the most money, even, in the end, university rankings.

 

 

*though I was pleased to read that Trinity recently spurned this approach so as to not turn off the not-quite-so-loaded donors.

 

**Interestingly, our nearest neighbours out at UCD handled their rankings very well, with a balanced and measured message to the community.

 

author: Andrew Jackson, @yodacomplex

Image: Wikicommons

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Advice for new Faculty

hinew

Congratulations – you’ve got your first Faculty position and you’re about to start! So you know you have to put together new teaching modules, get some grants and write some kick-ass papers. But in the midst of the head-down craziness of a new position it’s important to keep your eye on the ball. How do you make sure that in two years time you’ve been doing the right things and can progress at your new institution?

1. Get hold of the promotion form for your new institution, start filling it in and update it every 3 months or so. Do the same with the annual appraisal form, hopefully it’s similar to the promotion form! That way you can start building your portfolio and you don’t forget achievements. It also keeps you focused on the activities that you will be evaluated on. Try to talk to people who have sat on the promotion and progression committees to find out if there are other things you need to be doing.

2. Make active decisions about what you want to do rather than getting given jobs. Suggest to your manager potential service roles that fit with your interests & skills. If you’re asked to do something you’d really like to do but you don’t have time for then say that. “I would really love to do that but I currently have these other service/admin roles that prevent me from taking it on – is there a way of making room in my workload for this new job?”

3. Network within your new institution, you never know who will be able to help you out. It’s often easier to ask someone how a new task is done rather than trying to do it yourself from scratch, find those invaluable people who know the ropes.

4. The first 2 years are really tough no matter how well you do so cut yourself some slack. Most of the best things about being an academic never make it onto the promotion or appraisal portfolio. Count the successes & moments of satisfaction: improvements in your teaching evaluations, seeing a student get a concept due to your explanation, getting the funding to do something you are really passionate about, getting a paper published that you’re super-proud of. Don’t dwell on the missed deadlines (there will be many), rejections (there will be many, many) and frustrations (manyn) along the road.

And if you haven’t yet got that ideal academic position we’re hiring a spatial ecology/environmental biology permanent, fully funded, Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin J https://www.tcd.ie/Zoology/vacanciesindex.php closing on 18 September 2015.

Author

Yvonne Buckley

Photo credit

http://www.weenotions.co.uk/user/products/hinew.jpg

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Summer in the city

summer-cityThe blog is going to take a well earned summer holiday and will start back again in September when hopefully we’ll have a slew of papers and conferences to report on! See you all soon.

Author

Adam Kane, kanead[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

https://musiccourt.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/summer-city.jpg