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Community college day at the NIH

If all the information you had about scientific careers came from newspapers or TV, it would be easy to think that everyone who works in life sciences / biotechnology is either a Ph.D. scientist, post-doc, or graduate student.  In reality, the life sciences are more like an iceberg.  The public sees the people at the top, with advanced degrees, while the many people who have bachelors or associates degrees are hidden from view. ... Read more

Mining the job search sites for life science positions

Disclaimers - just so you know...

  • This information is cross-posted at www.bio-link.org
  • All the data and graphs in this post were obtained from Simplyhired.com. 
  • I do not have any kind of commercial affiliation with this company I found their site via GenomeWeb.


Having worked around biotechnology for several years, I thought I was pretty familiar with biotech job ... Read more

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From science research to science teaching: how to pay for a change

When I was a post-doc, I spent a few months seriously thinking about changing careers and teaching high school. I might have followed through on that plan, too, but I didn't know how to pay for it. Today, if you have a background in science, technology, math, or engineering, you can retrain to become a teacher and the National Science Foundation will help. The Robert Noyce scholarship program has funds to help ease that transition to the classroom. From the NSF web site:
The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program seeks to encourage talented science, technology, ... Read more
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Digital biologists, bioinformaticists, and computational biologists: more thoughts on the question of names

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet" - Juliet, from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare I realized from the comments on my previous post and from Mike's post that more explanations were in order. It seems we have two topics - why do we need a new name at all? and why the current names (biologist, computational biologist, bioinformatician, etc ... Read more
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A biologist by yet another name

What do you call a biologist who uses bioinformatics tools to do research, but doesn't program? You don't know? Neither does anyone else. The names we use People who practice biology are known by many names, so many, that the number of names almost reflects the diversity of biology itself. Sometimes we describe biologists by the subject they study. Thus, we have biologists from anatomists to zoologists, and everything in between: addiction researchers ... Read more
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Magpie day #1: interesting links to science careers

I've just returned from two conferences that focused on educating students for careers in science and technology and what do I find here at the home fort? There's Chad writing a very nice series on science careers!

I was a little puzzled by PNAS acryonym in his titles since to me, PNAS stands for "Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists" and is a high impact scientific journal. But then I realized that Chad is a physicist and he might not know this. It's quite possible that PNAS isn't as big in the physics community as it is in biology.

Anyway, this is a very nice ... Read more

On committing an unnatural act

A friend of mine; serial entrepreneur, and former president of Genetic Systems; Joe Ashley, told me once that starting a business is an unnatural act.

Now that I've done it, I agree. Even with my multiple back-up plans, possible grants, and part-time activities, my stomach still hurts and my mind is racing. My new company has "spun out" of another. Spinning out of control until you fall down from exhaustion. It's a great metaphor all right.

Sure, there's excitement and adventure. I love my new shiny business cards and my new shiny web site! It's fun ... Read more

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A fantastic book for anyone who teaches or works in science

My husband brought this fantastic book home from the ASHG* that I think many of you will find interesting. The book is: Making the Right Moves A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty, published in 2006 by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. You can download the book for free at the HHMI site and there's even a video of Tom Cech. In fact, this book has such great information, that if it weren't for the interesting discussions in the comment ... Read more
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Handling research animals: taking courses and learning how to be kind

The first lab mouse I touched had soft white fur and a light pink tail. It looked cute enough to snuggle and take home as a pet and I was smitten. I slipped my hand into the cage, thinking the mouse would respond like my pet gerbils or my brother's pet rat. As my hand closed around its belly, that sweet little mouse sunk its teeth deep in my thumb. I screamed and shook my hand, smashing the mouse on the cement floor and killing it in an instant. It's been many years now since I've been doing anything with mice or rats. There's much more oversight these days, as DrugMonkey ... Read more
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I pick myself up, dust myself off, and I

start all over again. MDRNA Inc., a Puget Sound area company formerly known as Nastech, announced on Monday that they'd be laying off 23 people including their president and chief business officer. This might not sound like a lot, but according to Joseph Tartakoff, from the Seattle PI, this brings the total number of layoffs up to 145 since November. These events present a challenge to those of us who teach in biotech programs or biotech-related fields. Nastech, the predecessor to MDRNA had been around for ... Read more
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