This week we present two stories about people finding strength in their own voice.
Part 1: A parent-teacher conference leads Eugenia Duodu to question whether she can be a scientist.
Part 2: At 13 years old Misha Gajewski has to undergo a jaw surgery to fix a face she is just getting used to.
Eugenia Duodu is the Toronto-based CEO of Visions of Science, which inspires kids from low-income and marginalized communities to pursue careers in STEM. As a youth born and raised in a low-income community, she strives to maintain a strong connection to her local and global community by being a mentor and advocate. Her goal is to help make a long-lasting positive impact in communities through STEM engagement and in-turn allow youth to unlock their potential. Eugenia holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Toronto.
Misha is a freelance journalist whose work has been featured on Vice, BBC and CTV News, among others. She is also a journalism Professor at Seneca College and a scriptwriter for the popular Youtube channel SciShow. Misha has a degree in business and psychology from Western University and a Masters in science journalism from City University London. She also has a cat named Satan and when she’s not writing in her pyjamas she can be found exploring the world or repurposing old furniture. She is @mishagajewski
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Your brain creates your mind which creates your experience. It determines your happiness levels and your ability to make new discoveries. But how well do you understand your brain? How well do you take care of your brain? Author and engineer Sean Webb joined the show to talk about the benefits of understanding how your mental states are created and how you can train your brain to improve your cognitive processes through practices like meditation. Sean makes a convincing argument that meditation is a practice you should start today.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Christine Ogilvie Hendren and Matt Hotze, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
What in the world is a Fibonacci Sequence? Where in the world can you spot one in the wild? And why in the world is that BEE adding and subtracting at the lightening speed of a child?! Join Guy Raz and Mindy as they explore the latest scientific buzz on bees and their newly discovered ability to do…MATH! It’s the Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and Wow in the world of BEE BRAINS!
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a crystal ball that could reveal your grad-school future?
You might look forward to see if that next experiment will work out, or if your research will eventually make the cover of Nature.
What you should do with the power of foresight is to take a deep look at the quality of mentorship you’ll receive over the next few years.
It’s no secret that good research advisors can be tough to find. Most are passable – you’ll learn what you need to learn and graduate on time – and a few are stellar, elevating your research beyond what you thought was possible.
But of course, lurking somewhere at every institution, are a handful of awful, terrible, no good, very bad PIs. These are the people you must avoid at all costs, lest they destroy both your confidence and your career plan.
Of course, no one has a crystal ball, and sometimes our choice of a research mentor doesn’t pan out. But there’s a website hoping to change that.
Hindsight: 20/20
Gadareth Higgs was ready for graduate school. His grades were good, he had some research experience, and he had been accepted to one of the most competitive programs in the US.
“I just assumed we would have good mentors. That was not the case,” he recalls.
In his third year, Gadareth would be forced to change labs, and his new PI was “not big on mentorship.”
Gadarath’s qualifying exam didn’t go well, and there were signs that the PI was working against him behind the scenes. Ultimately, he had to leave the program.
Then he got an idea: why not make a website where students and postdocs can score their PI on the factors that matter, so that other students can make an informed decision before committing to a lab?
Enter GradPI.com, which is something like RateMyProfessor.com for graduate students. This week, we talk with Gadareth Higgs and Paola Figueroa-Delgado to find out more about the purpose and people behind the website.
At its core, GradPI allows students to score their advisors on five factors called the “SMART” scale.
S stands for Standing. Reputation is important because your advisor will serve as the springboard for whatever you do next.M stands for Mentorship. It is important to have an advisor who can serve as a scientific role model, even if not as a career or life guide.A stands for Autonomy. The degree of independence desired by students is highly variable; only you know what’s best for you.R stands for Resources. Money talks. End of story.T stands for Tact. This is essentially a personality score. But it takes into consideration how well the advisor conveys feedback, and fosters a welcoming environment for students of different cultures, genders, races, religions, and sexual orientations.
It’s important to note that low-scores in a certain category may not be a bad thing for every student. Paola described how a prospective mentee might use the ratings to find a good fit.
“Everyone has different kinds of mentorship preferences. You can provide comments and feedback on these different categories and see why for you it’s important to have autonomy. So [an advisor] with a low autonomy score is not good for you,” she explained.
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In this episode Pearl Osirikeshares her story and some of the most important lessons she has learned during her PhD so far. Pearl is a biochemist with an interest in drug discovery and infectious diseases. She holds a first-class degree and a masters degree from the University of Benin, Nigeria, where she also serves as an Assistant Lecturer. Currently, she is a second year PhD student of Molecular and Cell Biology of Infectious Diseases at the West African Centre for Cell Biology and Infectious Pathogens at the University of Ghana.
Pearl is passionate about teaching and research and she is excited to share her story to motivate and inspire others.
To learn more about Pearl’s story, please listen to this episode. If you also have a story to be told or if you know someone, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tina Persson, Michele Manzo, Maria Sjogren, Paulius Mikulskis, Johanna Have, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
Dr Pinja Haikka, a theoretical physicist and (at the time of recording) the head of outreach at ScienceatHome
Steven Gray, CEO of Earthwatch (Europe & Middle East), on effecting change in corporates make policies in light of new climate change data.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Science: Disrupt, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
This week on UnDisciplined, we’re talking about movement. Our first guest is a scientist whose research is helping us understand the ways the world’s largest animal moves its body. Our second guest is a researcher whose recent studies uncover the ways animals are moved as part of complex global trafficking networks. Frank Fish is a professor of biology and the head of the Liquid Life Lab at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. Emily Miller works at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California,
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Utah Public Radio, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
Is it worth the time and effort to apply for grants when only a small percentage are funded? A recent paper by Kevin Gross and Carl Bergstrom (2019) suggests grant competitions in their corrent form are not worth it. We weigh in on our thoughts about the paper as well as grant funding, in general. We also briefly talk about the aspect of our jobs that motivate us to keep working. Spoiler alert: it is not applying for grants.
Contest models highlight inherent inefficiencies of scientific funding competitions – Gross & Bergstrom, 2019 — “We find that the effort researchers waste in writing proposals may be comparable to the total scientific value of the research that the funding supports, especially when only a few proposals can be funded. Moreover, when professional pressures motivate investigators to seek funding for reasons that extend beyond the value of the proposed science (e.g., promotion, prestige), the entire program can actually hamper scientific progress when the number of awards is small.”
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Andrew Smith, Twila Wingrove, Andrew Monroe, and Chris Holden, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
