Quarterly summary: Start-ups vs. starting up a lab… is it the same?
As Dave starts his second parental leave, we look back at what the Black Hole has been writing about for the last six months.
This “quarterly” summary actually spans about six months (sorry to readers who rely on these to catch up!) so bear with us for the long list of posts! We were delighted to welcome back Brianne with a guest post on advocacy efforts by postdoctoral fellows across the world and Jonathan picked up on some nice parallels between his current position (startup biotech CEO) and my current position (starting academic lab) captured nicely in his most recent post “No one is born a CEO, they learn on the job.” As always, we encourage more of our readers to contribute posts on the issues they would like to see discussed on here (or simply email us).
The top three posts for drawing readers’ attention this quarter were on ideas to help improve gender balance in the scientific workforce, the tongue-in-cheek pitch to drop an occasional fake grant into the review mix, and the post announcing Dave’s lab move after 3.5 years at the University of Cambridge.
All of the other posts are summarized below, happy reading!
Guest writer: Brianne Kent
Jonathan
- No one is born a CEO, they learn on the job
- Ageism in biotech
- Ownership structure of intellectual property at universities
- Bridging the gap between public and private research
- The current status of translational research funding in North America
- A brief history of translational research funding in North America
- The opportunity cost to doing scientific research at a university
Dave
- I started my lab 3 years ago and I’m moving already
- A call to male scientists in 2019 – #moreXXscience
- Focusing on the positives: some good ideas for improving science
- Could fake grants help clean up the peer review process?
- Advice on Athena SWAN in Canada: universities need to focus on practical change
- Scientists can’t take risks until they are in their 40s
- Scientists making science better – an eLife experiment
Hope 2019 has started off well for our readers – Dave has just started his second bout of parental leave for child #2 and you can likely expect some posts in that direction over the coming weeks. Some things are easier to manage, but similar challenges remain; and definitely new ones have cropped up this time around. Stay tuned!
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