About The Black Hole
The Black Hole blog focuses on issues affecting early career scientists in Canada.
Topics covered include science policy, science communication, and the education and training of scientists in Canada while also highlighting career opportunities and resources.
The blog is written by a group of early career researchers and led by Dr. David Kent, a Canadian postdoctoral researcher currently at the University of Cambridge.
- Subscribe to this blog by RSS
- Contact Black Hole writers by email
Quarterly summary: Transition success
Quick hit: Beth forwarded something interesting to me in a follow up to my slightly controversial critique of the Three Minute Thesis article – Jorge Cham of PhD Comics fame has just launched a two minute thesis video competition to have your thesis illustrated. An interesting idea for sure and something that should aid in the communication of scientific concepts to lay audiences when complete.
Quarterly summary: Transition success
This quarter was a disruptive but productive one as The Black Hole successfully moved from our old site to being hosted by University Affairs – we are very happy with our new home and colleagues and look forward to engaging more people as the momentum for the site builds. Instead of a summer series like So you want to be a…. and Notches in the STIC, we decided this summer to focus on a resource page which we hope to launch in early autumn to help early-career researchers better navigate through the resources that we’ve spoken about in the past. Stay tuned!
Articles written
Jonathan:
- The research bottleneck – flying blind
- Introducing career streams into academic research
- A call to arms
- Show me the money!
Dave
- Engaging early – changing direction before graduation
- Career streams in academia: Who foots the bill?
- Reality TV invading university – Thumbs down to the three minute thesis
- Networks – the big kind – and how they drive Canadian science
- Our blog for early career scientists – hello to UA readers!
Our other activities
Dave has continued to write for the Stem Cell Network blog (now named Signals), publishing four articles this quarter:
- Pleasantly surprised at World Stem Cells congress
- Strategies to boost regenerative medicine: Growing an extra layer of skin
- View from the floor 5: Pushing the boundaries with technology
- View from the floor 3: Till & McCulloch Meetings
Discussion highlights
- SB identified the Action Canada program as a way for people to obtain policy experience.
- Monica challenged Jonathan on the usefulness of looking at grad student statistics, believing the real problem to be the increasing length of postdoctoral terms.
- A lengthy discussion on the increasing number of PhDs being trained was had following Jonathan’s Introducing career streams into academic research post
- I had some strong disagreement to my critique of the Three Minute Thesis competitions – see here and share your views too!
Popular posts this quarter
- Introducing career streams into academic research (2,333)
- Reality TV invading university – Thumbs down to the three minute thesis (1,753)
- Networks – the big kind – and how they drive Canadian science (956)
- Our blog for early career scientists – hello to UA readers! (702)
- The research bottleneck – flying blind (587)
Comments
Leave a comment
