Tackling the “mega-lab” problem.

Your teams should consist of people that you trust implicitly, that will work hard on whatever it is that you’re trying to do and will do it for free.

Get ’em while they’re young, says David Kent.

When bringing your discovery to market, make sure you construct an investment case, resolve your supply chain and plan your approach.

UBC dataset on PhD outcomes holds key for prospective graduate students to make an informed choice about obtaining PhD training.

A guest post from Dr. Kellie Machlus, who asks the question: what processes can we set in place to guard against implicit bias and increase diversity in our ranks?

“I felt a bit like a new animal at the zoo, people were listening because they were curious about me in the way they would be about a rare creature,” says David Kent.

We at The Black Hole have serious concerns about the impact such drastic cuts to the NIH would have on basic research, and the effect it will have on Canadian researchers.

It is time we stopped investing in MD/PhDs as if they were a special class of worker, entitled to more than someone with “just a PhD.”

You need to recognize a problem by correctly identifying your customer and then refine your solution into a value proposition.

They lead to more stability and may force early career scientists to stop waiting to make that next “substantial” contribution.

The following is an edited transcript from a talk I gave at the medical device development course, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston, MA) on May 12, 2016. Due to length, I have broken the talk up into seven parts: Part 1: Why do this? Part 2: What you need to do before you start Part 3: Identifying […]

In 2015, even before I took up my official job as a group leader here in Cambridge, I was in my future director’s office and he asked if I would be able to act as the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute’s public engagement champion. He thought it would be a good fit with the sort of […]

Is there an important issue you feel the Black Hole hasn’t covered? Why not write a guest post!

The following is a transcript from I talk I gave at the Mentor Celebration Event, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (Boston, MA) on May 23, 2016. Due to length, I have broken the talk up into three parts: Part 1: Academe and industry are not your only career choices as a life sciences scholar Part 2: […]

Go get ’em Canada!

The following is an excerpt from a talk I gave at the Mentor Celebration Event at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA on May 23, 2016. Due to length, I have broken it up into three parts. What follows is the second part. In the first part, I addressed career options in academe when […]

Last week, the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (CAPS) released its most recent survey of over 2,000 postdoctoral fellows across Canada. It is the third such survey (the others were 2009 and 2013) and offers the first robust longitudinal data set to help us understand the core issues facing the most uncertain and precarious phases […]

The following is an excerpt from a talk I gave at the Mentor Celebration Event at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA on May 23, 2016. Due to length, I have broken it up into three parts. What follows is the first part: Part 1: Training, Life sciences careers, and academics PhD and postdoctoral […]

This quarter, although we didn’t really plan a theme prospectively, the majority of our posts have focused on the critical decision making process of early career researchers at the end of their training or the beginning of their independence. Jonathan has collated a particularly insightful series of stories from colleagues of his about the varied […]