2017 Future of Research Symposium

As stated on their website, “Future of Research, a nationwide grassroots advocacy group comprised of Early Career Researchers (ECRs) including graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, industry scientists and junior faculty is hosting a 1-and-a-half day symposium focused on training ECRs to develop skills to self-advocate for their training and career development needs.  The goal of this symposium is to promote the inclusion of early career scientists in leadership positions to ensure their representation during decision-making conversations that affect the future of the scientific enterprise.” 

We were honored to be invited to attend the 2017 Future of Research Symposium that took place in Boston. 

Some notes: 

Keynote by Kenneth Gibbs

            Talked about his journey in science from the bench as an immunologist to a “policy scientist” which he is now at the NIH as program director. He showed data on several of his studies that he has published in looking at diversity in science. He is very interested in how trainees make career choices to pursue post PhDs paths (also paths is better than pipeline). We asked him about what he thinks success in science means. He said: “success in science is about making the world more just. Science suffers when we don’t include everyone. It was captured in this tweet by Jessica Polka: