The Career and Networking Committee Newsletter: 08/06

This year the Protein Society held the 20th Annual Symposium in San Diego and celebrated its Anniversary. The Career and Networking (former Young Protein Scientists) Committee is glad to inform about its part of the activities devoted to the Symposium. The Committee was created 5 years ago to represent the interests of protein scientists at the early stage of their careers. Our main goal is to provide undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral scientists information about current career opportunities and to help them with the job search ( that's for the word Career). We are also aimed at improving the interactions between the protein scientists, making exchange of related information (ideas, data, financial suport opportunities, job chances) fast and efficient (and that's why we're also Networking).

The Committe has organized a number of meeting events during the 20^th Annual Symposium. These included the welcome mixer, NIH/NSF funding workshop and career panel discussion. This year 22 of total 104 young protein scientists who submitted their abstracts for the Symposium were chosen for oral presentations during the main panel sessions. These were: S.M. Pearlman from Stanford University, H. Smallwood from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, M. Jager from University of California, Los Angeles, Y. Li from California Institute of Technology, G. Wu from University of California, San Francisco, J. Hollien, University of California, San Francisco, M. Pucheault from Yale University, K.E. Beatty from California Institute of Technology, S. Lockless from the Rockefeller University, Q. Li from University of Alberta, D. Comoletti from University of California, San Diego, I. Cherny from Tel Aviv University, E. Cohen from the Salk Institute, T. Gidalevitz from Northwestern University, D.S. Daniels from Yale University, S.M. Lippow from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, R.A. Maillard from University of Texas, Galveston, T.C. Scanlon from McGill University, T. Nomura from Hokkaido University, K.K. Lee from the Scripps Research Institute, D. Fowler from the Scripps Research Institute and A. Gitler from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We would like to point out high level of all talks and the great interest from the audience they raised.

The Career Mentoring and Networking Mixer took place on Sunday, August 6. It was a great event: about 100 people came to the mixer to enjoy the informal atmosphere to use a chance to talk to the people of interest, often the future employer. Among those were both industry and academic science representatives. We gratefully thank the Protein Society, EMD Bisciences and Bruker Biospin for the financial support of the Career Mentoring and Networking Mixer.

The Career and Networking mixer.

The NIH/NSF Funding Workshop was held on Monday, August 7 and was aimed to help less experienced researchers to get funding from NIH and NSF. Official representatives of NIH (S.Sechi) and NSF (E.Bell) gave the view from “another side”, which was definetely helpful given the current funding situation. They tried to cover all aspects of the grant application process including potential pitfalls for those who were plannig to apply for their first grant.

On Tuesday, August 8 the Career Panel was organized. Chaired by J. Klein-Seetharaman, the Career Panel was intended to provide an opportunity for meeting attendants to question panel members on career issues. This year L. Hsieh-Wilson, I. Tinoco, C. Goodman and U. Hartl answered many questions from the audience ranging from the choice of Ph.D. program and the supervisor to the planning of all aspects of postdoctoral career. A good part of the discussion was dedicated to the career in industry.

The panelists in the Career Panel. From left to right: Ignacio Tinoco, Berkely Linda Hsieh-Wilson, Caltech Catherine Goodman, Assistant Editor, Nature Chemical Biology Ulrich Hartl, Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry, Martinsried/Munich , Germany Judith Klein-Seetharaman, University of Pittsburgh

The Protein Society and Career and Networking Committee always welcomes new members! Those who believe they can contribute to the activities of the Committee are kindly invited to join us by contacting the Chair, Prof. Judith Klein-Seetharaman (judithks@cs.cmu.edu).

We thank D. Man for the photos