At the FDA Lab Bench with Postdoctoral Fellow Supriya Ravichandran

News Story By Samreen Jatana

Q&A session with Samreen Jatana and Supriya Ravichandran, current and past UR student in Dr. DeLouise's laboratory. They discuss life at the FDA and how the experience may help to pave the way to a career in industry. 

Fact or Fiction – The “Medical” Student Lounge

News Article by Claire E. McCarthy

During my five years as a PhD student, I have often passed by the “medical” student lounge on my way to classes and seminars. Despite gazing at the large television, comfy-looking couches, and a fun foosball table in the room from the hallway, I never tried to swipe into the lounge. I thought the space was only for medical students. When I asked other Toxicology graduate students for their thoughts on the availability of the lounge, I got varied responses. Shannon Lacy, a second year student, said, “There’s a big sign on the door that says Med students only, so I don’t think graduate students have access.” Yet, Amanda Croasdell, a sixth year student, stated that the lounge is not exclusively for medical students. A first year student, Katrina Jew said that other people told her that the lounge is open to graduate students, “but I don’t know if it really is because the rules of who can or can’t use the room aren’t easily found.” 

Based on all of the rumors and confusion about the “medical” student lounge, I decided to disentangle the truth from the rumors by talking to Linda Lipani, the Registrar in the Office for Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs. 

Abandoning the Search for the “Perfect” Career

News Article By Julianne Feola

In doing some recent “career soul-searching”, I stumbled upon a document that I wrote in my second year of graduate school as part of a pre-doctoral fellowship application to the NIH.  Here, you can find a confident proclamation of my desire to continue on the academic route, first acquiring a postdoctoral fellowship and eventually rising to faculty member at an esteemed university.  While I don’t doubt that this option sounded attractive to me- aspects of scientific research will always excite me- I can say with certainty that my confidence in this decision was not there, and these goals changed almost as quickly as I had written them.

URBEST Mentoring for Faculty: Past and Future Workshops

News Article By Tracey Baas

On January 28, 2016, nineteen UR faculty members gathered at 8:30 am in the Center of Experiential Learning to participate in a URBEST Mentoring Workshop and share breakfast.  Departments in attendance were Microbiology and Immunology, Orthopedics, Neuroscience, Environmental Medicine, Surgery, Pathology, Medicine, Biomedical Engineering, Pediatrics, Pharmacology and Physiology, and the Cardiovascular Research Institute.

Although URBEST is known for its mission to Broaden Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST), which is mandated and funded by NIH, the focus of the Mentoring Workshop was not research or career development. The goal was to foster effective mentor-mentee communication practices that would better support trainee autonomy here at UR. Faculty at all levels - novice to experienced, tenure track and non-tenure track - were invited to fine-tune their mentoring skills in a supportive environment with their colleagues.

The Hybrid Academic

Career Story Blog Post By Helene McMurray, PhD, Director of the Bioinformatics Consulting and Education Service of the Edward G. Miner Library and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Genetics

Mythology offers a wide variety of hybrid creatures comprised of bits of other, more garden variety animals.  From the Griffin, Chimera, and Sphinx to a horde of other creatures from various traditions  to the post-modern Rainbow Unicorn Butterfly Kitten (if you haven’t seen this on social media, run a Google Images search for the name), stories and images of mixed up, muddled up creatures abound.  For the past two years, these conglomerations are the entities with whom I most identify.  During that time I have developed and run the Bioinformatics Consulting and Education Service in Edward G. Miner Library here at URMC, which makes me a Scientist-Consultant-Educator-Librarian.