Category: blog
-
What do we look for in new lab members? Our lab’s approach to evaluating job applications and interviews
As a young scientist I spent a lot of time applying to jobs and interviewing. For me the most frustrating part was the lack of transparency and feedback — written job criteria were usually vague, and afterward I received little to no feedback on why I didn’t get the job. Now that I am on…
-
Thoughts on the state of gut microbiome research
I recently attended a conference on the gut microbiome and health (mostly basic scientists, a few clinicians), and it left me thinking about the general state of the field right now in terms of what most people are doing, as well as what most people are not doing. The vast majority of studies discussed in…
-
Science depends on yet another lone genius in Interstellar
The movie Interstellar was buzzy in the science media when it came out in 2014, both because it prominently featured exotic astrophysical phenomena (time dilation, black holes, worm holes, and so forth) and because it had the involvement of a famous physicist, Kip Thorne, to vouch for its credibility. After having meant to watch it…
-
The possible and the actual in biology
I recently read the book The Possible and the Actual by François Jacob, who is famous for winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on transcription and gene regulation. The book is based on a series of lectures he gave at the University of Washington later in his career. I heard…