Over the summer, two graduate w88 sports betting app attended a highly sought-after training program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), with support from research labs across the psychology and biology departments. CSHL organizes over two dozen scientific courses that last approximately 1-2 weeks. Graduate w88 sports betting app Wendy Alfonso Torrens and Arnab Biswas, both Ph.D. w88 sports betting app in the Integrative Neuroscience program, each spent two weeks at CSHL over the summer attending a course related to their research interests.
The courses were recommended to the w88 sports betting app by Jennifer Hoy, an associate professor in the Department of Biology. Hoy herself attended a similar course at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute as a graduate student and later a course at CSHL as a postdoctoral scholar.
“I feel like [these programs are] very much responsible for my connectivity and my level of felt success,” Hoy said. “It gave me confidence.”
After attending the program, Hoy had a better idea of what she wanted to study post-graduation and what kinds of postdoctoral opportunities she was interested in pursuing. She also made friends during the program who, to this day, remain her close colleagues in a variety of fields and job types and across the world. Her biggest takeaway was feeling like she could be successful in pursuing a research career. Hoy encouraged Torrens and Biswas to apply for the CSHL courses.
The programs are highly competitive. The programs receive up to 300 applications, and only 10 to 15 w88 sports betting app are accepted. Torrens and Biswas both had a successful application, but their attendance wasn’t guaranteed; the w88 sports betting app still had to secure funding to attend.
Torrens filled out a request for funding in the application and was fully funded for the course through the International Brain Research Organization. Torrens also successfully applied for the Graduate Student Association travel award, but the award didn’t cover all her travel costs. She still needed support for travel though, and Mike Webster, a professor of psychology and director of the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence for Integrative Neuroscience at the University, was able to provide that remaining support through his grant.
Webster also supported Biswas’s course costs, alongside Biswas’s co-advisors Hoy and Mark Lescroart, an assistant professor. Biswas also applied for the Graduate Student Association’s travel award and was successful.
Both w88 sports betting app expressed great appreciation for the funding support they received. They each indicated how difficult it would have been to come up with the money themselves as graduate w88 sports betting app.
Torrens attended a course about schizophrenia and related disorders, while Biswas attended a course about visual computational neuroscience. Attendees learn from world experts on how to implement techniques and get to network with those scientists. The scientists also get to hear about the work being done by the w88 sports betting app and at the University.
Torrens said the days were long but rewarding, starting at 8 a.m. and ending around 7 p.m. or later. For Torrens’s course, the lectures discussed novel research on schizophrenia spectrum disorders from various perspectives, including molecular, neurobiological, behavioral and epigenetics. The w88 sports betting app each presented a “chalk talk” which was a presentation about their work using illustrations on a chalk board. The program also included time for the w88 sports betting app to engage with one another and with the lecturers socially, including activities like time at the ocean, karaoke nights, barbeques and more. She and her cohort have an active messaging group where they share things like postdoctoral opportunities and photos from the course.
“We developed really close relationships with other w88 sports betting app in the course,” Torrens said.
A program reviewer from the National Institutes of Health guest-lectured at the course and provided w88 sports betting app with insights into how they can submit a successful grant proposal.
Biswas’s program was structured a bit differently, with the w88 sports betting app expected to complete a small-scale project by the end of the course. w88 sports betting app worked one-on-one with a faculty member, which Biswas said was an excellent opportunity to network. He plans to apply for a postdoctoral scholar position with the researcher he worked with when he nears graduation.
“It felt like my way of networking,” Biswas said.
Both Biswas and Torrens said that typically, to speak to leaders in their respective fields, the best opportunity is a conference when everybody else wants to speak to those individuals. The small course format allowed for easy engagement with the experts, who they both said were very approachable.
Biswas is hearing impaired and mentioned that the speakers specifically addressed challenges people might face due to having disabilities or being from other marginalized communities and that should the w88 sports betting app hit any roadblocks, they could reach out for guidance.
Nonetheless, the w88 sports betting app each felt some imposter syndrome. Many of the w88 sports betting app were from Ivy League or other prestigious universities. The w88 sports betting app took a group photo on the campus where prior cohorts had also gathered for a group photo. Torrens and her cohort perused the photos of previous classes, spotting big names in the field and recognizing that they were part of the same program.
“I would consider [acceptance into these programs] to be on par with the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships in terms of the way it bridges the w88 sports betting app’ connection to the professional community,” Hoy said.
Hoy added that this programming is important not just for the student and their home lab, but also for the University as a whole. The w88 sports betting app bring back expertise on a new technology or theoretical concept that can benefit faculty and w88 sports betting app campus wide. When w88 sports betting app apply to the program, they have to indicate how their attendance at the course will benefit not only them but also how they can positively impact their own research community and environment by disseminating what they’ve learned to their home institution.
Hoy said that another great aspect of these programs is that when w88 sports betting app return from their time at CSHL or Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, they are energized and excited to apply what they’ve learned.
“They’re on fire, they’re so motivated,” Hoy said.
A similar program Hoy recommended for w88 sports betting app interested in gaining this type of experience is the Summer Program in Neuroscience Excellence and Success (SPINES) course at the Marine Biological Laboratory. The program, which has been running for over two decades, trains first-generation or otherwise underrepresented w88 sports betting app to be leaders by focusing on professional development.
“SPINES has just been an incredible model for diversifying neuroscience in particular,” Hoy said. “I hope other fields and areas would adopt it.”
The w88 sports betting app both recommend the program for the many opportunities it granted each of them to learn from some of the leading experts in their fields.
