The following is a condensed version of a Masterclass I recently presented for the International Mentoring Foundation for the Advancement of Higher Education (IMFAHE). The video of the full class is available here. As regular readers may remember, I’m an academic turned serial biotech entrepreneur. I stepped back from active engagement in my first company,...

Continue reading

A report recently published by Shift Insight, UK Reproducibility Network & Vitae, provides an overview of the types of various research culture initiatives throughout the U.K. and also sets out a framework for understanding these initiatives as collective groups of activities. There is certainly a lot going on in the name of “research culture change” with activities aimed...

Continue reading

As someone who stepped into the role of a group leader half a year ago, I have just embarked on an exciting journey to set up a new laboratory at University College London, U.K. My goal, as part of my New Year’s resolution, is to share some updates about the lab’s growth and some of...

Continue reading

Grant writing is a fundamental skill for academics, acting as the lifeline to pursue their research endeavours. Creating a compelling grant proposal is an intellectual challenge. It demands not just a clear articulation of your research ideas, aims and approaches but also needs to adhere to stringent technical guidelines. And don’t forget the detailed budgeting...

Continue reading

In recent years, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) have become buzzwords in the world of research, with funding agencies and institutions making efforts to promote these core values. While there has been growing awareness of the importance of EDI in research, we still have a long way to go. The current system does not work...

Continue reading

We are really excited to have Sarah Ruediger join the regular Black Hole crew. Sarah is a postdoctoral fellow who is transitioning to a group leader position at University College London this coming June.  She is an outstanding neuroscientist (with first author papers in Nature, Nature Neuroscience and eLife) with a long list of fellowships and scholarships who has undertaken...

Continue reading

This is a guest post from Hongyu Zhang. Mr. Zhang is a doctoral candidate in the department of geography at McGill University. He holds an MSc in geography from Western University and a BES in geomatics from the University of Waterloo. Before joining the Platial Analysis Lab, he was an engineering support specialist at Geotab. His...

Continue reading

This is a guest post from Sarah Ruediger. Dr. Ruediger is currently completing her postdoctoral research at the University of California San Francisco and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She studied molecular biology at the University of Basel in Switzerland, and completed her doctoral training at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research. Her research...

Continue reading

Earlier this month, I was pleased to see a paper published in PLoS Biology written by a large group of international researchers in the early stages of their careers about how we can improve research culture and practice. While I was one of the participants/authors, the real credit for driving the project goes to Brianne...

Continue reading

Our long-term readers will have noticed that the frequency of column entries here on The Black Hole has dropped in recent months. We’d love to imagine that the number of issues facing early career researchers has also dropped, but it seems that it is a lack of time rather than a lack of content driving the...

Continue reading