Although the percentage of minorities in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has traditionally been small, many institutions are making a serious effort to change that. One recent gathering brought together approximately 40 underrepresented minority graduate students from all over the country for the purpose of preparing them for postdoctoral education. Filling ...
Editor's note: MiSciNet editor Robin Arnette gives her first-person and first-time impressions of this year's annual meeting of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). Next week, MiSciNet will feature another report from a SACNAS conference participant. Flying over the endless red earth toward Albuquerque International Sunport, I can't help but think abou...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) started the Minority Graduate Education (MGE) Program in 1998, but later renamed it Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP). Its purpose was twofold: to develop and implement innovative models for recruiting, mentoring, and retaining minority students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) doctoral programs, and to d...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX Those of us who spend our workday in front of a computer screen may sometimes wish we could escape our familiar surroundings and travel the globe, looking for adventure. Like Indiana Jones, we'd encounter exotic locations, lost cities, and strange new habitats. Ecologist Emilio Bruna, (pictured left) who knows what it's like to work in one of these environments, gives Sc...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX Is specialized training in science writing required to be successful in the field? Some of the country's top science writers have no training in journalism and would probably answer "no." Yet, even if a science writing degree isn't absolutely necessary for a science writing career, it does make entering the field a whole lot easier. Jennifer Frazer, an environment report...
If you haven't taken the time to study the issue, you might believe that research is research, regardless of where it is done. Yet each institutional setting--university, government, or industry--has its own special skill set and its own particular ways of doing science. Understanding those ways, and the requirements for each work environment, is essential to having a successful and fulfilling ca...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX " You could literally walk into entire villages that would be permeated with the smell of death just because of the extent of the destruction," says David Bradt (pictured left), a disaster epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, recalling his visit to Gujarat, India, where in 2001 an earthquake killed thousands. But he mi...
Scientists of color continue to make significant contributions to America's quest for knowledge. One case in point is Stephanie Johnson (pictured left), a postdoctoral fellow at the Joseph and Kathleen Bryan Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Johnson's commitment to studying neurological and memory disorders will further improve our ef...
NEXT WAVE FEATURE, MD/PHD CAREERS Dr. Shahidul Islam (pictured left) likes doing research just as much as he likes taking care of patients. This Bangladeshi native came to the United States in the fall of 1993 to attend graduate school in Ohio, and since then has lived the American dream. Although he wears the hats of physician and researcher, he still finds the time to take part in his favorite ...
When Carol Plautz (formerly Carol Zygar) was nearing the end of her doctoral studies in biology at the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, she wrote an article for Science's Next Wave that detailed the ways that graduate students can pay for their education. Because she was a Next Wave reader herself, Zygar knew that many young scientists would use that information to further their c...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX Clinical drug evaluation is one of the many important jobs in industry. Those interested in a career in pharmaceutical clinical testing should have a strong science background and the ability to work within a team. These scientists often have research experience in academia and government but choose to use their skills to ensure that consumer medicines adhere to strict s...
MiSciNet's campus representatives are the network's eyes and ears on campus. They do their part in expanding the pool from which tomorrow's minority scientists are drawn by helping their schoolmates take advantage of the resources available on the site. Students from traditionally underrepresented minority groups -- African-American, Native American, and Hispanic/Latino -- often have to deal with...
How many of us grew up watching I Dream of Jeannie or Star Trek and wondered what it would be like to be involved in the space program? Well, Major Nelson and Captain Kirk can't tell us how it feels to be a senior official at NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center ( KSC), but Woodrow Whitlow Jr. certainly can. Whitlow (pictured left) was named deputy director of KSC in September 2003; he gives MiSci...
If you are interested in a career in research, getting involved in a research program over the summer is one of the best ways to truly get a taste of life at the bench, but depending on your field of study, your "bench" may be the dense foliage of the Amazon jungle (see " For the Love of Nature" by Dr. Emilio Bruna). Regardless of the discipline, students of all ages are enriched by the experienc...
During the past 5000 years mankind's scientific discoveries have ushered us into various ages of technological advancement. But, how many of us actually think of women playing a major role in these developments? Yes, we've all heard of Marie Curie's exploits with radioactivity (1890) and Rosalind Franklin's indispensable x-ray crystallography work toward the discovery of the DNA double-helix (195...
BACK TO THE FEATURE INDEX The Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute located in Melbourne, Australia, is a multidisciplinary facility that fuses traditional life sciences research such as biology, chemistry, and genetics with some of the latest technologies including nanotechnology, systems biology, and bioinformatics. This special blend is applied to drug discovery, vaccine developm...
