This index page and the articles it pointed to no longer exist on the Science Careers site, because the articles were deemed out of date. For a similar and more recent series on this topic, try the MBA Lessons for Scientists series. We apologize for any inconvenience....
BACK TO THE FEATURE INTRODUCTION Lists of business plan competitions are widely available on the Net. Next Wave selected two that are likely to be useful to our readers. The first, entitled The Best Business Plan Competitions, is a fairly good, but edited, list of links to business plan competitions. The second, compiled by the folks at the famous MIT $50k business plan competition, is a good dea...
When you think of job databases, several dozen come immediately to mind. And Career Owl isn't usually one of them. But it should be--with almost 3000 jobs currently listed and an amazingly rich set of tools and interactive features, this site is fantastic. This job site works like most others--you register your resume, browse job categories, and apply online to jobs that are posted. And, like oth...
Genetics used to be the province of lonely scientists cross-breeding flowers. All that has changed. Promising to cure everything from hereditary diseases to world hunger, companies have begun to flood the market with the products of genetic research. But how should the utopian promises of these products be balanced against public concern over potential dangers? That is the question that genetic p...
The Ottawa Life Sciences Council (OLSC) announced the details of their sixth annual National Conference and Exhibition earlier this week. Entitled "Into the Next Millennium: The Post-Genomics Era," the conference will include, in addition to your typical conference-like speaker sessions, a Biofair career exhibition organized in conjunction with the scientific human resources consulting firm Corte...
The year 2000 Canadian Federal Budget contains a surprising windfall for genomics research in Canada: a cool $160 million. Although the lump-sum check, announced on February 28, is for $35 million more than genomics researchers had requested for the next 3 years, the government did not specify how long the money is supposed to last, leaving administrators in a bit of a quandary. The big winner, G...
The Oceanlink Web site, brought to you by a whole slew of corporate sponsors, offers everything you ever wanted to know about marine biology but were afraid to ask. Oceanlink covers all aspects of marine biology, from the latest research on echinoderms to ecotourism. Next Wave readers will likely find the extensive section on careers in marine biology to be particularly useful. This informative s...
Scholarships Canada is what its name suggests: a scholarship database for Canadians. I'd call it a Canadian Grantsnet, but it's missing all of the useful supplementary information you'd find at grantsnet.org, and, well, a lot of the grants aren't there either. Instead, this is an extremely useful source of information on supplementary cash you may be eligible for. Although Scholarships Canada is ...
Students all across Canada gathered in protest rallies and a symbolic 1-day strike on 2 February. The "Day of Action" protested the decreases in federal transfer payments to the provinces, which have boosted tuition by 126% and have more than tripled the average Canadian student's debt to C$28,000 in 1998. Participants in the Day of Action--organized by the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), ...
Been in academia all your life? Don't know how much you're worth in the real world? Well, in Canada, a new salary survey, commissioned by the Biotechnology Human Resources Council (BHRC), should give you an idea. The survey provides information on salary and benefits for jobs in various segments of the biotechnology industry. But, more importantly, the survey is being used by companies to figure ...
Feeling a little low on the old national pride? Trying to remember the names of just five famous Canadian scientists to win a bet with a colleague at Columbia? Thinking of moving to the States because "you just can't get any recognition here"? Well, click on to the Great Canadian Scientists Web site, and you'll feel a bit better. OK, so you're thinking, this site has nothing to do with my job sea...
"Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch." Although it won't help you with your love life, NSERC's new matchmaking service might help you find the perfect job. Launched last week, The NSERC Concourse is a virtual meeting ground for students, researchers, and companies who are trying to find "research partners." In the crowded space of job posting sites, the NSERC...
Last week, the agency Human Resources and Development Canada released its report of the 1997 National Survey of 1995 Graduates to the public. The survey examines the transition students make when entering the workforce by interviewing postgrad students to determine trends in employment, salaries, and debt. The study reported that employment levels and salaries for the majority of university gradu...
This month, the Expert Panel on the Commercialization of University Research reported its recommendations on research commercialization to the prime minister's Advisory Council on Science and Technology. And in a manner rarely seen in the world of academia or government, the report calls for changes that would amount to a complete overhaul of the research environment at Canadian universities. The...
Well, it's been a good year for science in Canada. And as we sit around the lab, thinking about New Year's resolutions, perhaps now is a good time to reminisce. Probably the biggest news of the year was the evolution of the Medical Research Council Canada (MRC) into a bigger and more powerful Pokemon known as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). After several decades of complaints f...
One thing I noticed missing from my grad school education was some sort of financial plan. It seems that most of us spend a lot of time building our intellectual capital--learning new theories, new techniques, and new ways of thinking--but we spend almost no time building our financial capital. It's almost as if there's a stigma attached to it--you can't possibly be a hard-core scientist if you'r...
This month, the Medical Research Council (MRC) of Canada will be replaced by a new organization, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). In addition to supporting all of the MRC's current commitments, the CIHR has a mandate to improve the international competitiveness of Canada by substantially increasing overall grant funding and by establishing a virtual network of medical researcher...
OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES This series takes concepts learned in an MBA program and adapts them for easy comprehension by scientists without a management background. This is currently the 11th part of the series and the fourth in an introduction to marketing. In our introduction to marketing several weeks ago, we discussed "Promotion Strategy" as one of the four major facets of marketing. We d...
UPDATE: 23 May 2007 The Policy Research Initiative advises that it no longer offers the Canadian Policy Research Awards described in this article, nor does have information on its Web site about these awards. This page is offered for historical interest only. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sick of sitting at the bench, having ...
In the last few months, we've discussed how to save, and we've looked at one way of investing your money-- the stock market. We discussed the basics of how the stock market works, and how to pick a winning stock. We also looked at some other sites on the Internet that can help you understand the stock market better, and help you pick stocks on an ongoing basis. But the stock market is just one wa...
