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Awards, News

Writing competition for PhDs & postdocs

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In preparation of our upcoming 70th anniversary to be celebrated at the special Spring Meeting in Warwick (April 15th-18th 2018), the BSDB announces a writing competition for its graduate student and postdoc members. We are curious to hear about your thoughts (in not more than 500 words) on one of the following topics:

  • The future of Developmental Biology
  • What Developmental Biology has contributed to society
  • The experiment/paper in Developmental Biology that most inspired you

Further details of the competition will be formally announced shortly, but we thought it might help if we give you some head-start. The deadline will be Sunday, 4th of March 2018, and the winner is going to be announced at the Spring Meeting. The first prize is a free trip to and attendance of the 77th Annual Society of Developmental Biology meeting in Portland, Oregon, USA.

If you have any questions or would like to submit your essays, please contact Alex at students@bsdb.org or Michelle at postdocs@bsdb.org.

News, Opportunities

New BSDB website for junior members providing career advice

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If you are a junior BSDB member, please see our separate website providing support for academic and non-academic careers, clearly illustrating why the BSDB is such a great society!

The website was initiated by our postdoc representative Michelle Ware (group of Jenny Morton in Cambridge; 2015-18) and PhD representative Alexandra Ashcroft (group of Anne Ferguson-Smith in Cambridge; 2015-18) on the basis of  feedback obtained via the 2015 survey of student and postdoc BSDB members. To make sure that the page continues to serve your needs and expectations, please don’t hesitate to send in your ideas, corrections and feedback. Simply write to students@bsdb.org or postdocs@bsdb.org.

Brief summary of the BSDB PhD/postdoc site:

  • Advice for a successful academic career
    • Funding lists for postdoctoral research, starting your own group or PhD studentships
    • Eminent developmental biologists are sharing their Career stories to elucidate the rationale behind their decisions
    • Society members provide snapshot Timelines to demonstrate the multitudes of routes to running your own group.  These lists are unique in that successful members of our society have offered themselves up as “advisors” to the community. They will answer questions about the process of a given application.
    • Our Toolkit page (under construction) will highlight the academic skills uniquely gained in Developmental Biology.
  • Advice for those looking to leave academia
    • Developmental Biologists who left the field share their Career stories to show the breadth of what’s possible, and how to get there
    • Our Toolkit page (under construction) will highlight the transferable skills uniquely gained in Developmental Biology
  • CV Boosters page (under construction)
    • will offer advice on Consulting, Entrepreneurship, Public Engagement, Science communication and Science Policy
  • Events
    • alerts to our upcoming career events and looks back at past events we organised

Why not just visit our PhD/postdoc website and see for yourself?

Awards

Christiana Ruhrberg, winner of the BSDB Cheryll Tickle Medal 2018

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In 2016, the BSDB introduced the Cheryll Tickle Medal, which is being awarded annually to a mid-career, female scientist for her outstanding achievements in the field of Developmental Biology. The BSDB is proud to announce the 2018 awardee Christiana Ruhrberg. Christiana is Professor at University College London’s Institute of Ophthalmology. Her studies are centred around the links between vascular and neuronal development, with particular focus on the roles of VEGF and SEMA3A signalling and a long-term view towards identifying molecular targets for therapeutic intervention in vascular disease. If you would like to read more about Christiana, please visit this blog post. The medal will be presented at next year’s BSDB Spring Meeting where Christiana will give the Cheryll Tickle Award Lecture.

News, Opportunities

Please, advocate Developmental Biology!

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To promote Developmental Biology and bring across the importance of fundamental research in this field, we all should have our elevator pitches ready at all times – whenever there is an opportunity to engage with audiences about our discipline – be it with the public, students, fellow scientists or policy makers. We made a first attempt at providing a concise rationale and ideas that can be woven into such conversations (see our “Advocacy” tab).
The arguments presented can and must still be improved and complemented. Therefore, we would like to invite you to send in your thoughts and ideas, potential corrections, suggestions for improvement, additions, new arguments and/or potential links to supporting resources – all with the aim of further strengthening the message that we need to bring across (please, send to Andreas.Prokop@manchester.ac.uk). In particular those working in evo-devo or plant development, please come forward and make your contributions by helping us explain the importance of your subjects and extend this resource for the benefit of all.
If you would like to use some of the ideas currently presented, please download PowerPoint slides with the advocacy information here. If you are already active in science communication or plan to do so, please, also have a look at our public engagement outreach collection which can be found under our “Outreach” tab, and have a look at the special issue on science communication in “Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology” (LINK).