Special Interest Opening Day Workshops: Monday, July 28
1. Early Career Researcher Workshops
2. US Under-Represented Minority Workshops
3. Arabidopsis Information Portal Developer and User Workshop
New Career Development Workshops for ICAR 2014
Date: Monday afternoon, July 28, ICAR opening day (see program for timing)
NAASC is committed to increasing participation at the ICAR by early-career (EC) researchers and US under-represented minorities (URM) and faculty from minority-serving institutions. We have initiated two new programs for 2014 specifically to address key concerns of these groups and wrote explanation about it in narrative essay https://best-writing-service.com/personal-narrative-essay as well as about the overall process.
1. Early Career Researcher workshops: We define Early Career Researchers (ECR) into two subgroups: ECR1 (graduate students and early postdocs) and ECR2 (late postdocs and early faculty.)
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Both ECR1s and ECR2s will benefit from a joint session that targets essential skills like networking within the community, communicating science to the public and time management. Additional focused sessions will be held for the subgroups: ECR1 group for example, career options in science and presenting themselves and their work well; and ECR2 group, for example, how to get an independent research position and thrive in it, what mentoring and management techniques are effective, and how to find funding in challenging times.
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Program Development: The actual program of the ECR workshops will be developed based on feedback from interested registrants. Participants will be recruited via the registration form; those that indicate an interest in any EC program will be contacted by email to complete a brief online survey with a series of questions about their career stage and concerns, and they will be asked whether they would like their names and email addresses to be available to other ECRs before the meeting to establish cohorts.
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Priority will be given to ECRs that indicate interest via the registration form and brief survey. We expect to accommodate up to 100 attendees.
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Eligibility: open to interested early-career participants from all countries
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Date: Monday, July 28; optional informal networking lunch at 1:15 pm (cafeteria, self-pay); workshops expected to run 3-5 pm followed by informal networking 5-6 pm prior to the opening sessions.
2. US Under-Represented Minority (URM) workshops: NAASC recently formed a Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) to focus on relevant issues to under-represented minority scientists and faculty at minority-serving institutions in the US, such as a lack of support networks for minority PIs, a leaky pipeline of minority talent and a lack of URM-directed initiatives. For ICAR 2014, our new program has these objectives: to (1) identify networking contacts from within the Arabidopsis community (2) to develop a strong cohort and facilitate of communication amongst the cohort (3) hold workshops dedicated to the experience of science from the perspective of three URM scientists at various career levels and (4) gain experience with essential skills including career options in science, funding opportunities and presenting themselves and their work well, as well as workshops from successful pre-tenure and established scientists as described in the Early Career Researcher workshops above.
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US URMs and faculty at minority-serving institutions at all career stages will benefit from the URM workshop program, which will include an overlapping session with the ECR participants (above.) Additional focused sessions will be held for subgroups based on career stage, separate from ECRs.
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We expect to fund 10 US URMs/faculty at MSIs to attend ICAR. Awardees selected by competitive application will be required to attend the URM workshop, beginning with a networking lunch on Monday July 28. Please see Conference Funding page for more information; Deadline to apply: April 7.
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Program Development: The actual program of the URM workshops will be developed based on survey as part of the URM funding application AND feedback from interested attendees. Participants will be recruited via the registration form; those that indicate an interest in the URM program will be contacted to complete a brief online survey and they will be asked whether they would like their names and email addresses to be available to other URMs before the meeting to establish cohorts.
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The workshops are required for any minority awardees and will be open to others (including interested non-minorities) as space allows. Priority will be given to those that indicate interest via the registration form and brief survey. We expect to accommodate up to 100 participants.
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Eligibility: open to participants from all countries, however note the working definition of ‘Under-Represented Minority’ in science used is that of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF); those groups are the focus of these workshops. URMs include African Americans, Hispanic Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders.
3. Arabidopsis Information Portal Developer and User Workshop: A preview release of the NSF-funded Arabidopsis Information Portal will be made publicly available in the Spring of 2014. This early release will contain Col-0 structural and functional annotation, including GO annotation and computational and curator-derived summaries of gene function. Additional tools will provide access to protein interaction data, Affymetrix expression data and likely other functionalities.
This workshop has two goals.
- In the first part, we will provide an overview of the requirements/APIs for developers to provide tools or data sets to the portal.
- In the second part, we will provide a guided tour of the portal and show how the typical user can access the various data sets available.
- Using wireless access in the workshop room, users who bring their own laptops will be able to follow our demonstrations in real time. For those unable to attend this pre-meeting workshop, we will also offer a similar presentation during one of the regularly-scheduled workshop time slots. We are also pleased to announce that we intend to offer a 2-day on-site workshop to developers in Fall 2014, where they will be able to work on their own code in the company of several AIP software developers and engineers. Details of the 2-day workshop will be available later in the year at the AIP website: www.araport.org.
Date: Monday, July 28; workshops expected to run 1:15-4 pm followed by informal networking 4-6 pm prior to the opening sessions (minority awardees have an additional session from 4-5 pm).
