1. Increased opportunities to discuss and collaborate in my research area
2. Speed rate of scientific communication and discovery
3. Publicly funded research should generally be publicly available and transparent
4. Provide examples of funded grants to help others applying for grants

Since sharing my grant proposal, I haven’t been scooped and I haven’t had any negative interactions based on my openness.

Sharing has not led directly to any new collaborations, but it has made it very easy for me to share a link with someone when I’m discussing my research ideas or exploring potential areas of overlap. I also link to it in my faculty application materials, so I can concretely demonstrate my grantsmanship and  unpublished research avenues. According to figshare, my proposal has been viewed 960 times and downloaded 270 times, which I suppose means that someone is interested, and maybe has found the proposal useful, either for the conceptual ideas or as an example of what a funded grant looks like.

Figuring out what a grant is supposed to look like shouldn’t be the hardest part of writing one. Coming up with good ideas and articulating a reasonable plan should be where the mental energy is focused. But for early career researchers who may not have any prior experience in writing a grant, or adequate mentorship and support in getting started, just figuring out effective formatting can be an overwhelming hurdle, and extremely time consuming. I benefited greatly from being able to see examples of others’ funded proposals when I wrote mine, and it made the process much less stressful.

So I was really pleasantly surprised to get an email last week from a recent NSF Fellow (that I’ll keep anonymous), who stated that seeing an example of a funded proposal was extremely helpful for getting funded:

We’ve never met, but you have been super helpful with assisting me in accomplishing my professional goals. I read your publicly available NSF postdoctoral fellowship application about a year ago and several times since then. I wanted to acknowledge your role in my success, so I am writing you this note. This week I found out I was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship! …. I am super excited about the project! Thank you for the initial role you played in helping me with the process.

Wow, all sorts of warm fuzzy feels! I’m really glad to know that being open helped someone else reach their funding goals and have the opportunity to do some really cool sounding research! To me, this makes my openness worthwhile, and will definitely be going in my Why File.

ESA Early Career Mentoring Program

Time and Place:
9-14 August 2015, Ecological Society of America (ESA) Centennial Meeting, Baltimore, MD, USA

Description:
Conferences provide unique opportunities for biologists to interact with others in their field; however, these opportunities are rarely structured to promote meaningful interactions between the next generation of integrative ecologists and more senior scientists. Access to strong mentors both within and outside of their main institution is critical for early career ecologist support and for gaining the necessary skills to become a good mentor and to move towards the next career stages. Our semi-formal mentoring program pairs early career ecologists – advanced graduate students (within 1 year of graduating) and recent post-graduates (within 3 years of obtaining their degree) – with established ecologists in their desired career pathway, for the week of the 2015 ESA Annual Meeting. Specifically, 10 early career ecologists who apply for the program will receive funding to partially cover the cost of registration and will receive one-on-one mentoring during the ESA Centennial Meeting.

Mentoring Program:
The ESA Early Career Ecologist Section and the Centennial Committee will support a mentoring program aimed at advanced graduate students and recent postgrads to take place at ESA 2015. This program will provide participants with the following benefits:

1) an opportunity to receive evaluation and advice from their mentor on their oral presentation (on any topic or in any session) at ESA,

2) one-on-one interactions with a more senior scientist who will serve as a career mentor,

3) broad exposure of their professional profiles on the ESA (or other hosted) webpage, and

4) a continuing opportunity to expand their mentoring, and potentially collaboration, networks after the meeting has ended.

Applicants must commit to attending at least 3 full days of the ESA meeting and to giving an oral presentation.

Financial Support:
Applicants accepted into the program will receive $200 reimbursement to defray the cost of ESA registration fees and meeting-related expenses (e.g., travel and lodging).

How to Apply:
Recent postgraduates or advanced graduate students applying for the Centennial Mentoring Program should send 1 paragraph (≤ 250 words) on their career aspirations and why they would benefit from a mentoring program, a copy of their oral presentation abstract submitted for ESA 2015, and their current curriculum vitae to the Early Career Ecologist Section at [email protected], combined into a single PDF file. Applications should have “Mentoring Application” in the email subject line.

Deadline: 8 pm PST on February 28, 2015

For more information:
Email: Early Career Ecologist Section ([email protected])
Twitter: @ESA_EarlyCareer
Website: http://esa.org/earlycareer/

Confession: I don’t know how to write a blog. I’ve been told that the only way I can “find my voice” is to just jump in, so please bear with me. There will be awkwardness and growing pains and steep learning curves. I’m doing this because in my recent National Science Foundation grant proposal, I suggested that blogging would be a great broader impact. Then they actually funded my grant – Hooray! So now this blog exists.

I’m actually more excited to start a blog than I let on. This space will be used as “Supplementary Materials”* for my research – a place that can function as an open lab notebook of sorts, that might contain notes on things I’m reading, my projects, workflow, or useful bits of R code and computational tools. I might use this space to discuss my views on science, ecology, and academia, or work-life balance. This is my personal blog and anything I post here does not represent the views of the National Science Foundation or the universities with which I am affiliated.

New Directions

I’m beginning this blog at the beginning of a new year. I’m in a new place, at a new university, and I’m beginning a new postdoc with new collaborators and research avenues. This is my second postdoc gig since defending my PhD in the (awesome) Weecology lab and after spending a year with the fantastic Graham lab. In the past 2 years I’ve lived in 5 states, traveled nearly every month, and have stretched my mental muscle to work on fun science including bird migration, rodent time-series, and macroecological diversity trends**. I’m dragging my very patient and understanding spouse along for the ride.

In many ways, this new postdoc represents a big change for me. This is my own grant***, and I am more independent than ever before. Yet at the same time, I am continuing to expand my scientific community, which means that I am also gaining more collaborators and support.  I get to be in the uniquely awesome position of being a postdoc affiliated with three great lab groups (Williams, McGill, and Gotelli)! I waver between days where I feel like a complete impostor and days where I feel like I could conquer the world. But I think we all just make it up as we go along anyway, right?

*I’m ridiculously pleased that my name – Supp – now goes with a more interesting phrase than the usual “What’s Supp?”.

**After all that, I was really tired, so I allowed myself a bit of a recharge between postdocs. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s ok to enjoy the scenery along the way.

***Which you can read all about, because I’ve made my proposal open access on figshare. I think science can progress best if we share and discuss ideas together as freely as possible.

It is my intention (and hope) that these posts will act as “Supplementary Materials” to my academic website – extra information about my scientific workflow (like an open lab notebook), about research that I have found interesting or important, about computational tools, and about my general thoughts on academic work and living life.

Discussions and shared experiences with other researchers (online and in person) have greatly shaped my approach to research and collaboration, and have helped me to feel supported during challenging times. I can’t promise that I will have any exciting, groundbreaking, or especially eloquent thoughts to share, but I hope that my Supplementary Materials contribute in some small way back to the wonderful scientific community that I have found.