#PhD/Postdoctoral

[kyreniacommentator]

KAV Offers PhD and/or Postdoctoral Research Scholarship

KAV Offers PhD and/or Postdoctoral Research Scholarship Announcement from KAV, Cancer Research Foundation, for the 2024-25 Academic Year August 5, 2024 Continue reading KAV Offers PhD and/or Postdoctoral Research Scholarship

[dr-afsaeed]

Subscribe Youtube Channel For New Jobs and Scholarships

Subscribe Youtube Channel For New Jobs and Scholarships

[tenth-sentence]

Hsu had come from Chekiang University in China in 1948 to take a Ph.D at the University of Texas; now a postdoctoral fellow in human cytology at the medical branch of the university in Galveston, he was looking at cell nuclei in preparations of fetal spleen tissue.

"In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity" - Daniel J. Kevles

[aqeons]

[9jacompass]

IBM PhD Fellowship Awards Program 2022/2023 Application Update

IBM PhD Fellowship Awards Program 2022/2023 Application Update

The 2022/2023 application round for the IBM PhD Fellowship Awards opens for students globally to participate. The fellowship is a two year program anchored on major IBM research areas of interest and is fully funded. Eligible PhD students are welcome to apply. Since 1951, the IBM PhD Fellowship Program has collaborated with faculty, students and universities by recognizing and supporting…

[cellarspider]

Good lord I take a week off of tumblr and now there’s a lot of you

Hello to everyone who’s just followed me in the past week! Most of you have come from a long ramble of mine on interdisciplinary learning, medieval head trauma, and Gallus’ well-wishings on my recent graduation (https://www.tumblr.com/gallusrostromegalus/727017193756327936), thank you to Gallus for that. Thank you to those of you who’ve commented with kind words as well. Specific shout-outs, links to relevant rambles, and questions are below, in the section “Link Roundup and Shoutouts”.

Yes, this is a post with sections. This is how we roll here.

Introduction to Spider

For those who don’t know, I’m Spider! I’ve just gotten my PhD in Mammalian Genetics, having gotten a Masters in Informatics and a Bachelors in Medieval Studies before that. I’ll quite happily ramble about any of them, with the following caveats: an undergraduate degree means I know the basics, but they may be increasingly out of date. And advanced degrees are increasingly specialized in their scope as you go along—you gain the skills to more easily understand things from related specialties, but you only become truly, deeply knowledgeable on very specific topics. However, these topics are not always limited to the field of study generally expected by the degree-granting institution! My focus ended up being significantly divergent from everyone else’s, which resulted in an interesting challenge of communicating my project to others at the institute.

The field I dove into for my PhD was systems genetics. Rather than studying individual genes and how they function, my work examined the wider view: think the difference between a local weather forecast versus modeling the global climate. Both synthesize vast amounts of information, just on different scales and levels of detail.

Many people love studying the tiny details around individual genes, because they can dig down into the mechanisms that make the gene work, how it might break and cause disease, and maybe how to fix those diseases. My love is for the global view of things, which gives you the ability to characterize general statements about how genes are regulated and modified. It’s a field that’s very hard to study without good data that’s complicated to acquire, so it’s a very exciting subject to work on! I’m looking forward to carrying that on into a postdoctoral study, in which I’ll work with a new lab and learn the dreaded skill of grant writing. I’ll be starting this month!

…As Gallus mentioned, my time until then is very much devoted to Baldur’s Gate 3. Happily for me, the new research group I’ll be joining has also been going nuts for Baldur’s Gate 3, so I’ll have a lot to talk about with my coworkers once I’m back to the lab.

In my free time, I’m happy to ramble upon request about the subjects I love, including but not limited to my fields of academic study, my constructed language hobby, scientific ethics and its portrayal in media, creepy-crawlies (always appropriately tagged for people’s phobias), and Baldur’s Gate 3.

…Lots of Baldur’s Gate 3. (I’ve only just reached the Lost Light Inn, please no spoilers!)

Link Roundup and Shoutouts

For those who are interested to see my ramble about why European medical texts in the medieval period tended to be terrible, it’s available here: https://www.tumblr.com/cellarspider/680342023316930560/hi-please-rant-about-medieval-european-medical

Thank you to all those who dug up the name of the academic text I’d forgotten! Its title, in all its wordy glory, is Injuries of the skull and brain, as described in the myths, legends, and folk-tales of the various peoples of the world, with some comments on the significance and reliability of this information in evaluating contemporary concepts as to their nature and lethality by Cyril B. Courville, 1967. It’s a fantastic book, and good lord that title just does not stop

Thank you to fellow spiders @one-spider-from-mars and @vaspider for their comments. We are many. We are mighty.

Thank you to @belovedbright for the fantastic story of the death of Conchobar mac Nessa via brain trauma inflicted by a brain https://www.tumblr.com/belovedbright/727132485919604736

To @doomhamster's question on whether egg whites were used in the medieval treatment of burns: I don’t know! Unfortunately I can’t access the translation of the medical manual I referred to back then (https://worldcat.org/title/1123716578), and the only version I can find online at the moment is in 14th century French (https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Sloane_MS_1977). Egg whites do appear 33 times in the translation, according to the limited ability I have to search the text, and they show up throughout the book.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

Another perfect example of how masking to help prevent covid keeps us *all* safer from *all* airborne illness.

by Tamara Schneider

Lingering respiratory viruses set the stage for chronic lung disease, mouse study shows

Doctors have long known that children who become seriously ill with certain respiratory viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are at elevated risk of developing asthma later in life. What they haven’t known is why.

A new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may have solved the mystery. The study, in mice, shows that respiratory viruses can hide out in immune cells in the lungs long after the initial symptoms of an infection have resolved, creating a persistently inflammatory environment that promotes the development of lung disease. Further, they showed that eliminating the infected cells reduces signs of chronic lung damage before they progress to a full-blown chronic respiratory illness.

The findings, published Oct. 2 in Nature Microbiology, point to a potential new approach to preventing asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other chronic lung diseases by eradicating the persistent respiratory viruses that fuel these conditions.

“Right now, children who have been hospitalized for a respiratory infection such as RSV are sent home once their symptoms resolve,” said senior author Carolina B. López, PhD, a professor of molecular microbiology and a BJC Investigator at WashU Medicine. “To reduce the risk that these children will go on to develop asthma, maybe in the future we will be able to check if all of the virus is truly gone from the lung, and eliminate all lingering virus, before we send them home.”

About 27 million people in the U.S. are living with asthma. Many factors influence a person’s likelihood of developing the chronic breathing illness, including living in a neighborhood with poor air quality, having exposure to cigarette smoke and being hospitalized for viral pneumonia or bronchitis while young. Some researchers — López included — suspected that the link between serious lung infection and subsequent asthma diagnosis was due to lingering virus in the lungs that causes ongoing damage, but a direct link between the ongoing presence of virus and chronic lung disease has not been previously shown.

López and first author Ítalo Araújo Castro, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in her lab, developed a unique system involving a natural mouse virus known as Sendai virus, and fluorescent markers of infection. Sendai is related to human parainfluenza virus, a common respiratory virus that, like RSV, has been linked to asthma in children. Sendai behaves in mice in very much the same way that human parainfluenza virus behaves in people, making it an excellent model of the kinds of infections that could lead to chronic lung disease.

Using the fluorescent trackers, the researchers could observe signs of the virus throughout infection. After about two weeks, the mice recovered, but viral RNA and protein were still detectable several weeks later in their lungs, hidden away in immune cells.

“Finding persistent virus in immune cells was unexpected,” López said. “I think that’s why it had been missed before. Everyone had been looking for viral products in the epithelial cells that line the surface of the respiratory system, because that’s where these viruses primarily replicate. But they were in the immune cells.”

Moreover, the presence of the virus changed the behavior of the infected immune cells, causing them to become more inflammatory than the uninfected immune cells. Persistent inflammation sets the stage for chronic lung disease to arise, the researchers said. Indeed, seven weeks after infection, the mice’s lungs exhibited inflammation of air sacs and blood vessels, abnormal development of lung cells and excess immune tissue — all signs of chronic inflammatory lung damage, even though the mice appeared outwardly to have recovered. Once the infected immune cells were eliminated, the signs of damage diminished.

“We use a perfectly matched virus-host pairing to prove that a common respiratory virus can be maintained in immunocompetent hosts for way longer than the acute phase of the infection, and that this viral persistence can result in chronic lung conditions,” Castro said. “Probably the long-term health effects we see in people who are supposed to be recovered from an acute infection are actually due to persistence of virus in their lungs.”

The findings point to new ways to think about preventing chronic lung diseases, the researchers said.

“Pretty much every single child gets infected with these viruses before the age of 3, and maybe 5% get serious enough disease that they could potentially develop persistent infection,” López said. “We’re not going to be able to prevent children from getting infected in the first place. But if we understand how these viruses persist and the effects that persistence has on the lungs, we may be able to reduce the risk of serious long-term problems.”

Study: Castro IA, Yang Y, Gnazzo V, Kim DH, Van Dyken SJ, López CB. Murine parainfluenza virus persists in lung innate immune cells sustaining chronic lung pathology. Nature Microbiology. Oct. 2, 2024. DOI: 10.1038/s41564-024-01805-8

www.nature.com/articles/s41564-024-01805-8 (PAYWALLED)

[grison-in-space]

Hi! I've just stumbled onto the dogblr side of Tumblr and it seems fascinating. Could you recommend any fundamental reading/watching material for people who want to start learning about dog training/behaviour/cognition? It would also be cool to hear about how you, personally, got into it if you're okay sharing- it seems like a niche field and I'm curious about what the journey might look like for different people. Thanks! ^.^

Oh, sure! Bear in mind that my particular path is, um, actually much weirder than most folks': the dog training with clients is a very new (and very part time) development in my professional life. In my full time job, I'm a postdoctoral associate in neuroscience working on motivation and decision-making in the context of animal behavior. And even for that, my career path has been bizarre: I started out in population genetics, did the PhD in behavioral ecology with a side of metabolic neuroendocrinology, and have now wound up in a NIH-oriented lab focusing on topics related to sex differences, neurodivergence and addiction.

It just occured to me that the dog training thing puts me squarely on the grounds of applied animal behavior research, which means that I've done it! I've poked into all the disciplines that can be described as Animal Behaviour and collected all the achievements! I really gotta reinvest in the Animal Behavior meeting, huh. Oh, wait, no: I'm forgetting behavior genetics, which is an area of strong interest I've poked around the edges of but never myself published in.

See, animal behavior as a formal study contains at least four different disciplines of study that really only loosely interact with one another. Behavioral ecology often appears in concert within ecology and evolution, and it focuses on the study of animals within their own natural context according to their own concerns and experiences. Neuroscience is typically thinking in terms of understanding the mechanism of the human brain, and behaviorism is similarly trained on the universal mechanisms of learning and behavior. Applied animal behavior involves studying how to most effectively, safely, and ethically manage animals in human care, including both domestic animals and captive wild ones; it also covers finding out how to teach animals to do complex but useful behaviors, like training working animals. Neuroendocrinology involves studying how hormones effect changes in the brain and body: metabolic hormones, stress hormones, sex hormones, the works. Behavior genetics (and epigenetics) include studying the effects of genetic variation on behavior itself.

It's certainly not uncommon for people to jump fields once or twice, or to straddle an intersection of approaches over their careers. It's.... less usual to bounce around one's career to quite this extent, which I attribute to the fact that a) I have quite a bit of fairly obvious ADHD, b) I've never worked for anyone who hasn't had their own case bedeviling our focus, and c) I graduated directly into COVID, which meant that I had to figure out a solution on the fly when all the positions I had intended to cultivate dried up overnight.

Not that I'm bitter.

As for how I got into the dog training gig, essentially I like dog training, I really like this outfit, and I have some credit card debt I would really like to pay down. I wanted to meet and talk to more dog folks in the area and I also really missed teaching—I taught every spring and fall through my 8yr PhD, I'm good at it, and I really enjoy it. Since I've respected (almost) every instructor I've had through this outfit, and the one exception involved being listened to immediately about my concerns and increased supervision in response, and I knew that one of my instructors worked part time with them, I figured it might be a neat side gig. So far, that's been bourne out.

I also do have some longer term plans to do some behavioral genetics and neuroscience work on dogs, and I would like to incorporate some noninvasive experiments that use dogs from the general public. My facility also has a robust doggy daycare program and it'd be rad to work with them to build opportunities for everyone in a few years. I'm hoping to leverage a permanent tenure track job at my institution over it, but I might go in several directions from here. Predicting the direction of my career has been a losing proposition so far, so let's see what seems good at the time and stick around as long as I'm having fun.

As for how I got into dogs and dog behavior specifically? In addition to the ADHD, I'm autistic enough to have been diagnosed as a tween girl in the 00s, and my special interests never quite leave —they just flare up and simmer down in long periods over my life. Dogs are the first and earliest of these; my parents told me that they'd seen me gravitating towards the family Lhasa from pretty much the moment I could roll over on my belly. That seems about right. Dogs have been my gateway to huge corridors of my intellectual world, and dog training specifically have been a hobby for some time. In addition to my training gig, I'm experimenting with functional service tasks to support me as burnout and neurodivergence have limited my capacity.

Books and reading recs I'll try to get to later, mm falling asleep right now.

[dreadfutures]

University Workers on Strike.

Hi there!

TLDR: My union has called for a strike, starting Monday, Nov 14.

I am not an official representative of the union but these are my personal thoughts, and my reasons for striking, with links to our official UAW platform.

Graduate students, postdocs, and other academic student employees are essential to the teaching and research mission of the University of California, especially as undergraduate enrollments rise. But as greater and greater demands are placed on our work as researchers and educators, we are falling into rent burden and poverty, and suffer unjust treatment by our employers.

We cannot provide the level of research and quality of education that WE WANT to offer our colleagues and our students in these conditions.

Therefore we are demanding:

Wages and raises that meet or beat inflation.

Making the University-owned housing AFFORDABLE.

Increasing access too and affordability of sustainable transit options for commuters

Enshrining protections for workers against bullying and harassment from their supervisors

Among other demands, which can be found here.

What can you do to help?

Undergraduates at the University of California can help us out! Check out @ undergradsforCOLA on Instagram 

Community members can donate to the Strike Pay Fund. As we strike, the university is allowed to withhold our pay for work we are refusing to perform. The Union provides a small stipend to striking workers who are actively supporting the picket line (as I will be).

Keep up on social media and amplify the voices of our union (Santa Barbara’s is included here but there are others, and I do not attend the SB campus personally)

Write to (YOUR PERSONAL) representatives in the California Legislature, as well as the leadership of the University of California, in support of the strike and our demands.

IF YOU DONT LIVE IN CALIFORNIA: In addition to donating and amplifying the movement on social media, look at universities in your state. They’re looking at us right now. Many academic workers have unionized, following our example, over the past YEAR. This is a young movement that will live or die in the near future... and your support--even if it’s just encouragement--can give it power! Contact the local unions for workers like me and voice your support. Contact University administration and local political leaders to encourage them to support academic workers’ rights and compensation. And when academic workers go on strike, show your support with donations, vocal encouragement, and even volunteer on the picket line.

Please reblog this! Talk to people about it.

Below the cut, some more personal explanations.

Some of you may know that I am a graduate student, or more accurately, I am “pursuing my PhD in chemistry.” There is nothing “student” about my situation. I do not take classes. Instead, I perform highly trained laboratory work for the University of California along with countless other Postdoctoral scholars, technicians, and so on. Though the word research might conjure just pictures of me, a scientist in a lab, there is invaluable work being done in Humanities and Social Sciences that take on many different shapes and forms. All of it is done under the auspice of the University of California, and it is THIS that gives the university its prestige worldwide.

When I receive my “degree” I will continue doing the same work I am doing--currently on a $30k stipend--but the jobs I will be looking at pay $90k or much, much higher.

As a researcher, the work I do is severely underpaid in this university setting. It is something that we all DO agree to and put up with for the sake of having this “apprenticeship” time with prestigious professors and older researchers, at institutions that have technology, equipment, and libraries we need for our work.

HOWEVER, in agreeing to this severely underpaid work, we are offered things like guaranteed housing in the local community--communities like Berkely, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Irvine, and San Diego, that are INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE for people to live in otherwise. Or...some of us are guaranteed. Because EVEN in the University-owned housing, there are:

housing shortages

lack of significant subsidies

rent burden

More than 37% of my income goes to rent every month, and I live in the cheapest possible apartment from University-owned housing. Many academic workers are not even OFFERED the cheaper options, instead being given the “take it, or lose your housing guarantee on campus and fend for yourself in the outer community” treatment...but their offers are for apartments that cost 55% of their income or more. The university is paying us. The university is also charging us through the nose for housing we desperately need and can neither find nor afford elsewhere.

In addition to the insane rent burden we undertake, there are inadequate legal protections from overworking us (our reputations and references entirely depend on our advisors and supervisors Approving, and many of them expect 7am-midnight-or-late work days, 7 days a week), bullying us, harassing us or otherwise abusing us. International workers--drawn here, again, by the prestige of the University’s research efforts--are most at risk, and most unprotected.

There are other issues of equality and fairness at stake here: child support and paid leave, affordable transportation (hey, if we can’t afford to live in Santa Barbara, we will need to commute from somewhere else. Right now there are few options that are affordable, let alone sustainable, to do so), just to name a few examples.

The University also claims to be a leader in labor equality, fairness, and movements. We are among the historical faces of the Free Speech Movement and Vietnam War protests. We are the faces of labor rights research and progressive policy development and sustainable energy research. We are where the Earth Day movement started!

AND YET the University has antagonized union-forming efforts, incentivized anti-union sentiment, threatened and implied retribution for union activities, spends insane amounts of money trying to quash the union and send counter messaging, and seems to want to do ANYTHING other than pay us well.

Here’s an example of one of the latest offers and how insulting it is.

And it’s not just us. Food service workers on campus, custodians, and many others on campus who make things RUN, have gone on strike in the past and showed us how utterly hypocritical our sterling, utopic University is.

It’s just a corporation.

And so we are treating it like one, by going on strike.

I love what I do. I love science, and the research I do is focused on issues related to our energy crisis. The training I’ve received has prepared me to take jobs with IMPACT, that will shape our green energy future.

And I am a passionate educator. Right now I am responsible for ~ 250 students (a portion of our 900 students taking Chem1A right now), with classrooms of 50 students each. These are not ideal teaching conditions and yet I am DEDICATED to using the best pedagogy I have learned to help our most at-risk students succeed in this class. I have a history as a TA of improving student outcomes for underrepresented minority, low-income, and first-generation students who disproportionately fail our classes due to poor preparation at their local high schools, feelings of alienation, and the likelihood that they are working multiple jobs through college while more privileged students focus on classes. I have shown that I care about my students, in ways that even many professors do not.

That is why it is a heartbreaking and infuriating decision to go on strike, but I believe there is no alternative way to make the University improve our situation. We do it for other UC workers who are not compensated as well as we are, and we do it for future graduate student researchers, TAs, and postdocs–some of whom we hope are in Chem 1A right now--and we do it for the students who are not being best-served by graduate students sleeping out of cars, forgoing meals, and suffering from abusive supervisors.

Thank you for your support in whatever form it takes. it has been really encouraging to have friends, family (my REPUBLICAN CONSERVATIVE FAMILY SUPPORTS THE STRIKE), students, strangers, and even my supervisor (again, a red Ohio man lol) supporting this exercise of our legal right to protest, and the demands we are standing behind.

Talking to my advisor was a terrifying ordeal, especially when the other members of my lab were too scared to do it and risk his ire. We have a good relationship with him, but the fact is that he is our supervisor, and his reputation depends on our hours worked, and he could be frustrated. But I couldn’t sleep well if I didn’t participate in this strike, so I resolved to sit in front of my advisor face-to-face, alone, and tell him I was joining the strike.

My advisor isn’t the problem, the structure of the university is. But it was still the most terrifying conversation I’ve ever prepared for. And it went...so well. So, so well.

Our faculty understand that we are under a worse rent burden than they have ever seen or experienced themselves (they weren’t, and aren’t, paid super well either!), and they understand that we care about our work and don’t WANT to stop.

So it’s with great relief, and fervent hope, that I will be joining the strike. I hope whoever is reading this feels INVIGORATED by this movement, no matter the outcome. We are a new generation that is saying enough is enough. We will not tolerate mistreatment. We will work together to make sure we are all uplifted.

My department treats its chem students better than MAYBE any other chem department at the UC. We have it REALLY GOOD. My primary reason for striking is:

Sure. I can put up with some things. It’ll be tight, but I can afford it. Barely.

But I know many, many others can’t. They are my friends and colleagues. They were my mentors in the past. They are who I might be in the future!

Doing it for them is right.

[maaarine]

Women are being diagnosed with ADHD at unprecedented rates. Here's why. (Kaelyn Lynch, National Geographic, Jan 16 2024)

"There are three types of ADHD: hyperactive, inattentive, and combined.

Girls and women tend to have the inattentive type, characterized by disorganization, forgetfulness, and struggles with starting and staying on task.

“They’re more likely to be seen as daydreamers, or lost in the clouds,” says Julia Schechter, co-director of Duke University’s Center for Women and Girls with ADHD.

Even hyperactive or combined-type girls often display their symptoms differently than boys—such as excessive talking, twirling their hair or constantly shaking their legs, and emotional reactivity.

“Their symptoms are just as impairing, but can fly under the radar,” Schechter says.

When clinical psychologist Kathleen Nadeau co-authored Understanding Girls with ADHD in 1999—one of the first real attempts to characterize how ADHD appeared in young girls—the research community still thought of ADHD almost exclusively as a “boy disorder.”

“We were laughed at during conferences,” says Nadeau, now recognized as an authority on women with ADHD.

“They said, ‘We’ve got these guys that are in the principal’s office three times a week, getting suspended and throwing spitballs. And you’ve got these quiet girls making honor roll grades and you think they have ADHD?’”

While that attitude has started to change, the overwhelming majority of research on ADHD has been done in boys and men, leading to the hyperactive, disruptive boy stereotype of ADHD.

Many girls with ADHD excel in school, though it comes at a price—they may get an A on a paper but stay up the night before writing it after being unable to focus for weeks.

“Girls work very hard to hide their problems. ‘I don’t want the teacher to be mad at me, I don’t want my parents to be mad at me,’” Nadeau says.

Experts call this masking, or how people socialized as female tend to find ways to compensate for their symptoms due to societal expectations.

“They have to put in at least twice the effort of other people if they’re determined to do well,” Nadeau says.

“You can’t let people know that you’re falling apart,” says Janna Moen, 31, a postdoctoral research scientist at Yale Center for Infection and Immunity with a PhD in neuroscience, who was diagnosed with ADHD in her late 20s.

Like many girls who go untreated, Moen scored top grades in school and went on to have a successful career, but years of masking her symptoms contributed to her developing mental health and self-esteem issues, and struggling in personal relationships.

Like Moen, who showed symptoms of ADHD from childhood, girls and women are more likely to have their symptoms mistaken for emotional or learning difficulties and are less likely to be referred for assessments.

Gender bias also may play a role: in two studies where teachers were presented with vignettes of children with ADHD, when the child’s names and pronouns were changed from female to male, they were more likely to be recommended for treatment and offered extra support.

All these misconceptions mean that girls with ADHD are being overlooked and untreated well into adulthood.

As David Goodman, the director of the Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Center of Maryland and an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, points out, the ratio of boys to girls with ADHD in childhood is about three to one, while in adults, it’s about one to one, suggesting that ADHD prevalence is more equal across genders, with women being diagnosed later. (…)

Compared to their neurotypical peers, women with ADHD are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders.

They are also five times more likely to experience intimate partner violence, seven times more likely to have attempted suicide, and have higher rates of unplanned or early pregnancy.

One Danish study showed that the risk of premature death in women with ADHD was more than twice that of men with ADHD, potentially due to women being less likely to be diagnosed and receive treatment."

[petervintonjr]

"I had no role models because nobody ever publicized them, not that they didn't exist. George Washington Carver and Percy Julian and others had preceded me in science, but nobody ever publicized their accomplishments, and, therefore, many of the minority students didn't know that they had a future in science because they figured it was something that was not for them."

After a bit of time away from this project to make room for convention appearances and other shows, I now return to the subject with a look at the life and accomplishments of physicist George Robert Carruthers, on this, what would have been his 85th birthday.

Born in 1939 Cincinnati, Carruthers's father was himself a civil engineer at Wright-Patterson AFB, but the family soon moved to the more rural location of Milford, Ohio. Carruthers was described as quiet and focused --intensely interested in space travel stories and comic books (my people!), and a devourer of the science articles in Collier's magazine (even penning a fan letter to Dr. Werner Von Braun, to which he received an unexpected and encouraging personal reply). At the age of ten Carruthers built his first telescope, constructed from lenses he obtained by mail order. After George's father died in 1952, the family moved to Chicago but his fascination with spaceflight did not diminish. Encouraged by wonderfully observant teachers, he eventually graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1960, then earned his MS in in nuclear engineering in 1962, and then landed his PhD in aeronautical and astronautical engineering in 1964.

While working towards his PhD, Carruthers worked as a researcher and teaching assistant, studying plasma and gases. In 1964, Carruthers took a postdoctoral appointment with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., focusing on far ultraviolet astronomy. In 1969 he received a U.S. patent for inventing a form of image converter; an instrument that detects electromagnetic radiation in short wavelengths. In 1970 his invention recorded the first observation of molecular hydrogen in outer space (which he described as "a very big deal at the time.")

Far and away (literally), Dr. Carruthers's greatest contribution to science is his development and construction of an ultraviolet electronographic telescope, which became the first (and to date still the only) astronomical instrument sent to the surface of the Moon; more properly known as the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph. The camera was brought along on the Apollo 16 mission in 1972, set up to observe the Earth's geocorona (outermost atmosphere) from a vantage point never before possible. A short time later a variation on this very same camera was brought aboard Skylab to photograph the near approach of Comet Kohoutek, the first instance of a comet being recorded in ultraviolet. A flight backup of the Apollo 16 instrument, along with the original mission film canister, stood for many years as part of the lunar lander exhibit at the National Air & Space Museum, until it was later transferred to a more protected exhibit to guard against corrosion.

Dr. Carruthers's success and notoriety from the Apollo mission led to his creation of the Science & Engineers Apprentice Program, offering disadvantaged high school students the opportunity to work with scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory. His research into ultraviolet spectroscopy continued --in 1991 one of his ultraviolet cameras was used in multiple experiments aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-39). He retired from the NRL in 2002 and in 2003, was inducted into the National Inventor Hall of Fame. In 2013 was awarded the National Medal for Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama. Dr. Carruthers died on Christmas Day, 2020.

[rohanabb]

ell-hs on tumblr / © stills / unknown textbook (post) / sir gawain and the green knight, tr. simon armitage

YOU ARE ORGANIC / PLUM-HEARTED / OYSTER-THROATED

> root access granted

SKELETON / DOSSIER (ATTACHED) / PINTEREST / PLOTS

> task directory: arrival. introduction. first impressions.

BASICS.

𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄. Rohan Ibrahim Abbasi, PhD 𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐊𝐍𝐀𝐌𝐄𝐒. Ro 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌. Riz Ahmed

𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐅𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐒. medium height, lean build; cropped hair; short, trimmed beard; casual posture, typically leaning against counters, walls, or doorways with arms crossed; kind eyes. 𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐎𝐎𝐒 / 𝐏𝐈𝐄𝐑𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒. none.

𝐀𝐆𝐄 / 𝐃.𝐎.𝐁. 38 / 30 Sept. 1985 𝐙𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐀𝐂. Libra

𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐎𝐖𝐍. Mississauga, ON, Canada 𝐅𝐀𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐘. • Muhammad Erhan Abbasi. Father, b. 1949 • Mariyam Abbasi. Mother, b. 1953 • Samaya Hijazi. Sister, b. 1981. Married, two children (17f, 12m). • Naima Abbasi Ito . Sister, b. 1982. Married, three children. (11f, 5m, 5f) • Hanif Muhammad Abbasi. Brother, b. 1987. Married, one child (2m).

𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 / 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐍𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐒. trans man / he & him 𝐒𝐄𝐗𝐔𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘. bisexual 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐀𝐋 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐒. single, formerly engaged

𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒. charismatic, focused, creative, enthusiastic, tenacious 𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐒. stubborn, arrogant, dismissive, self-righteous, overzealous 𝐇𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐒. nail & cuticle biting; interrupting; leaving personal projects unfinished; double texting 𝐇𝐎𝐁𝐁𝐈𝐄𝐒. long distance running; a moderator on r/askbiology and frequent contributor to r/askscience; occasional tutoring high school students & undergrads

𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐒 (𝐋𝐄𝐅𝐓 𝐀𝐓 𝐇𝐎𝐌𝐄). none.

THE FOUNDATION.

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐅𝐅 𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐋𝐄. Staff Researcher

𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐎𝐔𝐒 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍(𝐒). • May 2018 – Dec 2018. Research Assistant at Site-17, Talbot Lab • Jan 2018 – Apr 2020. Postdoctoral Researcher at Site-17, Talbot Lab • Apr 2020 – Nov 2021. Postdoctoral Researcher at Site-17, Keir Research Group

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐀𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓. (November 2021 – Present) Site-169 Anomalous Entity Engagement Division, Schaffer Research Group. Investigating class-B amnestic-facilitated disruption of the hive mind. Tested on colonies with lineages from samples of SCP-1166, SCP-4589, and SCP-171. Experiment ended in failure, requiring fumigation of lab vivariums.

𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐒 / 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐈𝐄𝐒

academic. BSc in Biochemistry with a minor in Physiology (following a drop from the pre-med track) from McGill, MSc in Pharmacology from McGill, PhD in Neuroscience from University of Toronto extracurricular. tbd

EXTRAS.

𝐁𝐈𝐎𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐏𝐇𝐘.

Dr. Rohan Abbasi first came to the Foundation’s attention shortly following the defense and subsequent publication of his master’s thesis, entitled “Correlation between the potency of hallucinogens in the mouse head-twitch response assay and their behavioral and subjective effects in other species.” (Neuropharmacology 2014). An auspicious start for someone who was, of his own admission, little more than a glorified lab grunt prior to the manuscript’s completion. The Foundation’s growing interest in Dr. Abbasi swiftly followed with his continuing doctoral research into the treatment of complex-PTSD and psychopathies with medical-grade psychedelics and hallucinogens.  Records indicate this culmination of Dr. Abbasi’s academic focus to be some combination of chance — with a Research Assistantship in Professor Szymanski’s research group at the University of Toronto open, and Rohan Abbasi in need of additional funding — and a longer trend of interest in and unorthodox approaches to pharmacology and medicine. It was with this in mind that a small but robustly funded lab at site-17 solicited a freshly minted Dr. Abbasi to interview for an opening postdoctoral research position within the group.  In the seven years since his tenure at the Foundation began, Dr. Rohan Abbasi’s reputation and portfolio tell vastly different stories of the same man. Colleagues and close personal acquaintances of Dr. Abbasi consistently praise the discipline, energy, and creativity he brings to research settings. Indeed, much of Dr. Abbasi’s early career at the Foundation is categorized by a nearly unending stream of proposals submitted, findings published, journal clubs established, and special interest committees formed. It became, however, the concern of his hiring supervisor that such enthusiasm and, frankly, naivete would outstrip the professional demands of this particular role. Following agreement from all parties, Dr. Abbasi’s fellowship continued under the supervision of the Keir group.  Thus, a pattern began to emerge. Dr. Abbasi filled his new position with what former colleagues would now consider characteristic effusiveness and vigor. Rohan himself jumped between several projects, submitting additional proposals for each with or without final approval from his new supervisor, nearly all of which were, unsurprisingly, summarily rejected. This had seemingly little effect on Dr. Abbasi’s commitment to proposing outlandish, unorthodox, unrealistic, and in more than a few cases downright insulting avenues of research or applications of novel (often as-yet-unreplicated) findings.   Neither Dr. Abbasi nor his new team were under any illusions, then, on the circumstances and stakes surrounding the assumption of his third post, now in the Anomalous Entity Engagement Division. Indeed, it seems he has finally understood the precarious situation he has continuously engaged in, and has pivoted to bolstering his professional reputation alongside his personal. It’s with this mutual agreement that Dr. Abbasi has been encouraged to continue his work on class B amnestics.

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒. dm for skeleton-specific details.

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 / 𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐄��. tbd.

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐏𝐈𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒. Palamades Sextus ( The Locked Tomb ); The Biologist ( Annihilation ); Cosima Niehaus ( Orphan Black ); Dr. Allison Cameron ( House ); Rose Franklin ( The Themis Files ); Hank McCoy/Beast ( X-Men ); definitely others

𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐒. tbd.

[jcmarchi]

Erin Kara named Edgerton Award winner

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/erin-kara-named-edgerton-award-winner/

Erin Kara named Edgerton Award winner

Class of 1958 Career Development Assistant Professor Erin Kara of the Department of Physics has been named as the recipient of the 2023-24 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.   Established in 1982, the award is a tribute to the late Institute Professor Emeritus Harold E. Edgerton for his support for younger faculty members. This award recognizes exceptional distinction in teaching, research, and service.

Professor Kara is an observational astrophysicist who is a faculty member in the Department of Physics and a member of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI). She uses high-energy transients and time-variable phenomena to understand the physics behind how black holes grow and how they affect their environments.

Kara has advanced a new technique called X-ray reverberation mapping, which allows astronomers to map the gas falling onto black holes and measure the effects of strongly curved spacetime close to the event horizon. She also works on a variety of transient phenomena, such as tidal disruption events and galactic black hole outbursts.

She is a NASA Participating Scientist for the XRISM Observatory, a joint JAXA/NASA X-ray spectroscopy mission that just launched this past September, and is a NASA Participating Scientist for the ULTRASAT Mission, an ultraviolet all-sky time domain mission, set to launch in 2027. She is also working to develop and launch the next generation of NASA missions, as deputy principal investigator of the AXIS Probe Mission.

“I am delighted for Erin,” says Claude Canizares, the Bruno Rossi Professor of Physics. “She is an exemplary Edgerton awardee. As one of the leading observational astrophysicists of her generation, she has made major advances in our understanding of black holes and their environments. She also plays a leadership role in the design of new space missions, is a passionate and effective teacher, and a thoughtful mentor of graduate students and postdocs.”

Adds Kavli Director Rob Simcoe, “Erin is one of a very rare breed of experimental astrophysicists who have the interest and stamina not only to use observatories built by colleagues before her, but also to dive into a leadership role planning and executing new spaceflight missions that will shape the future of her field.”

The committee also recognized Kara’s work to create “a stimulating and productive multigenerational research group. Her mentorship is thoughtful and intentional, guiding and supporting each student or postdoc while giving them the freedom to grow and become self-reliant.”

During the nomination process, students praised Kara’s teaching skills, enthusiasm, organization, friendly demeanor, and knowledge of the material.

“Erin is the best faculty mentor I have ever had,” says one of her students. “She is supportive, engaged, and able to provide detailed input on projects when needed, but also gives the right amount of freedom to her students/postdocs to aid in their development. Working with Erin has been one of the best parts of my time at MIT.”

Kara received a BA in physics from Barnard College, and an MPhil in physics and a PhD in astronomy from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. She subsequently served as Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow and then Neil Gehrels Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She joined the MIT faculty in 2019.

Her recognitions include the American Astronomical Society‘s Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, for “outstanding achievement, over the past five years, in observational astronomical research,” and the Rossi Prize from the High-Energy Astrophysics Division of the AAS (shared).

The award committee lauded Kara’s service in the field and at MIT, including her participation with the Physics Graduate Admissions Committee, the Pappalardo Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee, and the MKI Anti-Racism Task Force. Professor Kara also participates in dinners and meet-and-greets invited by student groups, such as Undergraduate Women in Physics, Graduate Women in Physics, and the Society of Physics Students.

Her participation in public outreach programs includes her talks “Black Hole Echoes and the Music of the Cosmos” at both the Concord Conservatory of Music and an event with MIT School of Science alumni, and “What’s for dinner? How black holes eat nearby stars” for the MIT Summer Research Program.

“There is nothing more gratifying than being recognized by your peers, and I am so appreciative and touched that my colleagues in physics even thought to nominate me for this award,” says Kara. “I also want to express my gratitude to my awesome research group. They are what makes this job so fun and so rewarding, and I know I wouldn’t be in this position without their hard work, great attitudes, and unwavering curiosity.” 

[tlatollotl]

✨ NEW EPISODE ✨

In this episode, Dr. Marijke Stoll shares her recent research incorporating both qualitative and quantitative analysis to reimagine the use of GIS in mapping modern and ancient pathways in Oaxaca. We talk about insights gleaned from interviews carried out on the trail, creative ways of using new technology, and bringing the human element into all aspects of our research. Marijke Stoll received her PhD of Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 2018. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow with the National Science Foundation and is based out of Indiana University-Bloomington.

[ofzahras]

Welcome to New York ZAHRA HAMED !! They are a 35 year old CIS WOMAN who uses SHE/HER pronouns. They’re a POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER who has been in town for THREE MONTHS. When looking at ZAHRA you automatically think of PILES OF UNREAD BOOKS, FORGOTTEN CUPS OF COFFEE, ALL-BLACK OUTFITS but that probably makes sense since they also remind you of AIYSHA HART. You can always hear OH BONDAGE! UP YOURS! by X-RAY SPEX coming from their place. Who knows what kind of trouble they’re going to get themselves into.

here's zahra's pinterest for some fun vibes!

FULL NAME: zahra hamed DATE OF BIRTH: may 11, 1989 GENDER & PRONOUNS: cis woman, she/her

ORIENTATION: bisexual OCCUPATION: postdoctoral researcher PLACE OF BIRTH: minneapolis, minnesota  FAMILY: mother, father PETS: a black cat called circe

HEIGHT: 5′10′’ HAIR COLOUR: dark brown EYE COLOUR: dark brown

trigger warnings: mentions of religion, infertility, emotional distress, and smoking.

she’s an only child, born to a mixed race and interfaith family. her christian mother and muslim father brought her up in an environment where questions were encouraged and zahra was taught to argue her views and research new ideas.

despite her status as somewhat of a miracle child - her parents had already come to accept they wouldn’t be able to have children of their own due to a host of fertility issues - zahra grew up knowing a lot was expected of her. both of her parents had grown up with very little and had been able to use education as their way out of difficult home situations. she doesn’t resent her parents in the slightest, but sometimes wonders what her life would now look like if she been given just a bit more space and freedom to discover and make mistakes. still, she’s grateful for the drive her parents instilled in her as it has helped her to keep going even during times of distress. that being said, she has unfortunately picked up a host of rather unhealthy coping mechanisms for said stressful situations.

after graduating from high school at the top of her class, zahra packed her bags and moved to durham, north carolina, where she would go on to attend duke university, studying religion and philosophy. she later completed her phd in columbia university, writing her thesis about religious dialogue and pluralism.

while her life hasn’t always been easy or uncomplicated, it has been rather streamline. she has struggled and put in an enormous amount of hard work to get where she is now, but things have generally gone well for her. however, she has recently gone through something of a personal crisis and is really struggling to find her feet again. to put it simply, zahra has become wildly disillusioned with the academia and is suddenly really not sure she’s happy with her choices in life.

her postdoctoral research has now taken her back to new york city where she conducts research in and around the city. well, that’s what she’s supposed to be doing. however, she has run into a real slump and is struggling to get anything productive done. her self-esteem has taken a hit due to the resent developments, as her sense of self has been so deeply intertwined with her academic and professional success. she previously did a disappearing act, leaving her life in nyc behind, and is currently trying to get her shit together. trying being the operative word. she knows she doesn’t have the time to fuck around, but that’s kind of exactly what she’s doing.

will become visibly grumpy when asked about the state of her research project. that being said, she is procrastinating by researching other things, and has, amongst other things, taught herself french while trying to avoid all her responsibilities. she will soon start picking up and abandoning all sorts of fun pastimes in the hopes of distraction.

while she can be bit of a hermit - she spends most of her time alone, trying desperately to read and write, or avoiding said activities - zahra isn’t the sort of shy, serious person people might expect her to be. she can be incredibly talkative and opinionated, even downright bossy, and genuinely enjoys meeting new people. sometimes she just needs a friend to drag her outside.

looks kind of intimidating unless she’s making a conscious effort to appear approachable. while evidently very intelligent and well-meaning for the most part, zahra sometimes struggles when it comes to socialising and pleasantries.

zahra back arrived to nyc around two-ish months ago, so here are some super vague connection ideas for anyone interested!

the stress has led to a lot of sleepless nights, resulting in her becoming a real night owl. she can be spotted frequenting places that are open late, and can be found chain-smoking and scrolling endlessly on social media. she would’ve undoubtedly run into some folks with similar schedules and habits.

any people with fun, interesting hobbies. after forming some sort of a connection, she would undoubtedly pester these individuals to teach her stuff. your girl needs to be distracted from the looming doom of her research project.

zahra enjoys noisy music. so, a person willing to accompany her to gigs around the area. she’s happiest when it’s so loud she can’t hear her own thoughts.

definitely people she met while doing her phd in nyc. she left the city a few years ago, but would’ve spent around five-ish years there before skipping town. she spent some of those years in a relationship that ended due to her moving out of the city. that connection would also be very wanted!

[scholarshipdiary]

Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme

Higher funded Ireland Government Scholarship Program is announced for international and Irish students for all higher degrees.