Professional Development Workshops
“Can You Write Me a Strong Letter of Recommendation?": Soliciting, Writing, and Evaluating Recommendations
Organizer/Moderator: Donita RobinsonSpeaker: Teresa Reyes, Reuben Gonzales, Minna McFarland
Location: SDCC 31ABC
Track: Career Skills
Letters of recommendation are critical parts of applications to graduate school, postdocs, faculty positions, and career grants. What makes a letter of recommendation effective? This workshop will consider the elements of a strong letter for each career stage and is aimed both at scientists soliciting letters from mentors, scientists writing letters for others, and scientists evaluating letters for admission, fellowship, and hiring decisions.
Beyond the Rainbow: Empowering LGBTQ+ Trainees and Colleagues Toward Successful and Authentic Careers
Organizer/Moderator: Jennifer HoneycuttSpeaker: Kaela Singleton, Alycia Mosley Austin, Siddharth Ramakrishnan, Mae Guthman, Troy Roepke
Location: SDCC 31ABC
Track: Diversity and Inclusion
The LGBTQ+ community is more visible than ever, with increased presence across our field and within the Society for Neuroscience. The personal and professional experiences of LGBTQ+ trainees poses a unique mentoring challenge within the laboratory and classroom. Here, we aim to bring attention to the challenges LGBTQ+ neuroscientists face and discuss best practices for mentoring an intersectional community of neuroscientists from varied socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, religious, etc. backgrounds.
Why and How to Account for Sex and Gender in Brain and Behavioral Research
Organizer/Moderator: Lise EliotSpeaker: Margaret McCarthy, Donna Maney, Hannah LeBlanc, Annaliese Beery, Emily Jacobs
Location: SDCC 31ABC
Track: Research Skills
Long overlooked in research, sex and gender are now recognized as key variables that impact all levels of neurobehavioral analysis. But many neuroscientists do not understand the difference between sex and gender, the complexity of each variable, or how to best analyze their influence on data. Given recent NIH mandates to equally include males and females in both animal and human studies, this session will deepen neuroscientists' understanding of why and how to most rigorously do this.
Integrating Life and Work in Neuroscience: Strategies for Success
Organizer/Moderator: Georgia HodesSpeaker: Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, Debra Bangasser, Jill Turner, Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, Scott Russo
Location: SDCC 31ABC
Track: Career Skills
Participants from diverse backgrounds/family structures provide perspectives on strategies they use to navigate their lives/careers before and during the pandemic. Intended for trainees to mid-career researchers, we will discuss how we cope with issues experienced by many scientists. Topics include having/raising children, the “two body problem”, caring for aging parents from afar, travel, choosing between soft or hard money positions, and how to prioritize professional and personal success.
Culturally Validated Pedagogy and Inclusion in Neuroscience
Organizer/Moderator: Kimberly D'Anna-HernandezSpeaker: Arturo Zavala, Nakia Gordon
Location: SDCC 31ABC
Track: Diversity and Inclusion
The proposed session will focus on culturally validating pedagogy in Neuroscience courses to increase inclusion and retention and graduation rates in students from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds. Together we will workshop with instructors how to validate their assignments and syllabi in Neuroscience courses as well as mentorship programs to include culturally relevant content and practices.
Brain Data Science: A World of New Neuroscience Career Opportunities
Organizer/Moderator: William GrishamSpeaker: Edda Thiels, Oliver Armitage, Dimitri Yatsenko, Ariel Rokem, Saskia de Vries, Mathew Abrams
Location: SDCC 31ABC
Track: Career Paths
Open collaborative brain research is generating huge piles of data that must be managed and analyzed. The explosion of brain big data, machine learning and AI has created a demand for “data competent” neuroscientists working in multiple sectors who will shape the future of neuroscience. But how do we get into brain data science? This workshop features individuals with a variety of positions in brain data science to present how they do what they do, how they got there, and where they are going.
Neuroscience Departments and Programs Workshop: From Design to Analysis: Improving Research Skills for an Evolving Field
Organizer/Moderator: Robert Calin-JagemanSpeaker: Eleanor Batty, Ashley Juavinett, Mary Harrington
Location: SDCC 31ABC
Every neuroscientist has a list of “methodological resolutions” — things we’ve been meaning to learn or teach about more, but haven’t had time to delve in to. This workshop will help you get started with four common “gaps” in your training or your graduate training program: Experimental design, math, coding, and statistical thinking. For each, we'll explain why these gaps matter, highlight what’s especially useful to know, and provide resources to help you and your trainees get up to speed.
