Sanford-Burnham Science Blog
Today we’d like to take a break from our usual scientific fare to ask about you, our...
Sanford-Burnham’s campuses in La Jolla, California and Lake Nona, Orlando, Florida have both...
With competition for grant funding more intense than ever and academic job opportunities...
Beaker by the numbers:
Sanford-Burnham’s Beaker blog is 3 years old today!
On March 24, 2010, we published the very first blog post
Since then, we’ve published 538 posts - an average of one post every 2 days
19 regular and guest bloggers have contributed to Beaker
329,059 people have visited the site
Mihee Kim, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher at Sanford-Burnham
Originally published November 9, 2012
Editor’s note: In today’s post, our anonymous faculty blogger gives some advice for young scientists on how to succeed in a research career. (For the record, while certainly distinguished, we wouldn’t consider him “old!”)
The old professor just shook his head in response to the young student’s question about the secrets of his success. “Why in the world would you consider me successful?” he exclaimed. “I’ve never made any money in this business, my lab is always on the verge of bankruptcy, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get another NIH grant.” But the student insisted, “You’ve been doing what you love for more than 40 years, you’ve published so many interesting papers, and you’re known all around the world for the discoveries you’ve made. You must be doing something right. Can’t you give me a few hints?”
The professor thought about it for a minute and relented, “Okay, I’ll tell you four things that have kept me going for such a long time. But they’re not secrets. They’re just things that everybody knows, but doesn’t want to think about because they are hard truths to face…”
Starting tomorrow, we’ll be re-sharing our top 10 most-read blog posts of 2012—one each day for the last 10 days of the year, counting down to the #1 most popular post. Let us know what you think of them by leaving a comment here on Beaker or by tweeting to us at @SanfordBurnham.
Happy holidays!
Mihee Kim, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher at Sanford-Burnham
Editor’s note: In today’s post, our anonymous faculty blogger gives some advice for young scientists on how to succeed in a research career. (For the record, while certainly distinguished, we wouldn’t consider him “old!”)
The old professor just shook his head in response to the young student’s question about the secrets of his success. “Why in the world would you consider me successful?” he exclaimed. “I’ve never made any money in this business, my lab is always on the verge of bankruptcy, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get another NIH grant.” But the student insisted, “You’ve been doing what you love for more than 40 years, you’ve published so many interesting papers, and you’re known all around the world for the discoveries you’ve made. You must be doing something right. Can’t you give me a few hints?”
The professor thought about it for a minute and relented, “Okay, I’ll tell you four things that have kept me going for such a long time. But they’re not secrets. They’re just things that everybody knows, but doesn’t want to think about because they are hard truths to face…”
Rep. Stephen Precourt spoke at Sanford-Burnham's scientific seminar series
Guest post by Rep. Stephen L. Precourt
As an early and vocal supporter of the growing life-sciences industry in Florida, I was honored to speak at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute’s scientific seminar series on September 6. I told the audience of researchers and community leaders that I was born in a city that doesn’t exist anymore – “old Orlando.” Over the past decades, Orlando has transformed from a small town to one of the most popular travel destinations in the world, and now to an emerging technology and life-sciences center.
At the Medical City at Lake Nona you’ll find Sanford-Burnham, the University of Central Florida’s College of Medicine , MD Anderson Cancer Center Orlando, and the University of Florida’s Research and Academic Center. Nemours Children’s Hospital and the Orlando VA Medical Center will also soon open facilities in Medical City. Orlando already attracts medical professionals and scientists from all over the world when they come for medical meetings and conventions to our convention center. Now, we attract them in a more sustainable way – they come here to live and work at institutions like Sanford-Burnham. People love to come to Florida because of our outstanding quality of life and the growing opportunities in the state.
Scientists at the TRI measure Rebecca Kaercher's oxygen levels, among other parameters
Rebecca Kaercher has been struggling with her weight for years. “Losing weight has been a very frustrating endeavor for me. I go on diets, I work out, but I just don’t lose any weight,” she says. Rebecca has been working at Sanford-Burnham at Lake Nona for three years and, together with a few of her Institute coworkers, was thrilled to volunteer as a metabolism and weight loss study subject at the Florida Hospital – Sanford-Burnham Translational Research Institute for Metabolism and Diabetes (TRI). “I am very proud to work at Sanford-Burnham and I want to be an active part of our research. Except for being overweight, I am a very healthy person. I don’t have high cholesterol, no high blood pressure, no diabetes. So it was hard for me to understand why I didn’t lose any weight.”
Rebecca is the kind of person scientists at the TRI are currently looking for as volunteers – people who have tried to lose weight by exercising and changing their diets but didn’t succeed. As with many other people who have the same problem, something in Rebecca’s body keeps her from losing weight and researchers at the TRI are trying to find out what that could be. The common perception is that overweight people only need to eat healthier and exercise more in order to lose weight. But this simple approach does not work for everyone. That is about to change with the research taking place at the TRI’s new facility in downtown Orlando.
Image courtesy of the U.S. National Institutes of Health
Editor’s note: Most biomedical researchers at academic and independent research institutes depend on grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The process of applying (and re-applying) for grants and the peer review system the NIH uses to evaluate grant applications are almost becoming their own science. In this blog post, our anonymous faculty blogger gives some advice for early-career scientists on how to keep going after a research grant proposal gets rejected—and how to do it better next time.
OK, finally…the day I’ve been waiting for! My e-mail from the NIH’s Center for Scientific Review says I can check online to get the scores of my latest grant application. But hold on a second…do I really want to know the results? If the scores are bad, I’ll be depressed over the whole weekend. On the other hand, if they’re good, I can celebrate all weekend. Might as well take a look…
“Dear Principal Investigator, scores from the latest round of study section action are now available for applications ranked in the top 50 percent of the proposals reviewed. Applications in the bottom 50 percent, including your application, were not discussed at the meeting and did not receive a score.”
Oh, great! I could definitely have waited until Monday for that news. What am I supposed to do now?
High school interns at Sanford-Burnham’s Lake Nona campus, with their mentors Greg Roth (right), John Shelley (center), Sheila Collins (front row), and Darrin Kuystermans (left)
As summer begins, books get shelved and schools close, but for many teens and young adults, leaving the classroom doesn’t mean learning stops. On the contrary, they pursue internships that allow them to advance their education in a hands-on way, often taking steps toward a career.
Sanford-Burnham opens its doors to a large number of interns, at various stages of their education, throughout the year, but summer is an especially busy time. The enthusiastic voices of young people, some making their own scientific discoveries for the first time, emanate through the hallways, reminding everyone how exciting science can be.
Last week, Sanford-Burnham at Lake Nona in Orlando welcomed five students from area high schools including Trinity Preparatory School and Seminole High School. Forty students participating in a Junior Achievement summer program visited the institute to learn about medical research career paths. Each one is paired with a mentor in a research laboratory or the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics for two to four weeks. Eight college interns will soon be arriving as well. Throughout the summer, a number of aspiring scientists will be scattered throughout the Institute’s La Jolla laboratories for anywhere from one week to the entire summer.
The U.S. Ignite Initiative will help Sanford-Burnham process large amounts of data faster and more efficiently
The White House yesterday announced a new initiative aimed at connecting—and better utilizing—super-fast Internet networks across the country. The initiative, called U.S. Ignite, is intended to encourage a new technology boom by bringing together more than 100 groups, from local communities to academic researcher centers, to develop new approaches to taking advantage of networks that run 100 times faster than today’s Internet. Orlando’s Lake Nona community, home to Medical City and Sanford-Burnham’s Florida site, is one of the groups in the partnership.
The U.S. Ignite initiative is designed to link university campuses, research networks, and broadband cities by leveraging previous investments in network infrastructure. It will also encourage experimentation on public sector applications and services and initiate public-private partnerships between industry, foundations, and community partners.
We’re pleased to announce that two of the Institute’s publications recently received Hermes Creative Awards from the Association of Marketing and Communications Professionals.
Sanfordburnham.org, the Institute’s new external website that just launched in January, won the gold award for overall website. (The site’s user experience was designed by Digital Telepathy and it was developed by Neudesic.) The March 2012 issue of our donor newsletter, Portal, won the gold award for writing.
Thank you to all of our visitors, readers, and contributors!
On Memorial Day, members of our military—including those who have sacrificed their lives or have returned to us with injuries or illness—will receive much-deserved thanks and recognition. Whether you attend a parade, observe a moment of silence for those lost, or simply shake a soldier’s hand and say, “thank you,” you will find your way of expressing your gratitude. At Sanford-Burnham, we support the U.S. armed services by doing what we do best: science.
Sanford-Burnham’s headquarters in San Diego County place it in the midst of one of the largest active duty military populations in the country and the largest concentration of soldiers wounded in combat. Additionally, both states where Sanford-Burnham has locations, California and Florida, are among those with the largest populations of veterans. So the men and women who defend us are always on our minds. In honor of Memorial Day weekend, we have chosen to highlight some of the ways we strive to defend them in return.
John Reed (right) interviews Eric Topol in the latest "Medscape One-on-One" episode
In the latest episode of Medscape One-on-One, Sanford-Burnham CEO John Reed, M.D., Ph.D. interviews Eric Topol, M.D., author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine, about how technology is changing medicine, making diagnosis and treatment faster, better, and more accurate. In his book, Topol, chief academic officer of Scripps Health and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, discusses this digital revolution and how it can change medicine for the better—but only if we let it or if we have the will to do it.
Click here to watch the full interview or read the transcript.
Dr. John P. Holdren tours Sanford-Burnham's Lake Nona site
We’re always thrilled to have public officials visit our facilities in California and Florida, but last Friday was an especially exciting day for scientists and staff at Sanford-Burnham’s Lake Nona campus in Orlando, Fla. Dr. John P. Holdren, advisor to President Barack Obama, toured Orlando’s Medical City and spent time at the Sanford-Burnham site to learn about the promising research that is being conducted in our Diabetes and Obesity Research Center.
Dr. Holdren is assistant to President Obama for science and technology, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Congress established the OSTP in 1976 to advise the President and others within the Executive Office of the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs. The OSTP also makes recommendations on the annual NIH budget.
Beaker is 2 years old today!
On March 24, 2010, we published the very first blog post here on Beaker. It was about the excitement surrounding the generous $50 million gift from T. Denny Sanford that resulted in our name change from Burnham Institute for Medical Research to Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute—quite a milestone in the Institute’s history.
Since then, we have published 384 posts (an average of one post every 1.9 days!) by 17 different bloggers on subjects ranging from autophagy to zebrafish that make up 29 categories, including scientific topics as well as news about our people and events. These posts have racked up an impressive 397,653 page views by 231,347 unique visitors.
Readers of Beaker often continue the conversation with us by following us on Facebook and Twitter, and in turn, those outlets lead more readers to discover Beaker. For example, our Twitter profile @SanfordBurnham has grown from 175 to 1,418 followers and @SBI_Events has skyrocketed from 69 to 1,988 followers. Beaker posts have also made appearances in the San Diego Union-Tribune, La Jolla Light, ResearchBlogging.org, Nature’s ConferenceCast blog, and Florida Biotechnology News.
Thank you to all of our readers, fans, and followers! We look forward to connecting with you for many more years to come.
In the meantime, please enjoy reading (or re-reading) the top 10 most-read Beaker blog posts of all time:
NIH funding is crucial for medical research
When Sanford-Burnham CEO John Reed, M.D., Ph.D. traveled to Washington, D.C., in early February, he attended a variety of Capitol Hill briefings to discuss the importance of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for medical research. He pointed out that NIH grants account for approximately 80 percent of all funding for non-profit medical research institutions in the United States, such as Sanford-Burnham.
NIH grants contribute to the ultimate goal of developing new treatments for diseases and improving the quality of life for millions of Americans and people worldwide. The research supported by these grants also generates U.S. patents that fuel the biotechnology industry and creates thousands of jobs across the nation. NIH funding supports the training of our biomedical research workforce and strengthens the foundation of a 21st century knowledge-based economy.
