Monday morning saw me going to visit some posters I had looked up prior to the meeting. While I was interested in the topics of these posters I had an ulterior motive for going to see them. As you know I'm in the final stages of my PhD and am seriously thinking about what will come next. In July this year I attended an ethics conference and heard a researcher from Stanford give two of the talks. I approached him midway through the conference and asked, I don't know how I was so bold, if he taking any postdocs within the next year. We chatted and I learned that he runs one of the only labs in the US that does animal welfare research. I was very surprised by this and unfortunately he needed a postdoc to start immediately which, of course wouldn't be possible for me. Anyway, in preparing for Neuroscience I looked him up and saw that he was named on several posters. So I wanted to talk with his students and see what he was like to work with from a student's perspective. I was able to meet several of his students and one of his colleagues. He wasn't at the meeting but they encouraged me to apply for a postdoc when I'm done with my program. I was also reassured that he wasn't a crazy person which is what I really wanted to know. :)
Next I attended a panel session on how to effectively communicate your science to a variety of audiences. Scientists get such a bad rap for not being able to convey their research to non-experts, that is the public. However, I would argue that scientists have trouble conveying their research to anyone, scientist or not, who is not an expert in that particular field. I found myself getting frustrated with people drawing very hard lines in the sand between scientists and non scientists. Just because I'm a scientist doesn't mean I automatically have the upper hand when it comes to understanding some aspect of science. I may be just as lost as someone who is not a scientist. And that ends my diatribe. Anyway, I've attended workshops on this very topic but found some interesting ideas for ways to convey science and it really got me thinking about "audience". Each one requires a different explanation making effective communication even more challenging!
After that I attended a special lecture about spinal cord injury. At this point I should've been walking around and not trying to wrap my head around a topic that I know nothing about. So it was mostly lost on me. Oh well. :)
My last session of the day was a symposium on exercise and the brain. Very interesting and more accessible than the spinal cord injury talk. :) When this session finished up I made arrangements to meet up with Meredith again for dinner. We had a great time chatting over big salads. I told her all about my adventures collecting data for Wellington Zoo. She's a fan of cats so those stories were a big hit.
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