New years, Jewish, Chinese or Gregorian, are all about making resolutions. Mark the occasion, and do better in the time remaining to you.
Nothing full-fleshed has actually made its appearance, aside from vowing to get to bed far earlier.
This blog was going to be the one where I write about science, where I was going to try to conduct a sort of journal club, or at least talk about specific aspects of doing research in France. The other one was going to continue to be the little things, the complaints about writing projects for grants and management issues with my co-workers and the sillier stuff I come across and thought I would share.
It is not working out like that. I don’t want to write a review article every week for a blog. I’d love to read one. But when I start on a review, especially in a subject I don’t know, one thing leads to another. And another and another. Part II of the previous entry is still nebulous in my mind, and I didn’t even get to the article that I meant to write about in the first place, yet! GrrlScientist is amazing in that respect.
I am currently nursing a cuppa at the outrageously priced Holiday Inn Montparnasse, where I got coaxed to spend the night in anticipation of the meeting I will attend in an hour. This meeting has brought together partners and the scientific advisory committee of DGEmap , a European Design Study with the intention of pursing avenues in human embryo research.
From the website:
[The committee] draws on an international perspective to advise on the development of a future research infrastructure and to evaluate the overall implementation of the project including the research results, training, dissemination and exploitation and the required reports to the Commission.
All this European stuff is put together in such language. I’m learning. Anyhow, I am here as part of the “future infrastructure” side of things, and have a short presentation of our research and vision for a new European collaborative resource.
Tomorrow, the rest of a different Scientific Committee and I will preside over the 4th edition of the Congres Jeunes Chercheurs. This is something we young’uns working as permanent researchers put together for the even-younger researchers at Necker, and each year we decide to open up to more candidates from other Parisian institutions: Institut Pasteur, Institut Cochin… Programme here. The originality of this conference is that we have sponsors and bribe people to attend and listen to talks in wildly different areas of biomedical sciences; there are some serious cash prizes. That will take up all day, and I will crash at my absent in-law’s apartment and head to the airport early Saturday morning.
So, little research, yet it’s all about doing research.
No one can stay on science for every post. That’s difficult. Besides, there is a lot more than science to a scientist’s day, right? Like this conference. How did it go, by the way? I took a look at the program for Congres Jeunes Chercheurs. Some of the talk titles were in French, most were in English. How are most of the conferences you attend run? In English or in French? Or both? Is everyone bi-lingual?
Back and in touch via the Internet for the brief time before I turn in early, so as to wake up in time for tomorrow morning’s flight.
The conference was essentially in French, although many of the slides were in English. One Italian postdoc presented verbally in English. The posters, many of which are recycled from summer conferences, tend to be in English but the young people in front of them are generally happier to talk about their work in French.
The conference was delightful, though I usually fade by about 4PM. The presentations were of very high quality, though by necessity from the career stage of the presenters, more technical than when it’s done by heads-of-lab. Much of the work had been published between abstract submission time last spring and now, and in very respectable journals.
There were a couple of organizational bugs, like having to run out for plastic cups at the end when we wanted to have the final reception, although someone had thought to bring a corkscrew. Then I went across the street (we were at the medical school at Odeon) and saw Mamma Mia!
Heather, my previous job was all about ‘facilitating science’.. while my current one is about getting the results out, I guess. All I can say is ‘someone has to do it’, and it sounds as if the meetings/conferences/projects you’re involved in are very worthwhile, which is great! Best thing when something comes together, plastic cups ready or not.