Team members from Mark2Cure, a project of Associate Professor Andrew Su’s lab at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), will help launch the inaugural U.S. Citizen Science Day with an exposition on Saturday, April 16, showcasing local initiatives that seek the public’s involvement.
Held from 10 AM to 2 PM at the La Lolla/Riford Public Library, the free event will feature citizen science projects including the Urban Tide Initiative, Cabrillo National Monument Bioblitz, San Diego River Foundation, Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s Stand Up for Science, Ocean Sanctuaries, Surfrider and San Diego Wet lab group.
The Su lab’s Mark2Cure project enlists non-scientist volunteers to curate biomedical literature, identifying connections between key pieces of information to help point the way to new therapies for rare but devastating diseases. See the Mar2Cure website for more information.
TSRI Professor David Millar is the next featured speaker in the Scripps California Faculty Lecture Series with his talk, “Visualizing Protein Action, One Molecule at a Time,” on Wednesday, April 13. The lecture will begin at 5 PM in the Timken Amphitheater, Green Hospital. A reception will follow in the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Building, first floor.
For further information, see Millar’s Faculty Lecture Series webpage. The series is supported by an endowment from the Cochrane-Cartan families, established by TSRI Professor Emeritus Charles G. Cochrane.
Registration is now open for April workshops in the Spring 2016 Funding Fest, an annual training series for postdoctoral fellows and graduate students presented by the Torrey Pines Training Consortium, a collaboration of TSRI, the Salk Institute, Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and University of California, San Diego.
Finding Your Voice: How to be an Advocate for Science
Scheduled for Thursday, April 7, from 10 to 11 AM, this session will feature Yvette Seger, director of science policy at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland, presenting avenues and resources researchers can employ to advocate for research funding. The session will be held at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, building 12 auditorium. Register online.
Grant Writing 101
TSRI faculty members Luc Teyton, Ashok Deniz and Bruce Torbett will discuss grant opportunities, specific elements of grant proposals, the review process and tips for writing effective grants at this workshop, scheduled for Tuesday, April 19, from 1 to 2:30 PM in the TSRI Committee Lecture Hall, Skaggs Institute/Molecular Biology building, 2nd floor, room 220. Register online.
Navigating the NIH: Strategies for Identifying Your Target Audience
Salk Institute Staff Scientist Michael Nunn and Grant Writer David O’Keefe will provide strategies to select the National Institutes of Health (NIH) study sections and to translate research plans into funded proposals. Although geared toward NIH proposals (R01, K99, F32), concepts will be applicable to a wide range of funding mechanisms and granting agencies. Scheduled for Tuesday, April 19, 3 to 5 PM, the workshop will be held in the Salk Institute Trustees room. Register online.
A bicoastal workshop, “Effective Scientific Writing: Structuring Your Research Paper,” will be held Monday, April 11, from 12:30 to 2:30 PM Pacific time, on the Scripps California campus and broadcast live, from 3:30 to 5:30 PM Eastern time, to the Florida campus.
Conducted by internationally known author and speaker Jean-luc Doumont, the session will cover how to structure research papers, dissertations and other reports to attract readers’ attention and facilitate navigation through the material.
Designed for postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, the workshop is scheduled in the Beckman building’s Keck amphitheater in California and room B158 in Florida. Reservations are required.
With the recent tragic events in Brussels, Ankara, Istanbul and Lahore, and the crises in Syria, Sudan and so many other parts of the world, it’s easy to feel powerless to help or unable to ease the stress over the difficult news, particularly so for those at TSRI who have family and friends in these regions. In the latest of her “Ten Tips” series, Daphne Lurie, director of TSRI’s Counseling and Psychological Services department, offers suggestions to help cope and feel useful at these times.
Her recommendations include:
A complete list of “Ten Tips For Coping with Disaster” is available on the counseling office website. For information on other resources offered by Counseling and Psychological Services to the Scripps community on both the California and Florida campuses, visit the department’s website.
A French pastry and baked goods sale to help fund a memorial in honor of the late Kerri Anne Mowen, will be held on Wednesday, April 6, beginning at 8 AM at the entrance to the Immunology building.
The sale will offer such sweet treats as bavarois, brioches, cannellés, choux à la crème, crèpes, galettes au sucre, gâteaux au chocolat, gâteaux de savoie, macarons, madeleines, meringues, tartes aux pommes and more. The bakers for the event are: Tanya Blane, Violaine Delorme, Celine DerMardirossian, Sandra Encalada, Nathalie Franc, Amanda Gavin, Elise Landais, Daphne Lurie, Kim Masuda, Mishelle McClanahan-Shinn, David Nemazee, Stephanie Rigaud, Amanda Roberts and Judy Valecko.
Proceeds will be donated to TSRI's Kerri Mowen Memorial Fellowship; direct contributions to the fund are also welcome.
Some 300 San Diego-area hospitals depend on blood donations every day. To help meet this need, ScrippAssists is holding a San Diego Blood Bank (SDBB) blood drive on the California campus, on Thursday, April 14, from 9 AM to 2:30 PM.
Donors are asked to make an appointment on the SDBB website. Walk-in donors will be welcomed. Guidelines and eligibility requirements are also listed on the blood bank website. Donors should bring photo identification, a record of medications they currently take and a list of locations visited outside the United States in the past three years.
The SDBB bloodmobile will be located in the parking lot adjacent to the Skaggs/MBB building, 10596 N. Torrey Pines Road. All donors will automatically be entered into a prize raffle. For further information on the blood drive, contact project coordinator Leslie Madden at lmadden@scripps.edu.
The La Jolla Music Society’s Discovery Series will present Hungarian cellist István Várdai, winner of several international music prizes, on Sunday, April 17, 3 PM. Accompanied by pianist Julien Quentin, Várdai will perform works by Mendelssohn, Rachmaninoff and Dvořák as well as the Brahms Sonata for Cello in F Major. For additional ticket and program information, visit the society’s website
The Auditorium at TSRI is located at 10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive, San Diego 92121.
News&Views will take a break for Spring on Monday, April 11. Regular publication will resume with the April 18 issue.
Send comments to: mikaono[at]scripps.edu