Introverted scientist meets networking 👋
New Year greetings to you!
To this day, the mere thought of going to a conference makes my heart rate go up.
And to my introverted self's dismay, gone are the days when scientists were seen as eccentric types who should be left alone to do their own work.
Nowadays, collaboration and networking are the key to success.
Don't get me wrong, there are aspects of going to conferences that I love. You can learn so much in a short time—it's like downing a triple shot espresso of scientific knowledge.
But early on in my career it felt exhausting and intimidating to put myself out there, especially when I saw name tags stating job titles like "Director" or "R&D Lead."
It wasn't until I found myself sitting next to a speaker with a high-profile name tag on the journey home from a conference that my perspective shifted.
I plucked up the courage to say hello, and we had a great chat. It turned out that despite years of experience in the field, he, too, sometimes felt apprehensive about networking.
He also thought job titles were an unnecessary barrier that limited the type of connections he could make, and he preferred conferences where they weren't shown.
Sharing that moment of vulnerability made me realize that no matter how senior the name tag, we all experience the same anxieties, and networking doesn't have to be as daunting as it appears to be.
While I'll probably never love it, if I hadn't pushed myself to start that conversation, I'd be much less at peace with that fact.
'Til the next one!
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Why we loved it: It's great to see such a cool and important clinical application of Design of Experiments—and we promise we're not just saying that because the folks at GSK used Synthace DOE in combination with SPT Labtech 's dragonfly to make it happen.
They optimized a multicellular 2D monolayer model for cardiovascular toxicity testing, which replicates the complex interactions among different cell types in the heart, and doesn't suffer from the same throughput and cost limitations of 3D hPSC-derived models.
These interactions, which aren't represented in single cell cardiomyocyte models, can result in cardiotoxic effects being missed and promising drug candidates failing at the last stages of drug development.
Why we loved it: They say time heals all wounds—an expression that this study indicates doesn't just apply to mental wounds, but physical ones, too.
It found that wounds healed faster in participants who believed that more time had passed, compared to those who believed that less time had passed.
A fascinating finding, showing just how much our psychological state, including our perceptions and beliefs, can affect physiological outcomes.
Why we loved it: What if we could detect multiple fatal cancer types at an earlier stage, and make the diagnostic tests less invasive?
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About Synthace
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Scientists Luci and Fatima keep you posted on DOE, lab automation, plus all things current and future-facing in life sciences R&D. No frills. Only the important bits.