'Meet the Speaker' : External Seminar Series

The Centre for Carrdiovascular Science  invites a different external academic to present their research to the Centre every second week. Each speaker also gives half an hour of their time after their seminar for a 'Meet the Speaker' session, talking to early career researchers (ECRs) including MSc students, PhD students, postdoctoral and technical staff. Last year we were joined by researchers from the UK, Europe, Oceania and from North America. Normally, we spent 30 minutes discussing the speaker’s career to date, their reflections and advice on science, career opportunity and significant topics of the day. The sessions give ECRs the chance to learn from senior academics and build soft skills such as networking. One member of the department even found their next position through the session!

We look forward to inviting you to more sessions this year but in the meantime, here are some of our highlights from last year.

The ECR meet the speaker sessions are a unique opportunity to openly receive unsolicited advice from academics at the top of their game, and potentially secure a transatlantic post doc position! This was the fortunate case for me after co-hosting Prof Calum MacRae’s CVS seminar last September. During the informal chat we had a fruitful and stimulating discussion about scientific careers in Boston (USA) and what it takes to become an established academic. It was during this session that he mentioned having a post doc position available, which acted as a natural catalyst for a 1-to-1 conversation later. As tempting as it might be for ECRs, don’t shy away from getting involved in these sessions, you never know where they might take you! 

 Aryan Kaveh

In November, we had the pleasure of picking Onno Meijer’s brain during the post-seminar ECR session. Not only is Onno Meijer professor in neuroendocrinology of corticosteroids at Leiden University in the Netherlands, he also is a board member of the Nuclear Receptor Research Network, and additionally of a consortium of Dutch stress-researchers (StressNL). Prof Meijer shared his experiences working as a postdoc at UCSF, which led us to discuss the cultural differences between working in academia in the US versus Europe. Since many of his current projects involve testing steroids developed in pharmaceutical companies, he also provided us with interesting insights into the advantages of building collaborations outside of academia. 

For me personally, having met Prof Meijer in person during my PhD studies, the ECR meet-the-speaker session was a perfect way of ‘keeping in touch’. Because of this experience and many others, my first term as postdoc representative of the seminar committee has really opened my eyes to how useful these informal interactions can be for postdocs. Since postdocs often work under relatively short contracts, the ECR sessions really are a great way to widen and sustain your professional network, and perhaps secure your next position. Thus, postdocs of CVS, take some time out of your busy schedules every now and then, and meet-the-speaker!

Ineke Luijten

This year we were joined by Dr Merry Lindsey (@merrylindseyphd) from the University of Nebraska Medical Centre and she is the Editor-in-Chief of American Journal of Physiology – Heart and Circulatory Physiology. She was the first speaker of the autumn academic term and an exciting start! We discussed her own research in wound healing after a heart attack and her positive experiences as a senior academic in the USA. Of most interest to me was her discussion about AJP-Heart and her role as an editor. I’d never met an editor before and while I knew of their importance to research, I didn’t know anything about their day-to-day job and what challenges they faced. It was good hear her advice about publishing and what I really need to do to get my PhD published!

Greg Sutton

In October, we welcomed Professor Robert Star to the CVS online “Meet the speaker” session. Professor Star is the director of the Division of Kidney, Urologic, and Hematologic Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Chief of the Renal Diagnostics and Therapeutics Unit. After an interesting talk regarding the last innovations in Nephrology, Professor Star shared with us some useful advice regarding the most important qualities for a researcher and how to highlight them. He pointed out the importance of curiosity and passion as foundations of a scientific career and he discussed with us the role of collaborations and of exploring new topics and fields. As a PhD student at the beginning of her career I think that hearing the experience and the suggestions of Professor Star was extremely motivating!

Eleonora Mameli