I began my PhD project at the Charité Institute shortly after moving to Berlin in the end of April of this year. Unfortunately, I had what I would qualify as a bit of a rough start. I had moved to another country before a few years ago already and thus thought I had an understanding of what to expect, but I underestimated how much of a challenge not being fluent in the language was going to be, especially with regard to finding a place to live. Additionally, I had to learn to perform long and complicated experiments unlike anything I had done previously. This, combined with a host of administrative issues, meant that the first few months of my PhD project were more difficult than anticipated. And although luckily these issues did end up slowly but surely resolving themselves, the ALLODD workshop in Barcelona was still fortuitously timed. The change of pace, the interesting lectures and especially the opportunity to finally meeting my fellow ESRs from the program in person for the first time (as well as a number of the PIs) as I was unfortunately unable to attend the first workshop meeting in Vienna physically. The setup also facilitated networking, which I can otherwise find a bit daunting. I was especially reminded of how interesting the field of GPCRs can be, both in academia and in the industry, and this comforted me in my decision to do a PhD centering on the study of the GPCR MC3R was indeed the right choice for me.
Furthermore, MC3R in particular seems to be on the rise in terms of the interest accorded to it by the scientific community. Indeed, it has been considered in the past to have a redundant role to its relative MC4R due to both having loss of function mutations connected to obesity. However, as it turns out the phenotype of these mutations for MC3R, unlike MC4R, includes an increase of the fat mass compared to lean mass as well as the mice models having trouble putting weight back after a period of restricted feeding. Moreover, several studies have also shown that MC3R variants in both mice and human patients result in the late onset of puberty and abnormal menstrual cycles, as well as a lowered expression of several genes in the circadian rhythm. Despite these observations of how MC3R mutants affect organisms’ phenotype, information regarding the intracellular trafficking of MC3R is unfortunately lacking due to commercially available MC3R antibodies being non-specific in their binding. This makes the study of MC3R, specifically of its structure and its ligand binding affinity, particularly fascinating as it could very well elucidate some of the mystery that still surround this protein’s function, and I hope I will be able to take steps towards doing so in the coming months. I look forward to continuing improving my skills and pursuing my career both at the Charité Institute and within the ALLODD program.
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Perseverance, Hardwork, Deadlines “What do you want to be when you grow up?” We all get this question several times on the way to becoming an adolescent. Every kid projects themselves in their dream occupation: doctor, engineer, teacher, you name it and you hear some saying “I want to save the world” in an assertive manner, quite heroic. Well, for some of them that bold statement remains as a childish spark and fades away but for others, it even gets stronger and turns into a driving force to make them strive for making the world a better place. Oh, if you expected the story to go as “… and I was that kid” I must say you´d be quite wrong. I was an ordinary kid with decent dreams, if you had asked me that question at the time, probably you would have heard me saying “a teacher” or “a cook”, but I was always fascinated by the idea of contributing to scientific advancement that will make a remarkable change in people’s lives. This idea flourished as time went by and overpowered my childhood dreams. That’s how I found myself studying chemistry at the university, that’s why I got out of my comfort zone and moved to Belgium later on and last but not least, that's how the course of events made me distort my comfort zone once again, go for an adventure blindly and move to another country and voilà here I am, participating in the ALLODD program, doing a PhD in Spain. When I first got out of my small world in Turkey, little did I know that it could be quite challenging. Though, what I was feeling was excitement, more than being afraid of the unknown. Not knowing how things are being handled, where to go for certain bureaucratic procedures, not to mention the language issues coming along with not knowing the local language (which is a major problem on its own and yeah English is not always enough to save the day) … When you move to a new country, these are all tough stuff you need to go through every day until you get to the point where you pretty much learn how to get your way. After living in Belgium for 3 years, give or take, I reached a point where I felt comfortable living there. Though, Belgium still achieves to surprise me every now and then. When it was time to go back to Turkey after my master studies, I was at the point where I needed a fresh start and when I found this great opportunity in Spain, I told myself to go for it. Even though I had never been to Spain before, I was pretty confident that once again, going through all of these struggling & adapting steps of living in another country wouldn’t be scary at all. More challenges, bring ‘em on! Though there was one ‘tiny’ detail that I didn’t anticipate at the time: the fact that I had forgotten how complicated the visa procedure might be for a non-European person. Although I showed up at the embassy with every possible document that could’ve been asked for (do not underestimate how messy it can get at this stage), it took me 4 months to finally obtain the visa and at the end I bought my ticket from Istanbul to Barcelona, but there was one more obstacle on the way. It was March and it was the coldest time of the last 50 years in Istanbul, snowing like hell. Yeap you guessed it right, I had to postpone my flight due to the unexpected weather conditions. Long story short, I managed to move to Barcelona in mid-March. Shortly after, two new languages were introduced to my brain: Spanish and Catalan and I found myself dealing with the Spanish real estate world and bureaucracy again. Meanwhile I was trying to have a grasp on my PhD project. Two days after the official starting date, I participated in the first ALLODD event in Vienna. I was still trying to make sense of everything since my life changed at a pace faster than I was able to get adapted to. Though it didn’t stress me out, quite the opposite actually, I liked the feeling of a fresh start. Fast-forward to June, I was only involved in the program for 2 months and there were 4 conferences awaiting me. There I was as a rookie PhD student preparing presentations and posters without having any results to show, taking part in organizing a conference, getting prepared to welcome all the ALLODD members in Barcelona, the city that I could call home already. If I had to summarize that period with one word, I’d choose ‘deadlines’. Deadlines was the name of the game basically. It was extremely hectic, but also so satisfactory when I could cross one more item off the to-do list. At the end, after contributing to the organization of a successful event, attending to inspirational conferences where I got the chance to show my work (or let’s say what’s yet to be achieved with my project), meeting new people from all around the world, learning more about different fields, techniques, the feeling I had the most is euphoria.
Things never go as planned, some small tasks that are expected to be completed in a short period of time might fail even at the initial step, hence frustration is inevitable, but it is a part of the job, isn’t it? Nevertheless, the best thing to do is to sit tight and enjoy the ride (without getting too laid back, though).
I am really grateful for where I am now despite all the errors with my calculations, upcoming deadlines and such. I have no clue about what the future holds but whatever that is yet to come, I am impatiently waiting for it and ready to face it and embrace it (Hmm, I wonder if I spoke too soon, well time will tell, I suppose). I have always enjoyed going to conferences - hearing about others' research, showing my work and participating in scientific discussions and networking events. Still, I didn't realize quite how much planning it takes to organize such an event until June this year when the ALLODD 1st Training School & Networking Meeting took place in Barcelona, Spain. As prof. Xavier Barril’s ALLODD ESR, I had the chance to be part of the organization of the Barcelona meeting events - the Allosterism & Drug Discovery Conference and the ALLODD Training School. Being on the organizational team, I learned all about the little details of scientific meetings and experienced a real organizational process - from having a well-planned program and interesting speakers to thinking about coffee breaks and networking events; from counting numbers and budgets to sending organizational emails to participants. After successfully going through the ups and downs of conference organization, I decided to prepare myself a list of important points on how to plan scientific events. Here are my 7 tips for future conference organization:
My PhD experience as part of the ALLODD network and project started some days before my official working day in late January 2022. Just a few days before, I came to explore the city and start adjusting myself to it. The beautiful and romantic atmosphere, the landscapes that the city of Budapest allows you to appreciate are overwhelming. I had never been in this city before, but I felt not so far from home, maybe this was also due to some companion of trip in the first days, but this is another story. What I would like to focus on is my 6th month period spend here as a PhD student referring to how we perceive time, as someone once said “a year can be the longest or the shortest of your life” (even though we are talking about a half a year this time). The very first working day seems to be so far now but at the same time these full 6 months filled with tasks and events have passed so fast that it doesn’t really feel like half a year. I remember the first day to be caught by the beauty of the building I am currently working in, and the campus surrounding it: I was excited to start this new adventure. Having travelled for several Erasmus projects I took part in, I understood that just after colleagues and network for me the workplace contributes to appreciate what I do. Entering the lab for the first time I felt welcomed, one of my supervisors here introduced me to the group, and my meeting with lab colleagues was making me think glad and happy. This first impression turned into something real the following days when starting to work. I can say that even though at the start can be a little shy talking with new people everyone showed to be welcoming and available anytime into answer you and dedicate you part of their time and this I really appreciate, and I thank them for it. The next day the work officially started: a project on HDAC8 inhibitors which revealed to be not as easy as predictable. The challenges I believe are those who shape us or shape our thoughts and if we can find a way of learning from that we maybe really could get to reach something good for our own personal and professional growth. Not just challenges but also having the chance to share and learn from more expert figures is something really important and which in my opinion can really drive the scientific progress. This is what I feel getting through the ALLODD network, to be driven somehow in what we do, which of course is not just internationally expressed but also related to the single labs. That said, so the ups and down of research already made their way toward me, but I liked it and I like the challenges, so I started giving myself to it in order to find solutions to the problems and I think several teachings came to my way. As the first months passed by university events and responsibilities started to approach: exams courses and dates to establish, educational activities, the first meeting in Vienna for the ALLODD project together with some other small tasks, there was little time for stalling! I was thrilled at doing things, completing tasks and assuming responsibilities and meeting other ESRs like me extending our experiences and connections throughout national borders. From my point of view I could particularly appreciate the first ALLODD meeting cause it allowed us to introduce ourselves and while starting creating a network it give us the opportunity to get to know the people taking part in it, have some practical and also psychological training, lectures and experience whose lessons I will never forget and which I believe were really good to introduce as a start point in the first period of our PhD. I liked we had the chance to get to know more about the project, the scheduled events and exchange periods and other Professor and researcher of the ALLODD network, listen to their ideas and experiences, and of course it was also pretty nice to had a walking tour in the city! Following this just other 3 months have passed filled with new deadlines, new project starting, webinars, reports, the journal clubs, and a new event from the ALLODD was already on the way: the Barcelona workshop. Two days of conference and three spent between presenting our work, training, and experiencing other scientists’ work and realities. Everything was well planned and organized, and we also had the chance to meet and live a little the city together with the other group members. It felt particularly intriguing even to get somehow in touch with other representatives and partners of the consortium through their intervenes and in break times and to deepen some concepts and approaches, and the contrast of previous and new research approach or strategies, all this especially well highlighted in the round tables. So far, I am so glad to be part of this consortium I am happy I will have the chance to travel and exchange with the industrial world which I never experienced until now and have taken part to these events. It is nice to have the chance to get to know people from different background working together and share experiences and goals towards the common target which is allostery. I hope and I am sure our contribution in this will be important, and that the resources a network and in particular this network can bring will come up useful for understanding and exploring allostery. I am looking forward to other events and opportunity that this founded project will allow us to experience.
On February 2022, I officially joined the MSCA – ITN – ALLODD as an early-stage researcher (ESR) at Merck Healthcare KGaA (Darmstadt, Germany). MSCA – ITN program aims to promote international and interdisciplinary collaboration. As part of this training program, we first met in Vienna in April; you can find some blogposts below. In today´s blogpost, I would like to talk about the 1st training school & Networking meeting which was held in Barcelona. As covid restrictions were slightly less important than in Vienna, this workshop was the opportunity for most of the consortium members to attend in-person. The workshop started with a 2-day conference focusing on allostery in drug discovery with various speakers working both in industry and academia and sharing different perspectives of the topic. The first lecture was held by Dr. Jean-Pierre Changeux, the world-known scientist who described the concept of allostery in 1965. One of Jean-Pierre´s key message was serendipity: an unplanned fortunate discovery (like penicillin). Although, his advice was also to do not misinterpret data, for example receptor dimerization should always be taken in account. I hope I will be as quick-witted as he is at 86 years old ! The third day was dedicated to the presentation of our research project. I really enjoy having some more description and going a bit more into details and objectives of each PhD project. Although I am the only ESR working on new biological entities (NBE), the so-called antibodies-derived “nanobodies” gained attendees´ attention. The industry vs academia perspectives monopolized once again our conversation as we also discussed about our career plan. As I always have been working in industry, become a Scientist in a pharmaceutical company is a natural move for me, I have never thought about changing my career plan. Nevertheless, during our PhD we are going to acquire several skills that will be useful and valuable for a broad range of career plans outside R&D (marketing, venture, …). Furthermore, the application area is neither blocked by our PhD project, Dr. J.P. Changeux studied marine biology and then dedicated all his life to neurobiology and enzymology. My advice will be: learn; read as much as you can, try to deeply understand the concept, do not hesitate to ask questions and share your knowledge. During this workshop, we also had the opportunity to meet other PhD students working also on allostery. This was very valuable for me as I realized the power of the MSCA ITN program: “Connecting knowledge to grow a network− growing a network to explore/share knowledge” as we said in Vienna. Especially for me, being an industrial PhD student, having many interactions with the academic world and with people all over Europe working on the same topic will for sure empower my work. In addition, as an ESR I must perform three secondments that will not only allow me to adapt to a new country but also to learn new technics and participate to this collaborative project. This workshop was also an overview of the upcoming months as I will spend 3 months in beautiful Barcelona, working on FRET assays with Prof. Carles Curutchet. To conclude, I am delighted to have joined such a collaborative network and I am looking forward to seeing every member of the ALLODD consortium. Next workshop will be co-organized by the University of Strasbourg and Merck Healthcare KGaA, stay tuned. Starting a PhD, most students are technically well-prepared for conducting research. Freshly graduated from Master programs, we are used to quickly grasp the theoretical backgrounds of different fields, translate them into experiments, and prepare fancy slides for presentation. Yet, what happens in-between, and after reading papers, pipetting colorless liquids, or writing code is not very well covered by lectures and practical courses. Despite early insight into academic and industrial working environments through internships and lab rotations, many potential pitfalls, and strategies to deal with them are only encountered, when already knee-deep into a situation that requires certain experience to handle. Needless to say, we as PhD students of the ALLODD ITN are in an especially challenging and equally exciting position, as we are not only facing a behemoth of scientific work but also have to adapt to different countries, cultures, and working environments, within a variety of events and secondments. On top of that, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on most parts of our social and academic life, which was often substituted by virtual solutions, leaving many of us isolated. Of course, the possibility of online participation simplified many aspects, as for example not having to travel and doing other things in parallel while listening to talks. However, meeting someone through a monitor after repeatedly asking for visual and auditory functionality often left a weird, unnatural feeling, making fruitful networking even harder. Many would also describe the months of virtual meetings as mentally exhausting – a feeling that has also been coined ‘Zoom fatigue’ (Yes, that is a real thing. You can read more about ‘Zoom fatigue’ here). In an attempt to escape the virtual void of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, almost all members of the ALLODD ITN gathered in person in Vienna for the first Workshop & PhD Induction Course. With its tight schedule of seminars spiked with coffee breaks, lunch, and dinner, the workshop left no space for ‘Zoom fatigue’. Apart from the networking and scientific exchange, the setting between original Viennese ‘Figlmüller Schnitzel’, a piece of breaded meat that is famous for being larger than the plate it is served on, and ‘Stiegl’ beer, allowed us to meet each other under natural, non-virtual circumstances. For me, this natural setting significantly simplified building connections; connections that most definitely facilitate collaboration and promote a comfortable working atmosphere, which in turn, is necessary when working together as closely as required within the ITN. Connecting and networking aside, the workshop also featured seminars that provided tools for communicating and personally dealing with conflict and failure, which, as noted in the beginning of this blog, are often not part of common university curricula. Yet, these tools can be considered pivotal strategies for being professionally and personally successful along the way and after our PhD studies. The keywords that were central in one of the seminars that I would like to highlight here, are work-life balance and resilience. The point that struck me most, mainly because I never thought about it this way, is that a healthy work-life balance and resilience are not only impaired by external stress factors such as harsh deadlines and scientific drawbacks but rather by our own reaction to those factors. These reactions are often characterized as perpetuum mobile-like loops that are built up by negative thoughts that lead to emotions and physical sensations that we cope with by quick fixes or so called ‘band aids’, whose negative consequences in turn lead to new negative emotions. The important point here is that realizing what the drivers of those loops are, enables us to break them or even rewire them to create positive loops. Learning this at the very beginning of our PhD studies that are paved with potential stress factors, is undoubtedly a valuable lesson that I can only recommend spending time on as early as possible.
As the pandemic seems to calm down, at least for now, I am certain that we are lucky to escape the tiredness of staring into our monitors displaying windows of our favorite video conferencing software again and, are able to meet in person for the next consortium event in Barcelona in June. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this blog post and the event in Vienna as much as I did! In October 2021, I embarked on the journey of pursuing a PhD as an early-stage researcher (ESR) in the ALLODD consortium at the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Belgium). As I suddenly find myself six months into this track, I would like to reflect on my experiences so far as a PhD student in industry, life in Belgium, and on being part of the consortium!
Pursuing a PhD degree in the modern day and age often goes paired with moving to a new country, and this was no different for me. After my graduate studies in Leiden (the Netherlands) and some project work at Uppsala University (Sweden) and the Technical University of Munich (Germany), I moved to Belgium to start the PhD at Janssen. That’s quite a few countries in the past few years I’ve lived in, and in fact there’s only more to come with several secondments planned for the PhD! Moving to a new country can always present some challenges, and, in my experience, the most impactful one is language. Living in a country where you cannot communicate easily in either English and/or the native language can quickly make you feel isolated from the community. Do not underestimate this. But, being a native Dutch speaker, this was no issue for me in Belgium. In fact, I have never been able to settle so quickly in a new country. Finding great housing options without exorbitant rent was never so easy, and the culture here is truly epicurean. One of my first experiences with this culture of enjoying good food and drinks was an event organized by the PhD & Postdoc community at Janssen: the “Bierolade”. This is an amalgamation of the Dutch words for beer (bier) and chocolate (chocolade), and, as the name suggests, it involved a sitology expert teaching us the wonders of combining the taste of different beer styles with their perfectly complementing types of chocolate. A delightful experience that I would recommend anyone to try! My favorite combination was a bitter beer together with Sicilian pistachio chocolate, but I am sure there are still some fantastic other combinations to discover. Returning to the equally wondrous world of doctoral studies, a common topic of discussion I hear among students in the pharmaceutical sciences is the question of whether to stay in academia or to pursue a position in industry, and how different industry and academia really are. While it is certainly too soon for me to fully analyze the differences between the two at this point, I would like to make this a recurring theme in future blogposts in the hopes that it might help anyone on this matter. For now, an interesting aspect I found in this regard is that I was encouraged to read, read, and read for the first few months of the PhD. Naturally, I cannot say if this is different from starting as a PhD in academia, and I am sure it will also depend on the supervisor(s), but I must say it is truly empowering to deeply study the ins and outs of current approaches and insights in the field before setting up your own experiments and methodologies. It does, however, bring an interesting psychological aspect to the table as well, as not performing experiments for months might make you question whether you are “doing enough” to progress your PhD. In this respect, it is important to realize the implications of the alternative. That is, rushing to choose and setup a methodology without properly understanding its pros and cons will likely lead to scientifically unfounded decisions that you may not be able to justify down the road. However, by then you would be so deep into the chosen methodology that you would not want to abandon it all and start again. Or you do start again, but then you lose the gain of speed you decided to favor earlier. As such, I heartily recommend any starting PhD not to worry about producing results early on and instead focus on getting a good grasp on the current state of the field. This subject of mental fitness actually provides a perfect segue into the last topic I would like to address in this blogpost: the first ALLODD meeting. Just this month, almost all students and professors in the consortium met in Vienna to get to know each other and enjoy several workshops. The highlight of this trip for me, besides meeting my wonderful colleagues of course, was a workshop on work-life balance. During this training, the instructor shared a powerful lesson that I will cherish for the rest of my PhD. Namely, they proposed the idea of seeing bad thoughts as bees. For instance, if there is an upcoming presentation or, say, you are writing a blog for the whole world to see and judge, you might find yourself questioning whether your work is “good enough” to share. If you interact with this thought too much, it could invoke a fear of how much you will embarrass yourself, and you might become stressed about the whole situation. So, let’s visualize this doubtful thought as a bee or a wasp. Indeed, if a bee is flying close to you, the best thing to do is to just ignore it, and it will be sure to fly away. Choosing to interact with it, however, and trying to hit or shoo it away will only result in the bee constantly coming back and possibly hurting you. As an avid fan of the Beatles and annoying puns, I could not resist also taking this final lesson as the basis for the title of this blogpost. I hope you enjoyed the first of many more posts to come on my journey in the ALLODD consortium. And remember, if the title is too much on your mind, just don’t interact with it, and it will be sure to fly away! A dinner at a traditional Viennese restaurant on Sunday evening gave us the opportunity to meet some of our fellow-Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) and their supervisors within the ALLODD consortium in an informal setting. On Monday morning, the workshop started off with a session during which we were introduced to the other workshop participants and were provided with information on the ALLODD consortium, the Project Handbook and the Career Development Plan. The introductory session was followed by a lecture on Open Science by Gareth O’Neill. Principles of Open Science, open access publishing as well as Open-and Findable-Accessible-Interoperable-Reusable (FAIR) Data were introduced. The session fostered a lively discussion on the risks of Open Science in light of ever-more powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Following a team-building exercise and the lunch break, the ESRs participated in a workshop to develop our communication and presentation skills. Of particular interest to me was a section on nonviolent communication, which aims at communicating one’s perceptions and needs with empathy and without any prejudice on other people’s intents. In the evening, the group did a walking tour in Vienna’s city center, presenting some of the most important historic sites such as the Hofburg and the Stephans dom. Day 2 started off with a workshop on Research Integrity and Ethics. However, due to time constraints, we only superficially touched upon the topic of Ethics and focused on Integrity aspects. Here, I much appreciated our discussions on the “gray zone” between scientific misconduct and “sloppy” science. Based on case studies, we elaborated strategies how to confront situations in which we might be tempted to engage in questionable research practices. In the afternoon, ESRs and supervisors gathered to attend a workshop on work-life balance. This workshop was highly interactive. It was valuable to share experiences and to hear even from senior participants that they occasionally struggle with some of the insecurities that we face as young researchers. Amongst others, the workshop aimed at recognizing negative thought spirals and unhealthy coping mechanisms, and to give us strategies at hand that can be used to disrupt these loops. The final day of the meeting began with a course on scientific writing. Extending beyond the issue of writing, the course also covered topics such as navigating and managing scientific literature. A main takeaway for me from this course was the order in which to read sections in scientific articles. We were recommended to begin with the abstract and then move on to the conclusions section to find out whether an article indeed answers the question posed. Another advice given during the workshop was to have someone else readout loud drafts for publications and reports that one has written to assess the clarity of the writing. After lunch, Sharon Bryant from Inte:Ligand gave an impulse lecture on scientific innovation with emphasis on the life science sector. According to her, the most striking innovations within the healthcare economy during the past years were biotechnological advances such as the CAR-T cell therapy. I was slightly disappointed not having discussed critically to which extent more conventional approaches such as small molecule drugs might or might not be considered innovative. The workshop was concluded with a discussion on career perspectives outside of science. Although the choice of a career path seems to lay far in the future for us now, it was insightful to hear about and discuss which skills that we acquire during our PhD training are sought after in other sectors apart from research such as finance, journalism and policy making. “Connecting knowledge to grow a network− growing a network to explore/share knowledge” The Allostery in Drug Discovery (ALLODD) Training Program focuses on three pillars: Core research skills, advanced research skills, and transferable skills & qualities. The first ALLODD workshop took place in Vienna from the 3rd- 5th of April and focused on an ALLODD introduction and core research skills. This includes open science principles, communication skills, research integrity, and ethics, scientific writing, work-life balance, and innovation. The following report summarizes the main personal take-aways from the workshop. After an introduction to the ALLODD program, the first workshop discussed open science principles. Scholarly publishing results in worldwide sales of more than USD19 billion for publishing and access of peer-reviewed papers (see article by Buranyi,2017). The profit margins are incredibly high e.g. the profit margin of Elsevier is 37%(see article by PAGE, 2019) and there is no market control. However, a number of promising actions are regularly discussed to tackle the current dependency on the big publishing houses. Suggestions include transparency in costs spent by the publishing houses, the usage of open-access journals, and delayed publishing, meaning that the article would get freely available after a certain amount of time. In addition, there is a push towards Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable(FAIR) data (Teverson,2013). In conclusion, the main root cause why the scientific community is still stuck in the current system is the impact factor. Unless there is a rethinking within the scientific community, open science will have difficulties advancing. After a team-building event, the topic of the second workshop was communication skills. When communicating with other people, we are often dealing with an ambiguity in the meaning of our words and expressions. For example, the sentence “This project was well done.”, can be interpreted in many ways. On one hand, the recipient could interpret our statement as a compliment, on the other hand as an urge to perform better as "well done" is less strong compared to great or fantastic. How the message is sent out and received depends on the self-revealing aspect (how does the person feel in this moment?), factual level, appeal, and relationship. We learned that the following sentence structure is well suited to clarify misunderstandings or tackle tricky situations: “When I see A (observe), then I feel B (perceive/feeling) because I need C(recognize). That’s why I would like D (ask) now.“. The best way of resolving a conflict depends on the situation. Sometimes it is good to flight, fight, delegate the decision, compromise (win and lose), or find a consensus (win/win). We also learned another valuable skill on how to react in hostile situations, e.g., a competitor puts you on the spot during a talk by saying: “I do not agree with your statement...”. There are a couple of strategies to respond; (a) repeat what the person said, (b) use an emergency word such as O.K. or Aha, (c) reply with a paradox, or (d) change topics. All strategies give the person answering more time to think about the response and make sure that the insult does not result from a misunderstanding. The second day started with a workshop on research integrity (i.e., good scientific practices, research quality) and ethics (research content). As a scientist, we are con-fronted with tricky and delicate questions, and the line of where misconduct starts are often not as clear. To be safe, it is essential to document the scientific work in a good manner, such as using an (electronic) lab notebook, storing data on cloud services, having a good organization e.g. folder structure, and writing meeting summaries to document decisions. The second topic discussed during the course was the subject of the authorship (who gets the name on the paper?). In general, a person providing a substantial contribution gets to be on the paper. A person can also sign an author-ship contract with a collaborator to define specific points that are necessary to receive authorship. In conclusion, thinking about integrity and ethics is a daily part of the research. The topic of the workshop in the afternoon was work-life balance. The keyword of the course was “thoughts”. We learned that thoughts are not facts, that we need to question our thoughts and recognize loops. The loops are triggered by a thought resulting in a sensation or emotion, action, and in the end a consequence. There are multiple short-term solutions to long-term problems, such as stress, including exercise, box breathing, listening to music, cooking, and power nap. The way to tackle negative thought is to be first of all aware of the negative thought itself, to secondly create space (e.g. my reframing the thought “I am stupid.” to “I am having the thought that I am stupid). Thirdly, one can choose to react to the thought or just let it go e.g. a thought is like a bee, the more you try to push it away from you the more likely you get hurt. The fourth stage includes being curious to explore positive thoughts. On the third day, we learned scientific writing skills. Research is published to communicate science and create an archive for future scientists to explore and expand ideas. This is only one of the many reasons why papers must have high quality. A paper should follow the OCAR structure - Opening, Challenge, Action, Resolution.A paragraph is the unit of composition. Furthermore, it is essential to understand the source of cited papers to be clear and concise. Other important writing principles include that we should write to inform and not to impress, write to our classmates and future-self, include evidence with all statements, and omit needless words (Campbell-Kibler et al., 2006). It is essential to establish a system of writing e.g., define a time of the week dedicated to writing and separate editing from writing. Once a text is complete, it is helpful to ask someone else to read the text out loud. This enables one to identify where the text is not yet smooth. The main message of the workshop was that writing is a continuous process, which starts early and includes multiple reviewing rounds.
The workshops in the afternoon focused on the future and included a workshop on innovation and further careers outside of academia. To conclude, I think that combining research and the soft skills learned during the workshop is crucial to being successful in science. I hope that at the end of my PhD, I can be proud of my innovative, reliable, respectful, and creative work and that I could profit and contribute to the collaborative spirit of the ALLODD network. |