Category Archives: Higher Education
Looking for an unrelated topic, I stumbled across a transcript of a talk, ‘You and Your Research’ at Bell Labs given by Richard Hamming in 1986. I think it’s worth reading if you’re a scientist, mathematician or computer programmer. “In summary, I claim that some of the reasons why so many people who have greatness
Technology is accelerating bioinformatics needs, again, while the current need isn’t diminishing. This post was meant to be just a brief snapshot aimed at students wondering where bioinformatics is going in 2008 and beyond. What’s the future of bioinformatics? What kind of focus should you develop in the near future? What kinds of skills will
Video lectures are sometimes frowned on as being too ‘canned’ or ‘talking head’-like. I think this depends on the teacher. Video lectures will become increasingly popular as talks can be more readily refreshed and recorded, as the technology matures. Google is creating an archive of science and tech lectures online. There are some gems on
I teach at Brandeis (as most of you know) and have been happy to see three of my former students end up at the Broad Institute as analysts/programmers, doing what they always hoped to do. Someday with their permission I’ll tell you about them. Most of them are over 40, had years of experience in
If you haven’t run across this lecture on Time Management yet and you’re a graduate student, take some time and watch it. You can find the corresponding slides here at the Alice Project The talk is by Dr. Randy Pausch in 1997 and I wish I had seen it when I was a grad student.
This post was originally hosted on my blog Confluxion, at Nature Network Blogs A recent blog entry by Nature Network editor Corie Lok has pointed to the ongoing problems that Harvard (and implicitly its peers) have in increasing faculty diversity. What follows is my own opinion on the issue based on my perceptions. I want
As I write this, many of my colleagues are in Vienna, gathering for the 15th Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) & 6th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB). I’m not going to attend ISMB this year, unfortunately—a confluence of new job and busy schedule. Next year, ISMB will be closer
I try not to get too concerned with the content of political debates when elections are in the preliminary stages. I inevitably find candidate opinions that I don’t agree with (to put it mildly) and those candidates often don’t make it to the primary stages anyway. For me, examining all candidates at this stage is
Now and again I am surprised when I run across a scientist who has not heard of the Gordon Conferences. Imagine a site filled with other specialists in your general field, and being “holed up” with most of these people for nearly a week, during which time you are able to see presentations on research