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Renew/Join
GSA for 2013
This is it . . . if you
haven’t
renewed your GSA membership for 2013, your
GSA member benefits will soon lapse. These benefits
include your subscription to GENETICS, discounts
for publishing in the GSA Journals GENETICS and
G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, and reduced registration
fees at 2013 GSA meetings. Thank you to all members who have
renewed for this year. Remind your colleagues,
postdocs, and students to join GSA too!
Education
Federal Funding Opportunities &
the Proposal Review Process, a GSA Career Development
Workshop, will be a pre-conference workshop
available to attendees of the
2013 Drosophila Research Conference. The
workshop, organized by National Science Foundation (NSF)
Program Director Joyce Fernandes, will be held from 3-5
pm on Wednesday, April 3. Participants will learn about
multiple federal funding opportunities through NSF
and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A panel
discussion with program officers will be followed by a
hands-on exercise to examine program solicitations and
review criteria, and to work through the mechanics of
writing a good proposal.
Submissions to GSA’s
Educational
Resources Portal are now being accepted! If you have
a laboratory exercise, laboratory protocol
(e.g., quick and inexpensive DNA extraction), lecture
exercise, image/animation, or even a course
syllabus, please submit it to be part of GSA’s database
of educational resources and make it available to your
teaching colleagues. All submissions will be peer
reviewed to ensure the learning materials are based on
core concepts and core competencies to improve the
quality of genetics education. Resources accepted into the
portal will not be published in a scholarly journal but
will be citable, allowing the authors to list the
resource on their CV.
Submit your teaching materials today!
GSA is a partner in the
NSF-sponsored
Biology Scholars Program (BSP),
which seeks to improve undergraduate biology education based
on evidence of student learning. If you are passionate
about education and want access to alumni
travel grants, alumni
fellowships, and excellent BSP courses, join the BSP in
2013! Members of the GSA community who are
BSP Alumni include Alix Darden (Univ of
Oklahoma Hlth Sci Ctr), Daron Barnard
(Worcester State College), John Geiser
(Western Michigan Univ), Kathy Zoghby (Univ
of Richmond), and Heidi Sleister (Drake
Univ). The 2013 program includes
three residencies, all in Washington, DC:
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- Assessment Residency:
Measuring Student Learning, June 12-15,
2013. Application deadline: February 1, 2013.
- Transitions Residency:
From Science Education Research to Publication,
June 24-26, 2013. Application deadline:
February 1, 2013.
- Research Residency:
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning,
July 17-20, 2013. Application deadline:
February 1, 2013.
Fellowships
Graduate students and
postdoctoral scholars – are you interested in
science policy? Check out GSA’s web
page on
Policy Fellowships.
Learn about the science organizations that provide state,
national and international policy fellowships and how you
can apply.
The GSA Journals
The zebrafish research of G3
editor Nico Katsanis’ (Duke Univ) lab
was described in an article, “Will
This Fish Transform Medicine?” in Popular Science
on January 21, 2013.
Members in the News
GSA congratulates
its Past President (1988) Gerald R. Fink,
founding
Member of the Whitehead Institute, Margaret and Herman Sokol
Professor, and American Cancer Society Professor of Genetics
at MIT, who has been chosen to serve as
president-elect of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Fink will
begin his three-year term as an officer and member of the
AAAS executive committee on February 19, 2013. A yeast
molecular biologist, Dr. Fink also is the recipient of the
GSA Medal (1982) and the George W. Beadle Award (2001).
Policy
Last week an NIH Council of
Councils Working Group issued a report on the
Use of Chimpanzees in National Institutes of Health (NIH)-Supported
Research, which recommended that the
agency’s chimpanzee research projects should be shut down
within the next few years. The group developed 28
recommendations regarding the use of chimpanzees, focusing
on appropriate physical and social environments, colony size
and placement, and the review process for future proposals
to use these animals in NIH-supported research. A
60-day public comment period
regarding the report recommendations is now open. At
its conclusion, NIH Director, Dr. Francis Collins, will
decide whether or not to accept the working group’s
recommendations.
House Appropriations
Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) released the
Republican rosters of the 12 subcommittees.
Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-NY), ranking Democrat on the
House Appropriations Committee also announced
the Democratic rosters. Check to see if
your Congressional representative is on this committee or
its subcommittees, which will be instrumental in determining
the budget and reducing the deficit and debt of the United
States. Sign up for the Federation of
American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)
e-action list to receive important e-mails
about major public policy issues including funding
issues affecting scientific research.
In
an interview with Politico
(a widely read Washington newspaper with broad circulation
on Capitol Hill), NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins
said that the 6.4 percent budget cut for NIH, if the
pending sequestration occurs, would result in a “profound and
devastating blow” for medical research at a time of
unprecedented scientific discovery. While all
individual centers and institutes will experience cuts,
according to the article, these cuts will be
particularly devastating for the National Cancer Institute
where research on cancer “will go slower.” The Director is
also concerned about the availability of research grants,
especially for early career researchers.
Other Meetings of Interest
The International Festival of
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM),
called
STEMfest 2013, is a four-week
festival from September 25, 2013 to October 26, 2013
in Sarawak, Malaysia, which will
celebrate everything associated with STEM. The
festival will include conferences, exhibitions, field trips,
science experiments, space and astronomy events, lectures
and orations, gala dinners, parties and celebrations, and
expects researchers, educators, industry leaders and
economic developers to participate. For more
information, see the
website.
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Do you have a brief announcement to submit to GSA e-News?
E-news items include news about GSA members – new positions, book
publication, awards or grants received and obits; short policy
items; brief research news items and grant programs; and, award
nomination announcements.
Deadline for next issue:
February 8, 2013. Send items to Phyllis Edelman, pedelman@genetics-gsa.org. |
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