The Black Hole

We’ve all been told about the value of networks with adages like “It’s not what you know, but who you know”, but I’d never stopped to think about this outside of meeting individual people. While I’m certainly not denying the value of knowing the right person in the right place at the right time, I want […]

It falls to scientists to speak up in support of federally funding research and in this third installment of a four-part series, I explore the economic cost of doing research in a cash-strapped system and the burden this is placing on young investigators. To bring yourself up to speed, installements 1 and 2 are referenced […]

Over the past 15 years, there has been an enormous shift in the human resources completing scientific research.  The training period has lengthened significantly and adjustments must be made to address the growing concerns of young scientists.  Many individuals, who do not have permanent positions, share a unique set of experiences and challenges that need to be […]

As I’ve mentioned on here before – if you are involved in health research in Canada, you should read the CIHR’s proposed changes to its granting system.  This is a chance to assess and give your opinion before things are set in stone.  I can appreciate that it is long and somewhat tedious in sections, […]

Today’s post is actually two mini-posts – one on CIHR’s response to Budget 2012 and the other on the announcement of their Science Policy Fellowship program. Response to Budget 2012 Earlier this month, CIHR President Alain Beaudet released a message concerning the federal budget and its impact on CIHR.  Amongst the standard platitudes, a few interesting […]

A country’s biomedical advancement and innovation is intimately linked to its investment in academic research (Measure for Measure: Chemical Research & Development Powers the U.S. Innovation Engine). Funding for research comes almost entirely from government and private donors (Stossel, T.P., The Research Marketplace: A Little Grantsmanship Manual, Fourth Edition. 2011.), and is as value-based, bottom-up […]

We were thrilled this quarter to welcome Dr. Jonathan Thon to the Black Hole in the capacity of regular contributor.    He’s enthusiastically launched himself into the online blogging world with several articles and I’ve tried to scatter in a few along the way.  If you fancy doing something similar, we’re always open to hearing […]

The day-to-day rigors of academic biomedical research are difficult to appreciate, and it is necessary that scientists share their perspective of the knowledge market with politicians and government representatives who are burdened with making difficult decisions on our behalf. Unlike the airline industry that also does research and development (R&D) to create safer, lighter and […]

Over the last months, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) have conducted an extensive review of their grant programs and have released a document to describe these changes.  In a demonstration of top tier accountability, they have opened a multi-stage and multi-faceted consultation of the programs that I strongly encourage anybody who has any […]

Read related entries to this post: Pitching solutions: Transition awards and Targeted Hiring The Problem: A lack of faculty positions at top-tier Canadian Universities and Research Institutes Making the Case for Increased Federal Support of Biomedical Research Repatriating young Canadian scientists at the highest levels to establish new competitive technologies in the health sciences is […]

A landmark decision was made late last month by the Ontario Labour Relations Board regarding the status of postdoctoral fellows.  Jesse Greener, President of the University of Toronto’s Postdoc Association has recently, and nicely, summarised the impacts of this ruling on the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars discussion board. I am writing this because I […]

Read Jonathan’s earlier related entries to catch up on the series: Making the Case for Increased Federal Support of Biomedical Research and The Problem: A lack of faculty positions at top-tier Canadian Universities and Research Institutes One approach, in which Canada is lagging, is the introduction of transitional awards (such as the K99 award, offered by the […]

In his article The Vanishing Voter, Harvard professor Thomas Patterson makes a statement about modern political campaigns that made me a little nauseous: Ambition, manipulation, and deception have become as prominent as issues of policy and leadership You might scoff at my fragile stomach – claiming that politics has been like this for decades – but […]

Just a couple of quick weekend updates: 1.  Full video/audio coverage of the 2011 Canadian Science Policy Conference is now online.  Our session was on the Education and Training of Scientists: many of the ideas driving the session are in these articles. 2.  I’d like to encourage people to “like” our new Facebook page in order to spread […]

Science, technology, and innovation are critical drivers of economic growth and national well-being. In the context of health research, their impact extends to matters of human health, quality of life, and life expectancy in our country. On a global stage, progress in health research translates into marketable discoveries for which Canada is well situated to […]

 The Black Hole is extremely pleased to welcome Dr. Jonathan Thon to its team of regular bloggers.  Jonathan approached us last month to publish a series of articles on building a better support structure for young biomedical scientists in Canada which will be published here in four parts over the coming weeks.  As this is […]

Winning a postdoctoral fellowship is not trivial and when you land in a suboptimal research situation after bringing in your own money, things can get pretty stressful. Today’s post is a guest post from a former colleague of mine who has been through this process (and successfully moved labs) while retaining their CIHR award – […]

Since I first read about it on the Piece of Mind blog by UBC Professor Nassif Ghoussoub, I have been trying to figure out whether or not Google’s new “My citations” is a useful tool for researchers.  Essentially, this tool allows a researcher to collate their publications  and the citations on those publications are displayed […]

Happy 2012 everyone. The end of 2011 was very busy, but it was worth it to gather some momentum behind the ideas and conversations from the site in the form of our session at the Canadian Science Policy Conference as well as steady growth in traffic to the site. On the other hand, it is […]

So, a while back I mentioned that I would be applying to CIHR’s Science-to-Business (S2B) program, which provides scholarships for individuals with PhDs in a health related field to do MBAs. And the good news is that I was fortunate enough to receive one of these scholarships, which I’ll be using to take the part-time MBA […]