Shaping the Future of Research: a perspective from junior scientists

Gary S McDowell; Kearney T W Gunsalus; Drew C MacKellar; Sarah A Mazzilli; Vaibhav P Pai; Patricia R Goodwin; Erica M Walsh; Avi Robinson-Mosher; Thomas A Bowman; James Kraemer; Marcella L Erb; Eldi Schoenfeld; Leila Shokri; Jonathan D Jackson; Ayesha Islam; Matthew D Mattozzi; Kristin A Krukenberg; Jessica K Polka

doi:10.12688/f1000research.5878.2

Shaping the Future of Research: a perspective from junior scientists

F1000Res. 2014 Nov 28:3:291. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.5878.2. eCollection 2014.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biology, Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 02155, USA.
² Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, Tufts University, Boston, MA, 02111, USA.
³ Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
⁴ Department of Computational Biomedicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, 02118, USA.
⁵ Department of Biology, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 02453, USA.
⁶ Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
⁷ Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
⁸ Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, Tufts University, Boston, MA, 02111, USA.
⁹ Department of Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA.
¹¹ Synthetic Biology Center, Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
¹² Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
¹³ Department of Neuroscience, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 02453, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, 02118, USA.

Abstract

The landscape of scientific research and funding is in flux as a result of tight budgets, evolving models of both publishing and evaluation, and questions about training and workforce stability. As future leaders, junior scientists are uniquely poised to shape the culture and practice of science in response to these challenges. A group of postdocs in the Boston area who are invested in improving the scientific endeavor, planned a symposium held on October 2 (nd) and 3 (rd), 2014, as a way to join the discussion about the future of US biomedical research. Here we present a report of the proceedings of participant-driven workshops and the organizers' synthesis of the outcomes.

Keywords: biomedical research; funding; publishing; training.

Grants and funding

K12 GM074869/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States