Category Archives: Grants

Winners of the Summer 2009 NextBio Travel Grant

Posted on July 21, 2009 by NextBio. Filed under Grants, NextBio

After a long and difficult deliberation, we have selected the recipients for the Summer 2009 NextBio Travel Grant!

We were impressed with the quality of essays and very happy to hear about the different ways in which NextBio has been useful to graduate students in the pursuit of their research. The three students who were selected for this quarter’s travel grant are:

Abhishek Tiwari
Sayan Mondal
Yunyun Jiang

Abhishek is a second year PhD student in bioengineering at the University of Auckland who using modeling to study hormone dynamics. In his essay, Abhishek relates how a discovery in NextBio helped direct his research.

In order to develop a mathematical model of the steroid synthesis I was searching for functional mechanism of the steroidogenic acute regulatory protein or StAR. A simple keyword search using StAR returned a well categorized results page and further exploration and filtering of results landed me on a data correlation between StAR and congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Inspired from this small but crucial finding I devoted one section of my model to simulate the mechanistic basis of the congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and based on model sensitivity analysis we found new insights into the underlying process and emerging trends in diseased system. This was possible only because of the NextBio which provided an abstracted data correlation derived from several high-throughput data sources.

He goes on to discuss the collaboration features and the NextBio recommendation service and then wraps up the essay with a wonderful final paragraph on his vision for the future of science. I highly recommend you read the full text of Abhishek’s essay.
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The NextBio Travel Grant Continues!

Posted on May 4, 2009 by NextBio. Filed under Grants, NextBio

- Lisa Green

The first NextBio Travel Grant was such a smashing success that we have decided to continue the program!

I am extremely happy that the NextBio Travel Grant will continue. I remember how hard it was to live on a grad student stipend and what a relief it was when I received $500 from my department to offset the costs of attending a conference. But much more clearly than I remember the financial strain of attending conferences as a student, I remember the excitement of attending those conferences. So many ideas, so many high-bandwidth conversations, so many people passionate about their work – all gathered together in a wonderfully enriched and rarified environment.
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Announcing the Recipients of the NextBio Travel Grant!

Posted on April 1, 2009 by NextBio. Filed under Grants, NextBio

- Lisa Green

We are very pleased to announce the recipients of the NextBio travel grant!

We received numerous outstanding essays and it was quite difficult to select just three winners.After much deliberation the following students were selected:

Bryan Dickinson

Laura Mariani

Khader Shameer

Bryan is a chemistry graduate student at the University of California Berkeley who studies neural stem cells and is interested in NADPH-oxidase (NOX) proteins.Bryan’s essay describes how he used NextBio to find relevant information in the publicly available experimental data.

There’s Still Time To Apply For The NextBio Travel Grant

Posted on March 11, 2009 by NextBio. Filed under Grants, NextBio

- Lisa Green

The deadline for application to the NextBio Travel Grant is less than a week away. Haven’t started your application yet? Don’t panic. You still have time to apply.

We purposefully designed the grant application to be simple and easy. To apply for the NextBio Travel Grant, you won’t need official copies of all your academic transcripts since birth. Nor will you need to be a member of an exclusive professional society that requires three sponsors and a hefty membership fee. In fact, all you need to do to apply for the NextBio Travel Grant is to tell us how the NextBio tools have been useful to you in the pursuit of your research.

Maybe you use our awesome literature search to quickly find the relevant papers you need. Maybe you use our data-driven search to find correlations between genes within the NextBio curated collection of public experimental data. However you use NextBio, we want to hear about it!

Remember, the NextBio Travel Grant will give out awards of $500 to attend any science conference you choose. Complete details are available here.

Announcing the NextBio Travel Grant

Posted on January 15, 2009 by NextBio. Filed under Grants, NextBio

- Lisa Green

Are you a graduate student who would like to attend a scientific conference but is concerned about the expense? Apply for the NextBio travel grant!

Attending scientific conferences is important for graduate students. Unfortunately, many students find the expense of attending a conference to be a significant barrier. I remember even with the budget-stretching strategy of sleeping on the couch in a hotel room full of grad students, attending my first national conference took up a noticeable share of my monthly stipend.
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