Tag Archives: grad students

Travel Grants Spring 2012 winner: Malay Bhattacharyya

Posted on June 15, 2012 by Jyoti M.. Filed under Conferences, Research, Travel grant

Congratulations to our second travel grant winner! Read on to find out how he uses NextBio Research to explore oncogenic microRNAs.In Malay’s words:

I become truly amazed when I look back on my career and see how a student with undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Electronics turned into a biology researcher. In the very first week of graduate school, I received an article on microRNAs (miRNAs), a class of short non-coding regulators of protein-coding genes, from my supervisor. Ever since that first read, I have been hooked on these endogeneous RNAs for four years and counting. Read more…

NextBio Travel Grant Competition Spring 2010 1st Place Winner: Kelly Bouchonville

Posted on May 25, 2010 by NextBio. Filed under Guest Blogger, Life at NextBio, Travel grant

Finally, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, a standing ovation for …. Kelly Bouchonville! Congratulations to NextBio’s first place Travel Grant winner!

Effective communication of data is one of the most important and also most overlooked aspects of any research career. In an age of digital technology and free and instant access to databases containing a plethora of information, it is vital that one be able to easily interpret and assemble that data. No longer is it enough to look at data from a single species and/or experiment. One must broaden the scope to look at effects seen in a broad array of organisms and/or experiments carried out under a range of conditions. Additionally, many research outcomes are no longer single gene-centric, but must take entire pathways and systems into account.

As a graduate student nearing completion of a Ph.D., it has become increasingly important to be able to integrate data from numerous studies, both in a variety of conditions for my organism of choice and for single genes/proteins of interest in a range of organisms. The tools available through NextBio have simplified some parts of the integration process. Additionally, NextBio tools facilitate broadening the implications of results by providing correlations and additional studies of interest, making it easy to see how specific results in one organism translate into an adverse effect in another organism.
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NextBio Travel Grant Competition Spring 2010 2nd Place Winner: Elena Piskounova

Posted on May 21, 2010 by NextBio. Filed under Guest Blogger, Life at NextBio

A big round of applause please for… Elena Piskounova! Congratulations to NextBio’s second place Travel Grant winner!

One of the main interests of my PhD work has been a subset of the Argonaute family of proteins called the Piwi proteins. Piwi proteins have been shown to play a key role in male germ cell maintenance and to function with a novel class of small non-coding RNAs called piRNAs (Piwi-interacting RNAs). However, the mechanisms by which Piwi proteins control transposable elements and DNA methylation have not been completely elucidated.

When I was introduced to the capabilities of NextBio, there were several key features that I found particularly useful. I first performed a simple search for the different members of the Piwi protein subfamily. I was particularly struck by the convenient organization of the search results, allowing me to see the instances in which the different Piwi genes have been analyzed in various tissues, diseases, as well as drug studies. This has given me insight into the various systems that are being used to study Piwi proteins. Furthermore, delving deeper into these results allowed me to identify the less obvious studies that did not truly focus on Piwi proteins, yet contained valuable information on their regulation nonetheless.
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NextBio Travel Grant Competition Spring 2010 3rd Place Winner: Bibhash Mukhopadhyay

Posted on May 14, 2010 by NextBio. Filed under Guest Blogger, Life at NextBio

Drum roll please… Congratulations, Bibhash Mukhopadhyay, and thanks to all participants for entering.

NextBio: A versatile one-stop-shop for researchers (and a data junkie’s paradise)!

I am currently writing my doctoral dissertation on a gene involved in retinal degeneration at Baylor College of Medicine, and I have had internship experience. Both of these responsibilities involve assimilation and organization of a large amount of information to create mental snapshots that can be recalled and applied to specific contexts that I am interested in looking at. For my dissertation, I need to interpret primary research data in the context of existing literature or “knowledge base”, whereas the internship required integration of technical and clinical data for enumerating commercial utility.
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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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