Yesterday I went to a symposium at UC Davis that was the launching of a new partnership between UC Davis and the Mars Corporation. I note - I have been collaborating with some people at Mars on multiple microbiome related projects and generally have had great interactions with the people there. I am not directly involved in the planning for this new partnership between UC Davis and Mars and thus I was interested in hearing more about it at the symposium.
The symposium was at the Mondavi Center on UC Davis campus and I zipped in on my bike through the cold (for Davis) air and got there just before they opened the doors to the main theater. I saw a few folks I knew milling around in the lobby and said hello and then went inside with some people from my lab for the "show".
I will try to write more about this later but just one note - I found some of the big picture discussions about the importance of the nexus between food, agriculture and health to be pretty inspiring. For now - I hope the Storify I made and embedded below will give some idea as to the goings on of the symposium.
The UC Davis Pre-Health Student Alliance’s objective is to introduce and support academic, admission, and preparatory opportunities for all students interested in health professions with a focus on those underrepresented in healthcare (with regard to gender, economic, social, educational, linguistic, cultural, racial, and ethnic background). We target universities, community colleges and high schools throughout the United States. The UC Davis Pre-Health Student Alliance aims to impact health education, increase diversity amongst the healthcare workforce, and inspire future leaders of healthcare through hosting the largest national pre-health professions conference.
It was that mission statement that got me to ditch my wife and kids Sunday AM (and also much of Saturday PM for a dinner and to work on my talk). I went to a dinner Saturday for some of the speakers with the new Dean of the UC Davis School of Medicine Julie Freischlag. The dinner had about 20 or so people and I met some quite interesting folks there working on various aspects of human and animal health.
And then Sunday AM I got up early, decided to use slides (was not sure) and finished off the slide set I had worked on the night before. I decided that, in the spirit of the meeting, I would talk about two main things - diversity and access. And I planned to tell three stories about my work in this area. I wove in some personal stories since, at the dinner the night before Barbara Ross-Lee (who I sat next to) helped remind me of the importance of making talks personal. So in the end I talked about myself, diabetes, diversity of microbes, antibiotics, diversity in STEM, and open science. I came up with a title I was OK with: Opening up to Diversity.
My talk went well, I think. I am pretty sure it was vbideotaped but not sure where that recording will end up. I did however post my slides to slideshare. See below:
And I also recorded the talk using Camtasia (basically, it allows recording of the screen, the video camera on my computer, and the audio). I posted the recording (without the video feed which shows mostly my neck) to Youtube. See below:
UPDATE 10/16 -
I have scanned in my notes that I made in planning this talk. Figured, why not post them.
Update: 12/10/2014 - just discovered a video of the talk was posted to Youtube
Very proud of this. I was a finalist in the "Excellence in Education" awards given out by the UC Davis Undergraduate group ASUCD Associated Students, University of California, Davis. And David Coil, Project Scientist in my lba was another finalist. The award for my college (College of Biological Sciences) went to Jay Rosenheim, who is a great teacher, so no shame in losing to him.
Software Carpentry helps researchers be more productive by teaching them basic computing skills. We run boot camps at dozens of sites around the world, and also provide open access material online for self-paced instruction. The benefits are more reliable results and higher productivity: a day a week is common, and a ten-fold improvement isn't rare.
A great idea and done really well. Others out there should consider hosting or attending one of their Boot Camps and checking out their materials on their web site. See for example their videos and their reading list and their lessons. They really do great things ...
Stephen O' Brien talked at UC Davis a few days ago. I met with him in the afternoon before his talk. It was one of the more interesting discussions I have had in a long time. He has done some very interesting and important work (e.g., comparative genomics, HIV, feline evolution) though most of what we talked about was not work per se (e.g., we talked a lot about baseball and big cats since my kids are obsessed with big cats).
I have just joined an advisory group for the UC Davis Magazine and I am really happy with their new direction. They are trying to make the magazine a little less "UC Davis is awesome" and more "Here are some interesting things to think about, with a UC Davis angle". The new Fall Issue is a good example of this. There is for example a nice article by Sasha Abramsky about student involvement (or the lack thereof it). Plus there is a little video interview to go with the article.
Perhaps even more "interesting" is the article on the future of higher education by Clifton Parker. Not exactly a glory piece about UC or UC Davis.
Anyway ... just thought I would put this out there. Any opinions on the magazine please send them my way - the staff there seem great and really interested in feedback.
book with a dedication to my kids.
