Your Digital Mentor Podcast

Networking is your Net-worth

Episode Summary

Short description: How researchers can (and should) develop and maintain their social networks to boost their careers. Guests: Silvia Argimón and Swaine Chen Soundbite: ThankGod Ebenezer Episode description: Scientists with an expanded network of contacts have an edge when it comes to grants, publications, awards, invitations to speak, job offers, and promotions. In this episode we will be discussing how, as a researcher you can develop and maintain your networks, and build your social capital.

Episode Notes

Takeaways from today's episode: 

• Practice: The more you network, the easier it becomes.
• Be genuine. If you have a true interest in science, and a true interest in people, it is a very powerful combination that will make interactions easy.
• Not everyone is comfortable with meeting and greeting. The good thing is that you have at least one interest in common, which is science. Once you start, the communication will flow.
• Pay it forward, introduce people to each other especially if you have junior scientists that you are mentoring by seeding the conversation.

Resources

Networking in Academia: J. Streeter, 2014 

Swaine’s Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/swaine_chen_dna_and_genomics_will_transform_our_lives

How to Network (Forbes article): https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2014/07/28/how-to-network-the-right-way-eight-tips/

Guest information

Dr. Swaine Chen is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore and a Group Leader in Bacterial Genomics at the Genome Institute of Singapore. His research focuses on using computational and experimental methods to understand why some bacteria are proficient at causing infections and outbreaks in humans, you can find him on Twitter @swaine_chen.

Dr. Silvia Argimón is a genomic epidemiologist at the Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance, where she analyses pathogen genome sequences in the context of antimicrobial resistance and informs the development of web tools for global surveillance. Her work involves international collaborations for the implementation of whole-genome sequencing and teaching/training on genomics. Twitter: @silargi.

Dr. ThankGod Ebenezer is a Bioinformatician at EMBL-EBI, UK, within the UniProt team. His role focuses on developing computational pipelines for automatic functional annotation of proteins. Prior to joining EMBL-EBI he was a postdoc at Earlham Institute and studied for his PhD degree in Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, UK. Twitter: @ThankGod_Ebenez 

Website: https://euglenanetwork.wordpress.com/

Acknowledgements

Editing by Mariana Vaz, https://www.marianacpvaz.com/

Research: Alice Matimba and Isabela Malta.

Producers: Alice Matimba (Senior Producer), Isabela Malta (Producer), Christine Boinett (Creator and Executive producer), Emmanuela Oppong (Producer).

Hosts: Alice Matimba and Isabela Malta

Media and Marketing: Catherine Holmes

Music: https://freesound.org/s/477388/

Sponsors:

Wellcome Genome Campus Advanced Courses and Scientific Conferences

Wellcome Sanger Institute

Social Entrepreneurship to Spur Health