"Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen".
Interacting and networking with people can be a fruitful experience on several levels. First, it can increase your productivity and success, by brainstorming with other researchers. Second, the mere interaction can provide comfort and a feeling of belonging. Lastly, it's an opportunity to also give back, care, and share your experience and knowledge.
While some interactions may be toxic, I believe that most interactions are beneficial. Personally, I find it quite easy to interact with my peers, whether if to discuss science directly or our experiences throughout the journey in academia. However, one of the challenges for me and many of my peers is to approach and connect with researchers who are more advanced in their career stage, with the most striking difficulty in starting and maintaining interactions with faculty members. The reasons for this difficulty usually stem from respect, fear of "not being good/interesting enough", or, simply not knowing what to say.
In the pre-COVID world, it was difficult to cross the bridge of interacting with PIs. You would need to send an email, hope it would be read, and then be able to find time within the busy schedule of a PI, which is full with meetings and travel commitments. Surprisingly, the horrible COVID pandemic does have a silver lining - as most, if not all, activity has transitioned online, it is suddenly an opportunity to increase interactions.
Through my work in ScienceAbroad, I decided to harness this potential to increase the visibility and interactions of postdocs who are currently outside of Israel, with scientists in Israel and peers around the world. The goal is simple - many Israeli postdocs wish to eventually work in Israel (whether in industry or academia), and it doesn't hurt if people know who you are, and perhaps even become friendly with you. Therefore, I started two initiatives that create a platform for both vertical, and horizontal, interactions:
1) SuperGroups: The idea behind this was not original - At UC Berkeley we have topic-based SuperGroups (e.g. Protein Homeostasis SuperGroup) in which different labs come together for a joint meeting where one of the lab presents their most recent research findings. I decided to take this idea, and transition it online via ScienceAbroad. Since May 2020, we organized more than 20 meetings, spanning different scientific fields (from Cell Biology to Psychology). The virtual meetings are limited to 25 participants at max, and we invite 2-5 faculty members from different universities in Israel to attend. The meeting starts with a round table, where each person presents themselves. This is an opportunity for the attendees (mostly postdocs) to introduce themselves shortly to everyone else in the room. Then, we continue to a 30 minute lecture, which is full of discussion (informal, Q&A throughout the talk). Then, we continue to discuss the science, and network formally & informally. Luckily, many PIs have stayed to the networking sections, answered questions and addressed worries of people who are currently in their postdocs. The meetings have been a success, and some of our speakers received follow-up invitations to apply for faculty positions following their talk. Furthermore, the horizontal interactions included discussions on collaborations, one of which I will discuss in the next point. You can find the schedule for future meetings in our website- ScienceAbroad.
2) Online Life Science Symposium: At one of these SuperGroups, I virtually met Dr. Tal Pecht, a brilliant Systems Biology postdoc at LIMES Institute, Bonn, Germany. We have never met before, but we had great discussions about science and life in science, and decided together to organize another platform that will allow postdocs to increase their visibility and network with peers. We have officially launched now the online Life Science Symposium which we organize voluntarily under ScienceAbroad. This platform is a little less stressful from the SuperGroups, as there will be multiple talks and each talk is shorter, but again it will allow postdocs, researchers, and graduate students to interact and build their professional networking. If you're an Israeli postdoc - abroad or in Israel - I encourage you to submit an abstract for a talk.
I encourage all Israeli graduate students and postdocs to attend, both the SuperGroups and the Symposium. Everyone is welcome, and you may be able to learn about exciting new science, increase your visibility, and interact with other researchers - all from the comfort of your home. I also invite you to write to me directly at barziv@berkeley.edu if you want to chat.
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