The Progress of the OHBM Student and Postdocs SIG Online Mentorship Programme

Meena M. Makary

Edited by Ayaka Ando, Natalia Bielczyk

In 2017, The OHBM Student and Postdoc SIG launched an International online mentorship programme me where mentors/mentees pairs are matched based on their goals and experience. This is a unique experience where mentees can find direct mentorship and guidance to navigate their career path from mentors with at least three years of experience difference. More details about the history of the programme, the mentors-mentees matching process, and tips on how to launch a successful online mentorship programme can be found in our recently published paper [1]. Currently, there are a total of 558 participants in the programme. In this blog post, we compare statistics from the previous three rounds of the programme (Round 1, 2017, Round 2, 2018 and Round 3, 2019) of the mentorship programme: 252 participants signed up in Round 1, a further 172 participants in Round 2 and an additional 134 participants in Round 3 -- The numbers are decreasing partially due to many of the mentor-mentee pairs from previous rounds of the programme continuing to work together.

Geographic distribution of participants in the programme. (A) Round 1. (B) Round 2. (C) Round 3.

In the three rounds, most of the participants were from North America, Europe, China, and Australia. In the future rounds of the programme, we aim to put extra effort into having more participants from under-represented areas such as South America, other parts of Asia and Africa. Interestingly, we did not have many new participants in Round 3 from Europe. This could be due to many of the mentor-mentee pairs in this region continuing to work together from previous rounds of the programme.

Gender distribution of participants in the programme. Female (red), male (yellow).

Gender distribution was similar across rounds. Although there were slightly fewer females in rounds 1 and 2, more females enrolled in round 3. The programme has had a well-balanced gender distribution over the last three rounds.