Career Development and Mental Health Workshops

The Landscape of Post-PhD Career Tracks

Time: Friday July 10th

       10:00-11:00 (New York) / 15:00-16:00 (London) / 22:00-23:00 (HK)

Speaker: Natalia Bielczyk

About this workshop: Most PhD graduates will need to find jobs outside of academia. But, this should no longer be viewed as a failure. In fact, many of the skills learned within a PhD are essential for positions in the industry. You have a lot of options outside academia! In this workshop, you'll learn about the scope of your opportunities.

About the speaker: Natalia Bielczyk is a researcher, entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist. She graduated from the College of Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Warsaw, Poland, with a triple MS title in Physics, Mathematics, and Psychology. Thereafter, she went through a PhD program in Computational Neuroscience at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior in Nijmegen, the Netherlands and obtained a PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen on June 18th 2020.

In 2018, she launched a public foundation, Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling, aiming to help early career researchers find new careers in industry. She also owns Welcome Solutions, a company developing new tools and practices to help professionals in navigating on the job market, and in finding/creating their dream jobs. Even though she chose to work in the open market, she is still a researcher in her free time and has a strong belief in the compatibility of science and entrepreneurship.

The Bridge Between Industry and Academia

Time: Friday July 17th

       13:00-14:00 (New York) / 18:00-19:00 (London) / +1 day 01:00-02:00 (HK)

Speakers: Anna Khazenzon & Eduardo Aponte

About this workshop: In this talk, Dr. Anna Khazenzon will demystify the process of transitioning from academia to industry, a move many PhDs make with little to no guidance from their academic communities. First, we'll cover how to gain insight into whether you should consider working in industry. Then we'll go over how to begin exploring opportunities, prepare for the transition, and adjust to the new environment. Come with questions!

Neurocognitive and digital biomarker research is becoming increasingly important for the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, there is a large opportunity for trainees in the field of computational and cognitive neuroscience to contribute to drug discovery and industry research! As a computational neuroscientist at the Roche Innovation Center, Dr. Eduardo Aponte will explain the role of biomarkers in drug development, how computational approaches in neuroscience can impact the pharmaceutical industry, and how this can bridge academic and industry research.

About the speakers: Anna Khazenzon completed her PhD in 2019 at Stanford University, where she studied the cognitive neuroscience of memory formation. She now builds online study tools as a data scientist at Quizlet. When her attention wanders away from her research, she can be found cooking up vegetarian feasts, wandering in the wilderness, and playing with thread/clay craft. Anna was recommended to the Science Envoy program by Stanford psychologists Anthony Wagner and Barbara Tversky.

Eduardo Aponte originally completed his undergraduate studies in Philosophy at Colombia's National University. After a masters degree in Cognitive Science from the University of Osnabruck in Germany, Eduardo worked in a Biotech startup in San Diego developing algorithms for portable EEGs. He then moved to work with Karl Friston at University College London and, then, completed his PhD in Computational Psychiatry at ETH Zurich with Klaas Enno Stephan. In early 2020, Eduardo joined Christopher Chatham at the Roche Innovation Center as postdoctoral researcher in one of the first Computational Neuroscience groups in the Pharma Industry. 

Work, Life, and Family Balancing in Academia

Time: Friday July 24th

       8:00-9:30 (New York) / 13:00-14:30 (London) / 20:00-21:30 (HK)

Speaker: Alex Fornito, Amy Kuceyeski & Michele Veldsman

About this workshop: Science is hard. It is difficult to do and highly competitive, with low job security. Most scientists are driven people who are passionate about what they do and they struggle to stop thinking about work. As a result, work can easily bleed into other aspects of life which, in the long-term, can have unhealthy consequences. Dr. Alex Fornito will talk about some of the pitfalls of overwork, signs to recognize, and some simple practical strategies to try to maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Planning a family as an academic researcher can seem daunting but many have proved that it’s possible to thrive in academia while balancing a family. Dr. Michele Veldsman will share her own experience and the tips she learned throughout her journey on juggling family and work life, the best time to have children, and the common anxieties around family planning and work/life balance. She will challenge the idea that academia necessitates an immense sacrifice in one’s personal life. 

Dr. Amy Kuceyeski is an academic researcher who has found a way to make her work fit her lifestyle, not the other way around. In her section of the workshop, Amy will share the topic "Work-life balance: finding your fulcrum”. This talk will discuss her personal experiences throughout all levels of her academic career in trying to find the ever-elusive balance of work and life. She will present what has seemed to work for her in preventing burn-out, and, to find out from the audience what seems to have worked for you in this interactive talk.

About the speakers: Alex Fornito completed his Clinical Masters and PhD in 2007 in the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology at The University of Melbourne before undertaking Post-Doctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, UK, under the auspices of a National Health and Medical Research Council Training Fellowship. He is currently a Sylvia and Charles Viertel Foundation Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Brain Mapping and Modelling Research Program at the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.

Alex's research develops new imaging techniques for mapping human brain connectivity and applies these methods to shed light on brain function in health and disease. In particular, this work focuses on understanding foundational principles of brain organization, characterizing how genes shape brain network architecture, and developing maps and models of how mental illness might arise from disordered brain connectivity. Alex is co-author, together with Andrew Zalesky and Ed Bullmore, of the textbook Fundamentals of Brain Network Analysis.

After a winding path growing up on a farm in rural Ohio and studying Art History and Mathematics at a small liberal arts school best known for its football team, Amy found herself drawn to the most interesting and enigmatic thing in the known universe (spoiler: the brain!). For more than a decade, Amy has been interested in understanding how the human brain works in order to better diagnose, prognose and treat neurological disease and injury. Her Computational Connectomics (CoCo) Lab spans Cornell's Ithaca, NY campus and the Weill Cornell Medicine campus in New York, NY. The CoCo lab's main focus is on using quantitative methods, including machine learning, applied to multi-modal neuroimaging data to map brain-behavior relationships. The lab's overall goal is to develop individualized therapies that can boost natural recovery mechanisms and support recovery after neurological disease or injury. Amy lives in Ithaca, NY with her husband, two kiddos and two rescue dogs.

Dr Veldsman is a senior postdoctoral research associate in Cognitive Neurology and a Junior Research Fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford. After completing a PhD at the University of Cambridge, she joined the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, in Melbourne where she investigated brain network degeneration in stroke. She is currently based at the Department and Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. Her work investigates transdiagnostic markers of vascular cognitive impairment and brain network changes in ageing, stroke and dementia.

Entrepreneurship for Scientists

Time: Friday July 31st

       14:00-15:00 (New York) / 19:00-20:00 (London) / +1 day 02:00-03:00 (HK)

Speaker: Navot Naor & Natalia Bielczyk

About this workshop: Dr. Navot Naor will share the topic: “The overlap - being an entrepreneur and an academic, getting your work out of the lab”.

In this workshop, Dr. Natalia Bielczyk will share her experience on the similarities between entrepreneurs and researchers, such as the need to find new solutions to complex problems, salesmanship, work in teams, and adapting to new situations every day. She hopes to open your mind to the possibility of using the skills learned during research training for entrepreneurial goals. Are you entrepreneurial? Let's find out!

About the speakers: Navot received his Ph.D. in Clinical Neuro-Psychology from the University of Haifa for his work on the neural networks involved in the empathetic regulation of pain as a means to reduce empathic bias. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Laboratory of Cognition and Emotion at the University of Maryland, where he worked with Prof. Luiz Pessoa to study dynamic changes in the neural networks as a function of the competition between different emotions. During he’s fellowship Navot founded PlayWell, a startup company providing gamification solutions and mHealth services. PlayWell was recently named the winners of the Brain Race, a startup competition organized by the Center for Advancing Innovation in Washington DC and the UK-based Brain Tumour Charity.

Natalia Bielczyk is a researcher, entrepreneur, author, and philanthropist. She graduated from the College of Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Warsaw, Poland, with a triple MS title in Physics, Mathematics, and Psychology. Thereafter, she went through a PhD program in Computational Neuroscience at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior in Nijmegen, the Netherlands and obtained a PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen on June 18th 2020.

 In 2018, she launched a public foundation, Stichting Solaris Onderzoek en Ontwikkeling, aiming to help early career researchers find new careers in industry. She also owns Welcome Solutions, a company developing new tools and practices to help professionals in navigating on the job market, and in finding/creating their dream jobs. Even though she chose to work in the open market, she is still a researcher in her free time and has a strong belief in the compatibility of science and entrepreneurship.

Trauma Response in the Time of COVID-19 and Civil Unrest

Time: Friday August 7th

       10:00-11:00 (New York) / 15:00-16:00 (London) / 22:00-23:00 (HK)

Speaker: Emma Kaywin

About this workshop: The fact of the matter is that life has been a bit more stressful lately, to put it mildly. In this workshop, we will learn how trauma works in the body and brain, and the reasons why the current situation might be causing traumatic responses for any of us. We will also learn -- and practice -- tools for supporting each other through this traumatic moment.

About the speaker: Emma Kaywin is a sexual health educator, consultant, writer, and activist based in Brooklyn, NY.

She is the Consent Co-Director at House of Yes (NYC) and co-leads the Safer Spaces team at Meso Creso (DC). She consults for a number of nightlife communities and radical arts organizations across the East Coast, where she develops trauma-informed policies and procedures and trains staff. She further delivers tailored workshops and trainings on topics of consent, trauma, and sexuality to party collectives and young scientist groups internationally.

Previously, Emma worked at the Institute for Advanced Medicine at Mount Sinai Health System, where she led a team of Peers living with HIV/AIDS and developed sexuality and anti-stigma trainings. She was the sexual health columnist for Bustle for two years, where she developed weekly, research-driven responses to questions of sexual health and behavior.

Emma received a Master’s of Arts in health education from Teachers College, Columbia University and holds a Certificate in Conflict Resolution from the Teachers College Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution. She is currently working towards a doctorate in health education (EdD) at Teachers College, where she is researching what supports queer and gender-diverse individuals in feeling sexually safer in nightlife spaces.