Volume 16 | Issue 13 | 44 | Jun. 24, 2002 Previous | Next Enter the Heavyweights The world's largest computer companies climb into the bioinformatics ring | By Sam Jaffe Photo: Courtesy of Hormone Sekine BLUE GENE: Japanese artist Hormone Sekine chose blue for his primordial gene composition because, to him, it represents freedom. Will the big blue gene super- computer bring scientists mor

When Sandra Panchalingam finished her PhD studies at the University of Birmingham, she set her sights on the United States. "I knew that no matter how hard I worked in the United Kingdom, I would probably never get a chance to run my own lab," she says. "I always believed that in America, if you worked hard, there was an opportunity to reap the benefits. That's not always true in Europe." Now her postdoctoral training at the University of Maryland is winding down and Panchalingam is completing

Editor's Note: This is the first article in a 3-part series on research funding. "Training Wheels" ©2002 Shari Weschler Rubeck www.artinmind.orgPrivate and government funding can help trainees pursue their own dreams When Chris Hurst moved to Boston to take a postdoctoral research training position at Boston University, he looked at it as his first real job. After four years in graduate school getting his PhD in toxicology, Hurst yearned to do his own research on the sensitivity of liver c

A gadabout scientist in business suit and silk tie replaces yesterday's white-coated gent stuck in the lab. Today's life science researcher works in an interactive profession that requires enormous amounts of conversation, idea sharing, and plenty of social skills. "Science is politics," says Alexander Heyl, a genomics researcher at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany. And networking is part of the politics. "Networking is important because it keeps you current in your field and makes yo

Good" means average. "Great" means good. "Competent" is a blistering criticism. Welcome to the world of letters of reference, where you never say what you mean, and sometimes what you don't say, says it all. Letters of reference are the dirty work of science—an administrative duty that nobody wants to be bothered with. Yet they are an indisputably important part of being a scientist. In 2000, US universities awarded 25,979 science doctorates, according to a National Science Foundation surv