The Cabbages of Doom

Answer the question! (I’ve said it before but some things are worth repeating.)

Click here for more exam tips.

Two weeks ago, I attended the awesome double-header of ABACBS2015 and AGTA15. In some ways they were chalk and cheese - ABACBS was cheap and cheerful, where as AGTA was expensive and (therefore) exclusive - but both were great and highlighted some of the very best features of successful academic conferences.

As part of the ABACBS2015 organising committee, I needed to collect my thoughts for a debrief, so I thought I’d got down some thoughts here. (Thanks to grant writing, the post itself got a little delayed!) As with biology itself, most decisions are trade offs and the following comparison is not to criticise - I just find it interesting. As with the awesome ABiC14 conference last year, I mainly want to document good practice for future reference. (Some of these will no doubt be repeats of my ABiC14 thoughts!)

Size. Both conferences were, for me, the perfect size - around 180-190 people. This is enough to give the conference a good buzz and ensure that there are sufficient interesting people to listen to and posters to visit. Critically, though, it was small enough that you could find and speak to the people you wanted to. (Even if I didn’t fully get the chance at ABACBS2015 because I was busy, and managed to miss some people at AGTA15 because time ran out!)

Venue. ABACBS2015 was run on a budget and we were very fortunate to have the Garvan Institute provide a free venue for the conference. The Garvan lecture theatre is lovely, with a great AV system and comfy seats. The only negative for a conference of that size - and we got close to our 200 person limit - is that the space outside the theatre for breaks and posters does get a bit cramped. In contrast, AGTA15 was held in the Crowne Plaza at Hunter Valley, which is a pretty luxury hotel in the wine region of New South Wales. It took me a while to warm to the main conference setup, with seats around tables in a large, wide room with a screen each side of (and a long way from) the podium. However, the “trade exhibition” space where the breaks, lunch and posters were, was excellent. I am big fan of having the posters up all the time and in the same place as the breaks.

Location. ABACBS was held in the city centre at a research institute. This kept the costs down and made it easy to get to. (We did not organise accommodation.) It also made it easy to escape from, which might have affected evening social numbers. AGTA was out in the sticks, which made it harder to get to and may have put some people off attending - it essentially added another day to the length of the conference. The plus side of this was that everything was on one site and it was not so easy to disappear or go home, and so most people were around most of the time, I think. (Although there was the temptation of wine tasting on the doorstep!)

Goodie bags. I’m pleased to say that both conferences went down the reusable shopping bag route (pick above). Being budget, we got UNSW to sponsor us with some canvas bags for ABACBS. (Complete with the scary statistic that plastic bags take 15-1000 years to break down.) AGTA was (a) a bit more upmarket and (b) in wine country, so they provided wine coolbags!

Trade exhibition. We binfies are a cheap lot - and I don’t mean tacky or miserly, I mean that we don’t need a lot of money to do great things. As a result, it is hard to attract trade sponsors: we just don’t spend (or often even have!) any money! Genomics is clearly a different matter, as you literally cannot do it without lots of expensive kit. The AGTA trade exhibit was therefore pretty big and bustling. Again, putting it with the food and posters made for some great…

…Breaks. Breaks really do make or break a conference. One of the few criticisms of ABACBS2015 was that the breaks were a bit too short - we were somewhat hemmed in for time because we needed to leave people enough time to get to AGTA in the afternoon of the second day. We also tended to over-run a little, because people would be enjoying the breaks and take a bit of time to filter back into the theatre for the talks. My advice for conference planners: (1) make all breaks 5-10 minutes longer than you think they should be (e.g. 40 minutes for coffee and over an hour for lunch); (2) build in some dummy time into the program to soak up delays; (3) Make sure you have a bell or something to signal that the next session is starting! Being a more leisurely multi-day conference, AGTA had nice long breaks, including a session off for posters etc. after lunch. Lots of opportunities for mingling and looking at posters.

Invited speakers. Both conferences had outstanding invited speakers that gave really interesting talks. I know some of the binfie crowd would have enjoyed a bit more about the methodology in ABACBS2015 - and we should perhaps brief our speakers a little better in future - but personally I was blown away by the quality of the science presented. Both fields are rapidly changing as technology opens up opportunities and there is some really cool stuff going on out there! AGTA in particular seemed to have a lot of invited speakers, talking about really cool stuff - possibly part of the reason it's so expensive. (It must be said: the quality of the selected abstracts was good too!)

Gender Equality. Both conferences did pretty well on the gender front, I think. ABACBS2015 in particular nailed it, with a 50% split of invited speakers and over 50% female speakers overall! (The latter wasn’t deliberate as such - there are just loads of good female bioinformaticians in Australia who submitted interesting abstracts!)

Twitter. (And #confBingo.) I have mixed feeling about live tweeting at conferences. This year, I decided to throw myself in a bit more and, on balance, I feel that I got more out of it than I missed. It is true that sometimes I missed something a speaker was saying because of a tangential Twitter conversation (such as #JediKelpie) - but I also learnt stuff and picked up on things that I had missed thanks to the Twitter feed. The #confBingo thread was also quite entertaining a fun, and helped networking and building community spirit, which is what a lot of a good conference is ultimately about.

Coffee. Unfortunately, we were unable to attract the barista sponsor from ABiC14 to sponsor ABACBS2015. AGTA did have a sponsored barista, though. Roche (I think) gave out three tickets with registration for the trade exhibit barista. Not quite as good as unlimited but it hit the spot. My other top conference coffee tip: bring a reusable cup! It' so much easier/safer if you want to take coffee into the talks and generally cuts down on spills - and refills! (Next year, I am hoping for ABACBS Keep Cups in the goodie bags!)

Overall, I had a lot of fun helping with the conference organisation - and would recommend it - and even more fun attending. Australia has some great science going on and a really strong/vibrant bioinformatics community, and I am proud to be part of it.

Wednesday this week was our second Aussiversary, having stepped off the plane to start our new adventure two years ago.

To celebrate, here are some of things I have learnt over the past two years (in no particular order):

• Aussies are very serious about their coffee, and it’s fantastic. (Even if Melbournites think that Sydney coffee is crap!)
• The chips are disappointing but the fish is great.
• The Aussie ideal of mateship is aspirational and inspirational, even if not always realised.
• Not all of the animals are trying to kill you - including the dragons.
• Your average store chocolate is rubbish but they do have people who know what they’re doing.
• Jacaranda trees are awesome.
• If thongs are banned at a club, the bouncer will stare at your feet, not perform an intimate search. And you can buy thongs in vending machines.
• Aussie rules football is possibly the best spectator sport ever. (Based on one game!)
• Thanks to craft breweries, Aussie beer is not all bad, and some of it is very good.
• Brunch is a serious(ly good) meal of the day.
• Musically, Australia is trapped in the era of hair rock power ballads. And it’s awesome.
• The coins have animals on them
• For long haul, always fly an A380 if you can.
• The Socceroos may struggle but Aussies rule at robot soccer.
• They do a good line in sunsets.
• Australia is a great place to do bioinformatics.

Comment below if you think I’ve forgotten anything important - I’m sure there’s lots!

As with most academics, I get a fair a number of unsolicited enquiries about possible PhD placements. Unfortunately, a number of these appear to be from students who are receiving little or no advice regarding how to go about making an application.

Every now and then, an application stands out from the bunch for being particularly good or bad. A while back, I received one of the latter, which made me so sad that I thought I would turn my response into a post. What made it particularly tragic was that it was from a student who had received government funding to study abroad, and was therefore in a fairly strong position.

The email (name redacted) was as follows:

On [DATE] "XXX baby" <XXX@yahoo.com> wrote:

Subject: Hello doctor

My name is XXX, I finished M.Sc. degree in XXX University in Iraq at (2012), I have obtained a fund from the Iraqi government to study PHD in Microbiology in the Ustralia.

I had opportunity to be a student of Iraq and My interests are about Bacteriology and Immunity in general and I really hope to get your kind acceptance to pursue my PHD under your supervision in University of UNSW.

Kindly find attached my C.V please which I hope it gives detailed overview about me

Thank you very much

The CV was then attached as several JPEGs of scanned pages. Unusual attachments plus a username of “XXX baby” and subject line of “Hello doctor” meant that this one almost went straight in the bin as spam. Given the number of typos and other errors, it might have been better if it had.

I’ve had some others that were almost as bad, including one that started “Hello Sir !” and proceeded to end every sentence with an exclamation mark! Yes! Every sentence! No! That’s not a good idea!

Lest I get misunderstood, I must stress that the point here is not to be mean to these students. The issue is that they are clearly not getting the advice they need, especially given the fact that they are writing in their second (plus) language and applying to academics with a different culture.

Here then, is my advice/guidance for those wanting to make an unsolicited application for a PhD studentship (though most points still apply if a project is being advertised). I get many applications from overseas students. If I am even to consider you as a potential student then you need to impress me. The following impress me:

Professionalism. Send a well structured email, with a sensible subject such as “PhD enquiry” and a CV (if attached) that is provided as a single sensibly named PDF (or docx), i.e. your name and “CV” feature somewhere in there.

Genuine Interest. Personalise your message and provide some indication that you really know who I am. “Dear Sir” indicates a blanket mailshot to all and sundry and is thus destined for the bin. Knowing who I am is not enough, though. I also want an indication that you know and understand at least something of the research that goes on in my lab. Referencing degree subjects or research experience that match neither my background nor research focus indicates poor research/understanding. A PhD is long, hard graft and I need to know that you have genuine interest or everyone’s time will be wasted.

A clear CV. Your CV should have relevant skills and metrics highlighted. If you are from overseas, remember that I probably do not know what your grades mean, so place them in context. What proportion of students get those grades/medals etc.? This is a research post, so describe some of your research projects and your role in them. When it comes to CVs, evidence is the name of the game. Don’t just list skills and positive attributes: provide examples.

Motivation/Enthusiasm. Good grades are not enough and academic ability will only get you so far in a PhD. Motivation and enthusiasm are critical. As well as a CV that stresses relevant achievements, include a personal statement that convinces me that you want to do a PhD (with me) for the right reasons, and are likely to see it through.

Ask questions. This is basically genuine interest + motivation/enthusiasm but worth stating in its own right as intelligent questions are the evidence of those things. It's your PhD and your life - you should care about what you might be doing. The caveat is this: do not ask a question that is answered by ten minutes of reading my lab's webpages and/or paper abstracts.

Good communication skills. If English is not your first language, get your emails proof-read by someone with good English. Exclamation points after every sentence indicates that communication will be tricky, as does failure to appropriately understand/respond to emails. I am not going to think you are not keen if you take a few days to give a measured response. I am going to think that communication may be insurmountably difficult if I get a speedy response that is riddled with errors.

Funding. Unless you are applying for a specific funded project, you will need to secure your own funding. A clear indication of a funding plan is therefore crucial. If you already have funding, this is good. Better still, would be to detail exactly what that funding covers (i.e. duration? fees AND living expenses? any attached conditions?) and to indicate how the funding was won and how competitive it was. Winning a competitive scholarship is one way to impress. Even better, provide evidence in the form of an official notification of funding etc.

References. Ultimately, it is very tricky to assess a student from a CV and covering letter alone. Again, evidence is the name of the game. Provide two or more faculty members or professional scientists who can provide an academic reference. These should have institution email addresses, not personal gmail/yahoo addresses, as anyone can create these and they will carry less weight.

Fail to hit most of these points and your application is in the bin. (I now have a generic response that I send out to generic applications.) This may seem harsh but there is a lot at stake and it is important to get a good fit between student, supervisor and project; a poor student/fit is a net drain on lab productivity.

A PhD is not something to embark upon lightly. It will consume many years of your life and will quite possibly determine the direction of the rest of your professional life. A PhD application should be made with all of the research, care and attention to detail that this implies.