Dates set for multicolor flow cytometry course at UBC

Thematic Workshop:Advanced Multicolor Analysis and Cell Sorting, partnered with BD Biosciences, StemCell Technologies, Inc., Miltenyi Biotech

May 7 – 10, 2007

Workshop topics will be chosen based on the interests of the participants, the trainees may learn some or all of the following:

• Theory of flow cytometry, with particular focus on experimental design, chromofore selection and multicolor compensation
• Magnetic pre-enrichment of rare populations
• Instrument quality control
• Hands-on set up of multilaser flow cytometers, including Diva-Vantage, LSRII, Aria and Canto
• Hands-on compensation of complex samples
• Sorting and purity assessment
• Analysis using Flow Jo

All Network trainees are eligible to apply to participate.

For more information visit

http://www.stemcellnetwork.ca/training/thematicworkshops_flowcourse.php

Deadline for registration is: April 6, 2007

Download the registration form online at:
http://www.stemcellnetwork.ca/training/downloads/RegistrationforRossiWorkshop2007.doc

Human Embryonic Stem Cell Training Course

The Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC) is offering a hands-on hESC training course in Melbourne this June (application deadline is March 30).  There is one spot being reserved for trainees of the International Consortium of Stem Cell Networks (ICSCN), of which SCN is a member.  For any successful SCN trainee, ASCC will cover the registration fee and cost of accommodations, and SCN will pay for the travel and any meals not included in the course.

Download the brochure here.

Trainee Recruitment Opportunities

CIHR Multidisciplinary Team in Skeletal Regenerative Medicine

For more information contact:
stemcellteam-l@mailman.ucalgary.ca

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Changes at the Network Office

	The Network is happy to announce that as of this month, Sophie Chargé is now the Director of Scientific Programs. Sophie is responsible for overseeing the network's research programs, and will act as a liaison between investigators and the Network. Sophie can be reached by email at sophie@stemcellnetwork.ca, or by phone at (613) 562-5800 x 8590.
	Additionally, Tia Moffat is now the Manager of Training Programs. Tia is responsible for overseeing the Network's training program, and will be the primary point of contact on training issues. Tia can be reached by email at tia@stemcellnetwork.ca, or by phone at (613) 562-5800 x 8296.

Mentors are trusted councilors guiding their protégés. Mentors advise, inform, encourage and support without judgment. They acknowledge their protégé’s energy and talent and help them develop leadership skills. Most importantly, mentors pilot their protégés acclimation into their profession. They do so by introducing protégés to key people and giving them visibility. Unfortunately many educational experts claim graduate education fails through poor academic mentoring[1]. “There is resistance to understanding that everyone who gets a Ph.D. isn’t going to be emulating the career of the mentor. What we as faculty need to do is be creative about allowing our students to see a broader range of life and career opportunities.”

The academic mentorship system arose during the early days of graduate education. Originally, a professor’s primary role was teaching. Research acted to keep the mind sharp and the professor’s insight high, but it was a sideline. Brilliant protégés were handpicked for the discipline. They served to fill an ever-expanding pool of professors. Fast-forward to today; we find a drastically different academic situation. Universities no longer purvey knowledge, but rather serve as engines of the economy.  Governments invest heavily in building research capacity and professors are measured by research performance, not teaching ability. The numbers of research trainees, the so-called “hands of the professor” have climbed steadily over the past thirty years in order to meet the demands of increased research funding. However, the number of faculty positions has remained steady, which makes it difficult for students to graduate into an academic position. Furthermore, the extraordinary growth in life sciences resulted in the creation of a new category of trainee: the postdoc. Postdocs have become, in essence, a holding tank for Ph.D. graduates wishing to become professors. Only 10% of life science Ph.D. graduates will make it to the professor stream; another 20-30% will remain in academic research as “permadocs” with no career trajectory[2]. 

This “new academia” places tremendous stress upon the mentor-protégé relationship. A moderately successful professor may have 10 trainees in their lab. The majority of these trainees are not destined to become a professor; they will leave academia in search of other careers. This level of transition leads to a number of challenges for the professor. First, most professors do not believe they can acclimate their trainees into a profession outside of academia, such as industry or government. Second, the new culture establishes researchers (and trainees by default) as ‘entrepreneurs’ responsible for their own survival. Indeed, a “survival of the fittest” mentality arose in academia with the tremendous surplus of talent in the professor pool. While competition helps to drive the research agenda forward, it is undermining our knowledge capital. This is especially true of students who are not told the rules of engagement before or upon entering graduate school.

Despite overwhelming competition, there is much that trainees can do to increase their career success.

Research training options. Many students naively follow a traditional path to becoming a professor from undergrad to grad to postdoc to professor. But in today’s world of extreme academic competition, it is wise to consider other career opportunities along the way. This does not mean that a PhD is a waste of time, because in many career paths a PhD can be a “career maker”. 

               Astonishingly, many students enter graduate school because they failed to nurture other career options during undergraduate training. This behavior recapitulates itself in graduate school, where students don’t consider their career options until after they finish their thesis. Good graduate student candidates have researched their career options before applying to grad school; they have pursued research projects as summer students and established a network of professors who can write excellent letters of recommendation. Graduate students with a career plan and who know where to find resources to help them meet their career goals will ultimately succeed.

Maintain a career plan. Although universities do not consider themselves to be vocational schools, this attitude should not trickle down to inaction when it comes to assessing one’s career. The primary purpose of a university education is to find knowledge; one benefit of that knowledge should be the ability to see the vista of career opportunities that lie in front.  Students need to ask career related questions of their professors and they need to consult with university career centers.  They need to begin to identify a plan, well before they graduate. This plan should be a living document that is modified as knowledge is accumulated. Students also need to experiment with career options through coursework, information gathering and summer job experience.

Establish a network. It is a well known that 90% of career related jobs come from networking. While students are gathering information about their career opportunities, they should be establishing and maintaining a network. This network should begin with professor contact but it should go well beyond that into the career centre and onto contacts given to them in order to conduct informational interviews. Students should be focused on finding career related jobs, during their summer vacations; not working at the local coffee house or clothing store. Job experience, combined with networking, makes the best students more competitive in future positions.

Become a good protégé. The best way for a student to develop a good relationship with their mentor is through productive meetings, which have a shared agenda. Good protégés will schedule regular meetings with their mentor. However, meetings do not always need to be static; nor do they have to be for a set period of time. The best protégé’s are cognizant of their mentor’s time pressures and engage them accordingly. There is nothing wrong with a five-minute scrum to discuss a concept or a revised plan. Likewise an email can be used to brainstorm.

Regular meetings encourage information sharing, problem solving, project management, strategic planning and negotiation. However, science shouldn’t be the only topic; pressing personal issues, such as coursework, professional development and career plans should also be on the agenda. In fact, beneficial meetings commonly begin and end with non-science issues. A supervisor who is uninterested in discussing personal issues will not make a good mentor, and an alternative supervisor should be considered. Indeed, the biggest mistake a trainee can make is not realizing that a move to a new training environment needs to be beneficial. Attempting to manage the problematic mentor will not help if differences are irreconcilable. The longer a trainees stays in an unsupported environment, the more detrimental the experience will be. Furthermore, expectations, performance evaluation and feedback are very important during meetings. Although initially awkward, inclusion of these subjects builds to a solid relationship.

Adopt a professional development plan. Personal and career discussions may also be awkward when raised in a mentor-protégé meeting. Hence, a professional development plan (PDP) creates a wonderful platform for discussion and ice breaking. PDPs include a strategic plan for professional development and a portfolio of achievements. Using the PDP platform, a student outlines goals related to their research and coursework. Further goals may be set to strengthen weaknesses or explore areas of development. An important part of professional development planning includes reflective practice and strategic planning. Students must do critical self-evaluation of strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. Once identified and articulated in the PDP, a provisional plan can be critically examined and refined with the mentor’s help. Often students fail to engage their supervisor at this level, which commonly causes dissatisfaction in the relationship. With the PDP as a platform, a mentor understands their protégé in many dimensions. A PDP discussion allows a mentor to help identify opportunities, which otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

Use the resource-rich university. Many trainees lose the opportunity to practice important communication and negotiation skills by failing to build strong working relationships with their mentors. In turn, they are reluctant to engage other professors, who may hold the key to their future. Indeed, the university offers a wealth of knowledge and experience, but only the most resourceful students capitalize on the opportunity. Trainees must learn networking skills, which will help them find people to address their problems and career development goals. 

Find suitable mentors for career. Trainees may find their graduate supervisor is unable to satiate their full development, because the supervisor has a limited purview. Trainees should take advantage of the networking opportunity available within the university by finding additional mentors. This can be particularly important when a student begins to refine a career plan. The best advice and mentorship might come from an individual in industry, not their professor. In my role as Director of the Master of Biomedical Technology, I have found students using the PDP-industry mentor-networking platform are able to more quickly find satisfying employment opportunities, than without it.

Although the pressures of the world are taxing the traditional academic mentorship system, trainees should have confidence in knowing that by taking control of their own training and career, they have limitless potential.  No matter where one is at in their training, it is not too late to realistically assess career options and develop a plan and a network to help promote one’s career options.

Derrick E. Rancourt is the Director of the University of Calgary’s Master of Biomedical Technology, a one year course based MSc that integrates life science and business.

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[1] Nyquist and Woodford “Reinvisioning the PhD: What Concerns Do We Have?” http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision/

[2] www.nationalpostdoc.org/atf/cf/{89152E81-F2CB-430C-B15149D071AEB33E}/Postdoc_Factsheet_2006.pdf

Getting a Job After Your Graduate Degree: Becoming a Patent Agent

It seems like a long way from a lab bench to a law firm but Claire Palmer made the transition in just a few days. After completing her PhD in Molecular Biology she left in the Rudnicki lab at the Ottawa Health Research Institute to start as a Biotechnology expert and Patent Agent trainee at Marusyk Miller and Swain. We interviewed Claire about her experiences.

What do you do in your job?
I'm in training to be a patent agent.   A patent agent is a person who is registered at the Canadian Patent Office (CPO) to represent inventors and their interests.  To become registered at the CPO, you must have a minimum of one year experience in the patent field and have passed four exams which focus on different aspects of the patent field.  To this end I have received extensive on the job training and mentorship and have successfully completed three of the four exams. 

Do you need a law degree or PhD to work as a Patent Agent?
With regard to a law degree, no you don’t need to be a lawyer to become a Patent Agent.  In fact, even if you are a lawyer, to represent inventors before the CPO you must be a Patent Agent and therefore the basic requirements are the same, namely you must have a minimum amount of experience and have passed the four patent agent exams.  As long as you have a keen interest in learning, you can acquire the legal training you need by on the job training and self directed learning.  In essence you get legal training as you work. You're immersed in the legal aspects of the job, it's really a mentorship program.

As for the science qualifications, it depends on the field and the firm you work for. We have people from a range of different fields and have a wide range of different degrees (undergraduate, Masters, PhDs) who work at our office. At my firm, people who specialize in chemistry, molecular biology and biopharma tend to have PhDs, but it's not an absolute requirement. Clearly in some fields an advanced degree is necessary to allow you to effectively communicate with inventors.

Do you have a specific mentor?
Yes, I have a few. Our head Patent Agent Elaine Johnson is one of my mentors and so is Kay, my sister, who started there two years before me and is a patent agent already. A more experience person is always providing guidance to a less experienced person. They do this by reviewing work and through one on one discussion. We have in-house training sessions at lunch and there's a lot of self directed learning.  It's ideal for somebody who likes to learn and be challenged on a daily basis.

What do you do from day to day?
I guess the best place to start would be to tell you a little bit about how you get a patent and about what makes up a patent.  First, patents are regional.  What I mean by this is if you want to protect your invention in Canada and the U.S., you would need to obtain both a Canadian and U.S. patent.

To obtain patent protection in Canada for your invention, you must file a patent application at the CPO.  A patent application includes several parts that can be basically broken down into a “description” of what the invention is and claims which describe what you want protection for.    There are several requirements in order to obtain a patent in Canada, namely what you want protection for must be new, inventive, useful and it must be appropriate subject matter.    So once a patent application is filed in the CPO, it is examined by Patent Examiners.  It is the job of the Patent Examiner to look at the application in order to ensure that it meets the requirements I just discussed as well as other formality requirements.  If it doesn’t meet these requirements, the Patent Examiner sends a report detailing the faults in the application.  The Patent Agent responds by either traversing the Examiner’s objection or by amending the application.  Once the Patent Examiner is satisfied that the patent application meets all requirements, the application is allowed and following payment of a fee issued to patent.  Obviously, there is more to it then that but the above will provide the necessary information so that you can understand what I do.

I do two main things from day to day: I draft patent applications and I interact with patent examiners.

To draft a patent application, you interview and interact with the inventor in order to determine what they invented. You don't just want to cover off their invention as it appears on the bench, you want to cover off any variations as their patent needs to last them a long time. It's a real back and forth with inventors which can be really interesting.

Once the application is filed, for example in Canada, in order to get it examined it you must request examination.  Once you request examination, the patent application is examined by a Patent Examiner. As I indicated above, the Patent Examiner will review the application and point out any reasons they believe prevent the application from being allowed. It is the job of the Patent Agent to plead the case as to why the application should be issued to patent. In a sense it is a negotiation of sorts. A lot of my work revolves around responding to Examiners.

How do you communicate with your clients and the patent examiners?
The vast majority of my communications are written, although sometimes I do meet clients in person.

Are you only handling biologically related patents?
No. The majority of my work is biopharma and molecular biology but I am handling some engineering, nothing that would require specialized training to understand. 

How long does it take to get a patent?
It depends – it can be very quick or take a long time.  When you file a patent application into the CPO you have five years to request examination. When you do this you're asking an examiner to look at the patent and that starts the examination process. You could file and wait five years before requesting examination. After that, the first communication back from the patent office can take one or two years depending on field. Sometimes you can have just a few years left on the term of the patent after it's been granted or you can have close to 20 years. Now, in Canada the patent term is 20 years from the date that the application is filed into the Canadian Patent Office.

Are you able to stay current with the field you trained in?
I read more patent literature than anything else now. When you're working on a given patent you may need to do more reading in a particular field. I just stay up on the major current stuff; I read Nature and Science. I don't generally stay up to date on what I did my PhD on anymore unless it's to find out what people I know are doing now. There's lots of interesting things going on in the field of patents to keep up to date on.

How do you find the cultural differences between the lab and the law firm?
I personally found there wasn’t a significant cultural difference between the lab and the law firm.  In fact, I'm still working with a bunch of scientists. The biggest differences are that I sit at a desk and work on a computer instead of a lab bench and I have to dress a little nicer.  Another key difference, is that as opposed to working on one or two projects, I work on many different things in many different fields, for example one day I could be working on a patent application related to DNA replication or viral expression vectors and the next day be working on a patent application related to diagnosing cancer.  Also in the lab, individuals tended to have their own personal project, I find that now I tend to do more work in teams.   Perhaps, I found the transition easy because at the firm I work at they have a lot of scientists that have left the lab so they know how to help you make the change.

Are you happy with this as a career choice?
I'm very happy with this as a career choice, it suits me. It's exciting; there is lots of opportunity for career development.  It's fantastic for people that are interested in their field and want to keep up to date with it but don't necessarily want to do the wet work. You have to be ready to leave the lab and if you're ready to leave the lab you know that. You just have to be honest with yourself. It's really nice to know that I can use my scientific training for things outside the lab.

Many thanks to Claire for taking the time to speak with us.