Tag Archives: science

The One Day Initiative

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As expected, December 21st 2012 has passed. Earth and humans are still there, no end of the world in sight, no apocalyptic scenario (though we had a nice winter storm 😉 )

It is quite impressive that almost 1 Canadian out of 10 believe in these dooms day announcements. See this link: One in Seven (14%) Global Citizens Believe End of the World is Coming in Their Lifetime | Ipsos.

Even sadder, is when a society that thrived on science and technological advances (which is impossible  if the fundamental discoveries were not performed), a society that has split the atom and uses its power for energy, medicine… and yes military applications, believes at a level of almost 50% of the population, that Earth age is orders of magnitude younger than science tell us and that the bible provides an accurate account of the creation (In U.S., 46% Hold Creationist View of Human Origins.).

When this happen, we as scientists have failed to communicate efficiently with the public. We, scientists, need to get involved and educate on a larger scale.

Last year, I spent one day meeting over 500 students from a high school talking about radiation, radioactivity and its use in medicine. I intend to repeat the experience this year. If  I alone, during that single day, was able to reach hundreds of peoples, together we can reach out to millions, covering hundreds of topics.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one day per year would be dedicated officially to science and technology education conferences by experts for the general crowd, coming back every year at a similar date? Every school would have to get this day planned in their calendar year. In return, every University would make their advance graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, researchers and professors available on that day (no classes!)… Wouldn’t it be an exceptional day!

In the mean time, for 2013, I challenge you to give one day: let’s call it the one day initiative (it needs a good name!) to meet, talk with and educate your fellow citizens about science and technology. This can be meeting elementary or high school students, make a public conference, participate in a scientific debate, …

If you like this concept, please do disseminate the link to this blog post and use the name one day initiative as often as you can. Maybe by the sheer numbers we can create something new.

The time it takes…

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The start of the fall semester is very busy time for a university professor / researcher in Canada. First, classes start after the summer break. Second, there is a converging interest, a nexus of research grants and scholarship application (i.e. writing project descriptions and letter of recommendations for the students!) deadlines in the September-October period. Third, fall is also the time of the year for some major conferences in my field of research. All of this explains the lighter posting on this blog 😉

Research grant applications have a very peculiar habit to take of lot of your time. However, the most time consuming portion is not always what you would imagine. Every year, after the October deadlines are passed, I keep reminding myself of that. Sure, the research proposal itself tends to be a long process, starting with some key elements, an outline, maybe a mind map. However, by the time you start the writing of the proposal itself, it usually “flows”.

No, sometimes the most time consuming parts is actually filling out everything else: the online CV forms (this year was really bad with the new and old Canadian Common CV coexisting, at least for us in Quebec), the extra information about prior grants, etc. One of my senior colleague, who started out before computerized forms and internet existed, used to tell me that not so long ago, they would hand-write the science proposals and go back to the lab and to teaching; It was someone else job to type everything in (as in using a typewriter), including the up to date CV…

It is done!

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Final result in…I got promoted to full professor, effective June 1st. At that date 21 years ago, I was just starting my grad studies 😉

The most interesting part of the process leading to this promotion was the writing of a consolidated report of all my activities for the last 6 years. For me it was the first time I had to do it since I was hired directly to the associated professor level. While the exercise did produced a lengthy document, it also give a very full filing sense of accomplishment: I was quite proud of what I had achieved but more important how things looked moving forward.