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UBC-PDA social: Mt. Seymour Hike + Dinner

Join us for a hike and/or dinner Saturday September 29th.  Register for one or both components here.
Hike details:

The hike will take place weather permitting! Update will be sent close to event time.
When: meet at 9:00 a.m., Saturday, September 29th
We will meet up in front of the kiosk at the farthest end of the upper Mt. Seymour parking lot.
The hike will be the Mt. Seymour trail, which is ~9km return and elevation gain of 450m.  If you would prefer  less or more challenging options, there are other trails  that departs from the same parking lot.
Details: please remember to bring plenty of water, a lunch, sunscreen, a hat, and the 10 essentials for hiking.  We will arrange a car pool for anyone interested – please indicate if you need a ride or can offer a ride on the registration form.
The hike will be weather permitting – we will email all registrants the day before  the hike to confirm.

Dinner details:

When: 6:00 p.m., Saturday, September 29th
Where: Colony Kitsilano (3255 W Broadway)
First round of appetizers is on us.
Details: please RSVP even if you’re not planning to attend the hike, so that we know how big of a table to get.
We will meet for dinner rain or shine!

Contact Ido Hatam  if you have any questions about this event.

 

New funding for the PDA

We are very pleased to announce that we have secured a major new funding agreement with UBC that will allow the PDA to greatly increase its activities going forward.

The Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies and the Vice President, Academic have both agreed to contribute to the PDA on an annual basis. Before this, we relied on funding from just one UBC institute, the LSI, which has backed us from the beginning. Their continuing support combined with the new funding means the PDA budget will be 3 times bigger from this year!

This will allow us to offer our members – all UBC postdocs – much more in terms of research and social events, while continuing to be an independent voice advocating for postdoctoral researchers at UBC and beyond.

The new funding will mean:

  • Continuing the expanded, full-day format for the annual Postdoc Research Day
  • Subsidised postdoc socials every two weeks – no more worrying about expensive activities or full-price hockey tickets
  • a PDA welcome lunch for new postdocs after PDFO orientations
  • enabling PDA officers to travel to represent UBC postdocs at national conferences, such as the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars annual meeting
  • further development of our new relationship with the UBC careers service
  • and much more!

Do you have ideas about how we can use our new funds? Our purpose is to work for you! Let us know by getting in touch, or shape the future of the PDA by joining the Executive Committee.

The PDA Annual General Meeting is coming up next month, so come along to hear our plans. If you really want to make a difference and gain some great skills along the way, you can stand for an Officer position.

Call for Nominations: 2018/19 PDA Executive Officers

ciWe are excited to announce the call for nominations for candidates to be part of the UBC Postdoctoral Association’s 2018/19 Executive Team.

Deadline extended! Apply by Monday March 12th

  • Represent the postdoc community
  • Gain leadership and management experience
  • Organize professional development, research and networking events
  • Interact with big-name academics, advocates, and UBC leadership

The PDA is run by Elected Volunteer Officers (the President and 6 Vice-Presidents). All 7 positions will be elected for the 2018/19 year at our Annual General Meeting, held on Wednesday, March 14th in LSC room 1330 (5 pm). Find a list of open positions and a description of their roles below.

All UBC postdocs and research associates are encouraged to attend the AGM on March 14th for the elections. The event will be followed by a celebration with food and drinks!

Self-Nomination: Download the UBC PDA nomination form here. Please fill out this form and return it to ubc.postdoc@gmail.com along with a recent photo and a short Letter of Interest (100-200 words) detailing why you would like to serve and any relevant experience.

Further details

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Another exciting 3-Minute Postdoc Slam!

The 2017 UBC PDA 3-Minute Postdoc Slam (3MPS) was a great success, with more presenters and a bigger audience than ever before. More than 60 postdocs, students, and faculty came along to hear 10 postdocs from across UBC compete to present their research to a general audience in the most engaging way, in just 3 minutes.

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Thanks to another year of generous support from the UBC Life Sciences Institute (LSI), the event took place in LSC3 in the LSI. Alongside the 10 talks, judged by 3 faculty members from different academic institutions, there was an engaging and extremely useful feature presentation on science communication by Dr. Jenn Gardy, and a short talk on opportunities from Mitacs.

Following a brief introduction to the UBC PDA and an explanation of the rules from Kieran, the PDA President, the competition got under way. Competitors were allowed just 3 minutes to present their research projects using a single slide, with no animations, transitions, or moving media. A variety of approaches were taken, from slides with multiple detailed figures to just single images. The full list of the presenters and presentation titles is given at the end of this post.

After the first five presenters, Amin Aziznia from Mitacs gave his own 3-minute presentation explaining the funding and training opportunities available to postdocs at UBC. Following a coffee break to allow for some energetic discussions, the final five presenters gave their talks. Dr. Gardy, from UBC’s School of Population and Public Health, concluded the event with her presentation, entitled ‘A very, very short course in science communication’. Dr. Gardy is a science communicator extraordinaire, who has given many public lectures, presented several television programmes, and has thousands of followers on social media, and her talk contained tips useful for everyone from new graduate students to experienced faculty.

Dr. Gardy also judged the 3-minute presentations, along with Dr. Mahda Jahromi, from the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and Prof. Dr. Roland Herzog, who is currently visiting UBC from Technische Universität Chemnitz. All the presentations were extremely high quality, with 3rd to 7th places in the scoring separated by less than 1 point. The judges also made comments and suggestions that were passed to each presenter after the competition.

The winners were announced at a fully catered reception, generously supported by the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute, where networking and many more discussions took place.

The UBC PDA Executive Team would like to congratulate the three winners, thank all the participants for making this an excellent event, and thank the three judges and the audience for supporting us. We hope everyone enjoyed themselves, and look forward to seeing you at future UBC PDA events!

The 2017 UBC PDA Executive Team

The winners:
1st Place ($100) – Will Burt

2nd Place ($75) – Beniamin Zahiri

3rd Place ($50) – Christine Anderl

The presenters:
Amanda Haage, Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences
‘Talin Autoinhibition Regulates Cell Behavior & Migration’
Amir Sharafian, Department of Mechanical Engineering
‘Methane Planet’
Fiona Choi, Department of Psychiatry
‘Mass Trauma and Mental Health’
Willis Monroe, Department of Asian Studies
‘Quantifying the History of Religion’
Rahul Sachdeva, International Collaboration of Repair Discoveries
‘Combined Regenerative and Rehabilitative Strategy for Cardiovascular Recovery after Spinal Cord Injury’
Beniamin Zahiri, Department of Mechanical Engineering
‘Smart Stimuli Responsive Surfaces – A Multifunctional Material’
Mohamed Elgendi, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
‘Help Me Help My Body: Visualization of Biosignals’
Christine Anderl, Department of Psychology
‘It’s the hormones talking…’
Will Burt, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
‘Why is the ocean……green?!’
Navid Khosravi-Hashemi, School of Kinesiology
‘Galvanic vestibular stimulation as a pain management method’

Event supported by:

Catered reception supported by:

Call for Nominations: 2017/2018 PDA Executive Officers

We are excited to announce the call for nominations for candidates to be part of the UBC Postdoctoral Association’s 2017/2018 Executive Team.

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This is a great opportunity to:

  1. Gain leadership experience
  2. Represent the postdoc community
  3. Organize professional development, research and networking events

The PDA Executive Team consists of 6 Volunteer Officers (i.e. President and 5 VPs) whose position will be voted on at our Annual General Meeting on Thursday, March 9th in the Life Sciences Institute (LSI) room 1510 (5 pm). For a detailed list of our open Officer Positions and a description of their role below.

We encourage all postdocs to attend the AGM on March 9th.
Light snacks and refreshments will be served!

Eligibility: All candidates must be UBC Postdoctoral Fellows.

Service on the Executive Committee: Candidates should be able to attend the majority of the Executive Committee meetings held bimonthly either on or off-campus, as well as the PDA events. Executive Committee member terms are 1-year, beginning 1 April 2016 and concluding 31 March 2017.

Self-Nomination: Download the UBC PDA nomination form here. Please fill out this form and return it to ubc.postdoc@gmail.com along with a recent photo and a short Letter of Interest (100-200 words) detailing your interest in serving on the PDA Executive and any relevant experience.

Nomination deadline: Thursday March 2nd, 2017.

Commitment: On average, the President attends 2 meetings a month (5-10 hours a month), while the VP attends 1-2 meetings a month (2-7 hours a month)

All Executive Officer positions are open for election, interested PDA members may also join the PDA executive as non-elected Committee Members at this (or any other) time. Click the position to read a brief description of the role:

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