student pulse
one stop place to connect with the
PhDs all over the world. We are
building a sustainable ecosystem
wherein current PhDs can make
use of the career related
information from around the
world and help them take an
informed decision and eventually
succeed. In return, they can be the
next generation professionals who
are helping the incoming
PhDs.”Dr Viswanadham Duppatla
has completed all his studies in
the Government institutes. He
feels lucky to travel from a remote
village in Andhra to IISc and
beyond. His dream is to make
government schools excel
corporate schools. His village and
school gets part of his time and
salary. He strongly feels that
students like him from remote
places do deserve a chance to be
in Science. Hopefully ClubSciWri
will make his dream come true.
The plans are to convert CSG into
a non-profit startup which will
depend on grants and private
funding to bring the best platform
of knowledge and awareness
needed to the pool of motivated
and talented intellectuals. To have
workshops, seminars, outreach
events to create awareness among
the industry hiring authorities
about how industries can be in an
advantageous position by hiring
the brightest of PhDs who have
over many years of such training
have developed almost all skills
which industry cares about.
Pursuing Ph.D. unlike other
professional courses is not a linear
process. Because of the sheer
number of factors which controls
the process of getting the thesis
into a proper shape the entire
process can be daunting. CSG will
provide the support system like the
google map to help students who
are stuck in their academic careers
34
BioVoiceNews | July 2016
Science clubbing all the way
The Club of Science Writers,
popularly known as ClubSciWri,
officially came into existence on
January 05, 2016 with its website
www.sciwri.club. The founder, Dr
Abhinav Dey, is a postdoctoral
scientist at Emory University
(Atlanta, USA) and he has been
actively supported by the cofounder, Dr Ananda Ghosh.
“Recently, I was invited to 3
round of onsite interviews by
Novavax, Inc. I received and
accepted their job offer.
Unlike my earlier interviews,
I nailed this interview. What
did I do differently? I sought
help from the key CSG
members who acted as my
mentors during this job
interview process namely:
Avnish Kapoor (Novartis),
Saurav Guha (Counsyl),
Roshni Ghosh (Regeneron),
Semanti Mukherjee
(Regeneron), Ushati Das (UC,
Santa Cruz). They helped me
in each and every step to
assure that I do the right
thing now for me to move
ahead for the next round."
-- Dr Satarupa Das
Assistant Research Scientist,
University of Maryland
for various reasons, through
crowdsourced knowledge from
PhDs across the world.
“Overall we want to make a top
class university outside the physical
campus setting, once people leave
the "real" school so that they can
still enjoy the intellectual cultural
values, what a good institute
brings,” says Dr Ghosh.
“The discussions on CSG forum
served as the breeding ground for
the conception of the ClubSciWri
idea. Exchange of career
development ideas on the CSG
forum have had different flavors.
However, there was always a
common driving force that has
compelled every discussion from
day one. The driving force was
and continues to be the changing
landscape of Scientific Research
Training in the US and other parts
of the world” says Dr Dey. He
added, saying that “With the
National Institutes of Health
(NIH) realizing that academic
career route in only possible for
less than 5 percent of the
postdoctoral trainees, the
unsustainable future for the
remaining 95 percent required the
trainees to think and train for
options beyond the academic
ivory tower. Most of the
postdoctoral appointees from
India have been trained for an
academic career and
disappearance of academic
options with funding drying-up
leaves them unprepared to gearup for the road ahead.”
Scientists love to see their work
being talked about at various
forums as it adds impact to their
research, especially after the
arrival of altmetrics. So
ClubSciWri was esta