Grad News Forum

Jeffrey Robinson, a fifth-year graduate student in the Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) program in the Department of Biological Sciences, is the founder and chairperson of the Dartmouth Graduate Outing Club (DGOC). DGOC organizes events throughout the academic year, including hikes, ski trips, canoe trips, and camping. Recently, Robinson organized a leadership series to promote the essentials of outdoor leadership so that other grad leaders would benefit from this perspective.

The leadership series ran from October 2012 through January 2013. Robinson planned several incrementally more complex sessions, beginning with short sessions on the basics of wilderness safety, clothing and equipment, group dynamics and risk management, and logistical organization for trips. Classroom knowledge was then put to practical use in an ascent of Mount Lafayette in November, during which participants practiced managing group safety in icy and snowy mountain conditions. The final event was a wilderness survival overnight to the Class of ’66 Lodge in January, where students learned how to start fires and build shelters in snowy and wet conditions, along with some basic avalanche safety. Participants in the course were considered officially qualified as graduate student outdoor leaders.

I met with Robinson for a question and answer session to learn more about his experiences as a leader and how these experiences have shaped his life.

Gilbert Rahme (GR): When and how did you get trained as a leader?

Jeffrey Robinson (JR): It takes a lot of experience to be a good leader. I was active in the Boy Scouts. Our troop focused on outdoor skills and fieldcraft, and I found that I excelled at this. In the Scouts, leadership is something that you learn by watching as a younger scout, and then start to put into practice as you advance in rank. I learned the fundamental skills in the Scouts, and I put them into a lot of informal practice post college by encouraging friends to go hiking, camping, backpacking, and rock climbing. In 2004, I took the National Outdoor Leadership School’s (NOLS) Pacific Northwest Mountaineering Course.  I learned technical mountain skills and wilderness expedition planning, group dynamics, and risk management. In particular, the NOLS course instilled a lot of confidence in my outdoor leadership capabilities and was a real turning point in my life; this experience was a major motivator for my decision to go for a PhD. Last, I volunteer with the Upper Valley Wilderness Response Team, a local wilderness search and rescue group. These guys are real professional wilderness rescuers and working with them has been the final step as far as taking my outdoor leadership knowledge to the level where I felt comfortable teaching others.

GR: What encouraged you to start the DGOC?

JR: A few different things. I went to a policy fellowship info session led by alumnus, David Lukofsky, who received his PhD from Thayer in 2009. Lukofsky mentioned that it is great professional experience to do some kind of community organizing activity or project, which got me thinking about what I could contribute. I had also been attending some Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC) trips my first summer here. I met some exceptional individuals and made friends with some of the undergrad leaders, but I was always a little sad that grad students did not have some DOC equivalent. On a trailwork trip, Lauren Lesser ’10 suggested I start a graduate version of the DOC. I got some interested grad students together, and we became a recognized Graduate Student Council (GSC) organization. We also had some meetings with the Outdoor Programs Office and Graduate Studies Office to talk safety protocols. Dartmouth is small enough that, with a little effort, you can make a difference in the community.

GR: What do you think it takes to be a leader?

JR: Real leadership takes faith, vision, determination, and flexibility. Otherwise leadership will break down in times of hardship and difficulty. I admit feeling a little uncomfortable pronouncing on leadership when I still struggle in many areas not relating to outdoor leadership. Objective self-appraisal is very important; most of us prefer not to admit our weaknesses, especially to ourselves, but recognizing them is the only way to overcome them.

GR: You have graduation on the horizon. What advice do you want to give to future graduate student leaders at Dartmouth?

JR: People should find something they are good at and that they like to do. Remember that being successful at anything worthwhile does not happen overnight: it requires multiple iterations of planning, executing, evaluating, and trying again. Set short, intermediate, and long-term goals, and periodically re-evaluate them.

GR: Where do you see yourself in the future and how has being a graduate student leader helped you realize your future goals?

JR: I have considered science policy work with the government or in international development. I have also considered continuing in an academic setting because I really enjoy teaching at the college level and potentially would like to develop a research program. It would be great to combine biology (as well as earth and environmental sciences) and outdoor leadership into an integrated curriculum at an institute that has that sort of perspective.

Being a grad student outdoor leader has been among my most valuable experiences at Dartmouth. I have learned as much about myself as I have about working with other people. I look forward to applying those principles to my future career.

GR: Anything you want to add?

JR: Enjoy and value the outdoors for the challenges and benefits it can provide. When times have gotten hard, being outside has always provided perspective. Also, join the DGOC! It’s a great way to experience the outdoors around Hanover while hanging out with your friends. E-mail us at graduate.outing.club@Dartmouth.edu

Anyone is welcome to join!

by Gilbert Rahme

Lilian Kabeche, a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Molecular and Cellular Biology program, was recently featured on the blog of Bárbara Alcaraz Silva of the University of California, Irvine. Kabeche was a recipient of an award in the poster competition of the Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) of the American Society of Cell Biology (ASCB).

For the full post see Science and Research.

The second talk in the series “Becoming a Faculty Member” was as informative as the first. Professor Ron Taylor talked to a group of graduate students and postdocs about how to write an effective research paper, something that he and his lab have a lot of experience with.

The hardest part of writing is figuring out where to start. Professor Taylor suggested that writers start with the abstract, which will provide a general overview of what the paper will be about. He did mention that your ideas will probably change as you start writing the paper, but you can always adjust the abstract later. After developing the abstract, the next and most important aspect of writing is looking at the collected data. Professor Taylor suggested actually having the data physically in front of you, so that you can move it around and arrange it into a coherent story. Sometimes more experiments may need to be done before the story is complete. Do you have controls? Is everything labeled correctly? Do the results fit well with what the abstract says? Looking at the data in advance will allow the writer to determine how the paper should develop and what remains to be done.

The next important aspect of writing a paper is determining why other researchers would care about what you are writing. You will want to present your work in a way that interests others in the field and addresses an issue that they find compelling.

Professor Taylor also stressed the importance of remembering basic writing skills, such as making sure each paragraph has a topic sentence. You should correct spelling and grammar before sending the paper off to be read by your advisor—sometimes having a colleague read through the paper in advance can help.

A final consideration when writing a paper is deciding where you ultimately want to submit it. This may change the layout and content of the paper. Some scholars pick journals based on impact factor, while others may submit to a smaller journal, hoping that the paper will be published faster. As Professor Taylor noted, however, it is often worth taking a risk and submitting to a more prestigious journal because, “If you don’t play, you can’t win, and sometimes you can win.”

Overall, Professor Taylor offered a number of helpful pointers to aspiring graduate student and postdoc writers.

by Britney Tappen

Photo from Microbiology and Immunology Website

The students in the Microbiology and Immunology Program have had a remarkably successful year, receiving a variety of awards and recognition from on and off campus. Several of our students graduated this year: Kevin Hart, in Brent Berwin’s lab; Kyle Cady, who worked with George O’Toole; Adel Malek, Amy Piispanen, and Diana Morales, in Professor Deborah Hogan’s lab; Kimberly Spotts, in Ambrose Cheung’s group; and Jarrad Marles, who worked with Ron Taylor. Christina Megli, who graduated with a PhD from the Taylor lab, is now working towards an MD.

Eleanor Clancy-Thompson, a PhD candidate in David Mullin’s lab, was awarded a Research Scholar Award, from the Joanna M. Nicolay Melanoma Foundation, which supports exceptional graduate students. Eleanor was one of nine students awarded this prize in a national competition. Ana Posada, in Ambrose Cheung’s lab, was awarded a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) GK-12 Fellowship, from the National Science Foundation, meant to introduce current research into the K-12 classroom, and teach fellows to make their research more accessible—the fellowship includes training in communication skills and teaching techniques.

Allia Lindsay and Amy Piispanen, in the Hogan lab, published a paper in Eukaryotic Cell that was spotlighted in Microbe and cited as an article of significant interest by the editors. In Professor George O’Toole lab, Amy Baker was awarded an NSF Graduate Fellowship, Dae-Gon Ha was named the 2012 Rosalind Borison Fellow, and Laura Filkins was appointed to the Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) Training Grant, and attended a week-long intensive microscopy course at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory where she was awarded for her outstanding presentation of the work she performed during the course.

Dae-Gon is also doing an independent study project at Celdara, a local biotechnology company. Matt Deberge, in Professor Richard Enelow’s lab, was named the James W. McLaughlin Travel Awardee at the 2011 Annual IHII/McLaughlin Colloquium at University of Texas Medical Branch, and he was elected as an Albert J. Ryan Fellow in both 2011 and 2012.

Students in every lab have had successes this year, in their research, presentations, and publications, and we’re looking forward to another year of great work and accomplishments.

On Tuesday, April 10^th, Dartmouth’s Graduate Student Council (GSC) announced the recipients of the 2012 Faculty Mentor Awards at the Graduate Poster Session. Established in 2005, the award recognizes and highlights the outstanding graduate mentoring activities that are undertaken by Dartmouth faculty advisors. In addition to publicly recognizing each recipient’s contributions to the school’s graduate community, the GSC also credits $500 dollars to each faculty member’s Dartmouth account to encourage further mentoring. This year, Dean Madden of Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) and Thalia Wheatley of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS) were selected for the award.

Each year, students from all of Dartmouth’s Arts and Sciences graduate programs submit letters of recommendation to the Graduate Studies Office for faculty members who they feel exhibit excellent mentoring qualities. All nominated faculty members are then asked to email their curriculum vitae to the award’s selection committee—a panel of student volunteers from the GSC’s Executive Board—who then review all of the letters of recommendation submitted for each nominee before selecting the award’s recipients.

Professor Dean Madden of Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) was selected as one of this year’s award recipients. A Dartmouth faculty member since 2001, Madden’s lab is currently comprised of four graduate students and one rotation student. The primary research focus of Madden’s lab is understanding the functional characteristics of ion channels and transporters in terms of their molecular structure.

All of the letters submitted on Prof. Madden’s behalf spoke of his approachability, his positive demeanor, and his dedication to mentorship. “When I have my own lab, I hope I can laugh as much as Dean. He is genuinely happy, and it is contagious… He is always the first to ask a thought-provoking question in a seminar,… [and I admire his] ability to affect the lives of all students, and faculty, he comes in contact with,” wrote Jeanine Amacher, a current member of the Madden Lab.

In addition, many students spoke of Madden’s unique ability to foster self-directed, independent research while providing the professional guidance needed to strengthen both the research and scholarship of his lab’s members. “[Dean] provided me with a great balance of independence and direction, which have helped me progress my research while learning how to be an independent scientist,” said Lemira Sahar Al Ayyuobi, a member of Madden’s lab whose research examines the connection between mutations in the chloride channel CFTR to the genetic disease Cystic Fibrosis.

Finally, this year’s Faculty Mentor Award Selection Committee chose Prof. Madden for the award because of his approachability. Christopher Bahl, a member of Madden’s research group stated, “[Dean’s] open door policy facilitates and fosters a collegial, productive atmosphere in the lab. He is always available and excited to troubleshoot or discuss project ideas when we want help.”

Congratulations, Professor Madden! The Graduate Student Council thanks you for all of your contributions to Dartmouth’s graduate community.

The Graduate Forum will be publishing department highlights from 2011 on an ongoing basis. Check back regularly to find out what graduate students, alumni, and faculty are doing in the graduate community and beyond!

Pinar Gurel, MCB graduate student in Harry Higg's lab, Biochemistry

The Molecular & Cellular Biology program (MCB) welcomed twenty-seven first year students for the start of fall term this August. Even the threat of Hurricane Irene did not deter our new MCB’ers from attending the first day of orientation.

Joining MCB this fall are two MD/PhD students now working in thesis labs after completing their first two years of medical school training. We extend our congratulations to twenty-five students who received their PhDs this year from the programs in Biological Sciences, Biochemistry, Genetics, and Microbiology & Immunology.

This year’s recruiting activities are underway for the fall class of 2012. Interview weekends are scheduled for February 17-18, February 24-25, and March 9-10. We look forward to talking with prospective MCB’ers

David Mullins, PhD, has joined the faculty in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology and is now a member of the MCB faculty, supervising two graduate students working on thesis research.

MCB’s new website was launched this summer. The new site facilitates quick access to MCB information and features achievements by our students and faculty as well as providing listings of upcoming seminars and events—many thanks to those on the Website Design Committee.

The Copenhaver Fellow named for 2011 is Kyle Cady (graduate student in Microbiology & Immunology). The fellowships are awarded to students who best exemplify the qualities of a scholar through a demonstrated record of accomplishment and a commitment to the pursuit of new knowledge. Congratulations to Kyle!

MCB faculty and students will again be visiting New England colleges to present research seminars and talk with undergraduates about Dartmouth and MCB. These visits were very well received last year and this year, we plan to expand these visits to schools throughout the US!

by Janet Cheney, MCB Program Administrator

The Joanna M. Nicolay Melanoma Foundation established the Research Scholar Award Program in 2006. The primary objective of the program is to recognize and support outstanding graduate students who are actively involved in melanoma research, and their institutions.

One of the six recipients of this prestigious and highly competitive award for 2011 is Katelyn T. Byrne, a fourth year graduate student from the MCB program at Dartmouth Medical School. Byrne is a highly accomplished senior graduate student in the lab of Dr. Mary Jo Turk.

Her recent cutting-edge work on the role of autoimmunity in the generation of long-term protective responses to melanoma was published in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation. The elegantly established system employed by Byrne has shed light on the role of normal, self-tissue destruction in the generation of enhanced adaptive immune responses against cancers.

Byrne is a 2007 alumnus of Boston University, where she graduated with a degree in biochemistry and molecular biology. While completing her bachelors degree she worked in the lab of Vicki Rubin Kelley at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where she studied the role of Colony Stimulating Factor -1 (CSF-1)—a primary growth factor for macrophages—in enhancing inflammatory responses and thus lupus nephritis.

Bryne intends to use the $10,000 award toward further experiments the Turk lab is conducting to elucidate the mechanisms involved in their current findings where long lasting, highly effective, adaptive immune responses were primed by autoimmune Vitiligo in their model of melanoma.

Surgery is one of the most common treatments for melanoma but poor tumor immunogenicity compromises post-surgical memory immune responses. Previous work from the Turk lab has contributed to illustrating the effect of regulatory T cell depletion in establishing protective post-surgery memory responses to tumors with poor immunogenicity.

Turk explained that Byrne is the first student from her lab to receive this award. She added, “The Nicolay Foundation award provides recognition for our lab’s ongoing efforts to combat melanoma.  This is an honor for Kate, the Turk lab, and the Norris Cotton Cancer Center as a whole.”

by S. Rameeza Allie

The Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) program welcomed 26 new students this fall term, and we extend our congratulations to the 18 students who received their PhDs this year.

Jamie Moseley, PhD, has joined the faculty in the Department of Biochemistry and is a member of the MCB faculty.  We quickly solicited his help to redesign our MCB website. Our department recognizes the importance of web visibility, and intends to use the resource to project our research opportunities to students and faculty across the globe. We feel that our new website will attract more students and boost our recruiting efforts.

Christen DiPetrillo, of biological sciences, and Michael Molloy of microbiology/immunology, were selected as Copenhaver Fellows this year. Maria Hindt of biochemistry received a 2010 NSF Fellowship, and first-year MCB student David Tobin received a GK-12 Fellowship for Teaching from the NSF.

This past fall, MCB initiated an outreach program with visits to several New England colleges. Faculty and students visited colleges to present research seminars and talk with undergraduates about Dartmouth and the MCB program.  Next year, we will expand the program to colleges in other parts of the United States.

By Janet Cheney

Top Photograph: Jamie Moseley, PhD, new faculty member in Department of Biochemistry

Bottom Photograph: First year MCB graduate students

Molecular and Cellular Biology graduate student Bradley DeMay is the first student to be accepted into the PhD/MBA Program, although the program—which allows graduate students to obtain an MBA from the Tuck School of Business after completion of their PhD—has been open to applicants since August 2009.

DeMay was one of the doctoral students who helped initiate the PhD/MBA Program along with faculty and staff from Graduate Studies and the Tuck School of Business. The Graduate Forum had the opportunity to talk to DeMay, who plans to start his MBA later this August, about his experience as a science student being accepted into the program.

TGF: Brad, have you had prior experience in business?

BD: Actually, no. I came to Dartmouth in the fall of 2005 after I finished my bachelor’s in biochemistry and biophysics. I didn’t have any experience doing research in the private biotech and pharma sector, or any formal training in economics, finance or management.

Brad DeMay, PhD/MBA Student

TGF: Why have you decided to go to business school after doing bench work for more than five years then?

BD: It’s been cooking in my head for a while. During my second year, I tried to get a little more perspective of what was going on at Dartmouth outside of MCB.

Tuck has a fantastic reputation, and as I started exploring more, consulting really struck me as a career option because it fit my interest of problem solving—it’s similar to the problem structuring that one does when attacking a science research question. During my third and fourth years, I was fortunate enough to confirm my interests more thoroughly by getting involved with the Consulting Club and then for a year with the Health Care Consulting Club.

TGF:  What parts of your education do you consider the most important and how did the MCB graduate program prepare you for a career in business?

BD: What I hope to do going forward revolves around defining a problem, structuring a solution to it, and executing the necessary research to come up with the best solution to that problem. Those are the same attributes that you require in research, but I suspect I will find myself applying them in a very different context. My graduate education has prepared me by honing my abilities to extract information from data and ask substantive questions. It’s helped me develop a critical mindset.

TGF: Coming from a PhD background, what do you think has been the most beneficial in terms of participating in student clubs and being involved on campus? How did you demonstrate leadership experience, one of the criteria Tuck requires for admission?

BD: Most of my experience with Tuck was through the clubs and working with professors Brian Pogue and Bob Hansen to set up the PhD/MBA Program. In the Tuck clubs, the material and topics of discussion were interesting and made sense to me, helping me to seriously consider consulting as an option. The Graduate Studies Office has a lot of great handbooks that I referred to, and I was able to apply the concepts I learned to the cases we were working on in the Consulting Club. I was coming up with similar solutions as many other students in the club, which helped me appreciate that consulting was not something beyond my reach and it fostered my interest in business even though I wasn’t formally trained.

From a leadership experience point of view, it’s important to get involved in student groups or organizations and take on a role with responsibility. In my third year, I was involved with the MCB committee, which was a great experience. I was responsible for reviewing the applications of prospective students and organizing and coordinating recruitment weekends. I was also one of a few members (at the time) of the Graduate Student Council and I wrote the bylaws for the transparent public voting system we have now. I was president of the GSC the following year, when the GSC began the initiative to create the PhD/MBA Program, among other projects. In the GSC, we work very closely with our executive board members, so I was able to gain some experience in conflict resolution.

Everyone’s experience and background are going to be different. If you aren’t satisfied with the extracurricular options currently around, don’t be afraid to take a chance and create them!

TGF: How was your experience in the student clubs at Tuck?

BD: I enjoyed my brief time participating in the clubs, but there are still some kinks that need to be straightened out regarding graduate student involvement. There were times when I was left out of mailing lists, for example, but it is completely understandable given that Tuck students are busy and this program is nascent. Interesting questions to consider now are: Should Tuck clubs be open to any interested graduate student, since the PhD/MBA Program is now official? Or, should clubs stay somewhat exclusive to students enrolled at Tuck? It is a difficult situation; I realize why the groups might want to stay exclusive, as Tuck students may not gain as much from an open environment as graduate students will.

TGF: How do you feel about shifting gears from research on Ashbya gossypii to pursuing a career in consulting, two vastly different fields?

BD: I am anxious but definitely looking forward to it. I think it is going to be very different and more social as I would interact with more students from varied backgrounds.

I am looking forward to the first year coursework, and the interest groups, in which I’ll have the opportunity to address a wide range of problems and discuss different topics – it will be very different from working on my thesis.

At this point, I am concerned about learning the jargon of the field and getting as much exposure as possible early on. I am planning on taking the mathematics review class Tuck offers in August, which I hope will help me become more comfortable and understand better the context of how mathematics is being applied.

TGF: What edge would the MBA give you and what would you gain beyond just doing a PhD?

BD: I hope it will be a number of things – I am looking forward to gaining basic business knowledge and skills, which will hopefully make my transition to consulting easier. Tuck is a renowned institution and being a part of the Tuck family would give me better access to their alumni network, which I hope will help me in my post-graduate career.

TGF: What advice would you give to students who are potentially interested in the PhD/MBA dual degree but do not have prior work experience or business exposure?

BD: Tuck offers small courses such as “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” to people interested in the program. The Tuck Business Bridge Program is a four-week immersion program you can take during the summer. I would encourage potential students to attend seminars and introduce themselves to people at Tuck, and start making connections. Get involved with student groups or clubs that you’re interested in.

TGF: Where do you see yourself ten years from now?

BD: This is interesting since my perspective of things has evolved so much over the last few years. It would be very closed-minded of me to just say I would end up in consulting since I am of course open to additional possibilities and accumulating different experiences. It would be more realistic to say that I hope to work in consulting for a few years and then reevaluate to determine if I want to continue along the same track. I could speculate that it would be exciting to be involved in small biotech and get back into science from that end. We’ll just have to see how it all works out!

by Yash Patankar
photo by Kerry Landers

PhD/MBA Info Session
Tuesday, April 26@ 12 noon
Light lunch provided
Tuck Executive Dining Room
Attendees should walk through the Byrne dining hall, and the EDR is located on the back wall of the dining hall.
Sign-up:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/phdmba2011

Are you interested in combining science with business, but lack the business knowledge? Come attend an info session with Associate Dean of Tuck Business School, Bob Hansen and Dean of Graduate Studies, Brian Pogue as they discuss how Dartmouth doctoral candidates can attend Tuck. In addition, Amy Mitson, Associate Director of Admissions will share her perspective on what the Admissions committee looks for in candidates.

Mike Malloy, a Dartmouth PhD student in immunology, was the recipient of the John H. Copenhaver, Jr., and William H. Thomas, M.D., 1952 Junior Fellowship.

The Copenhaver-Thomas Fellowship is awarded each year to a student(s) in the Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) graduate program at Dartmouth who demonstrates academic excellence.  In addition to Malloy, Christen DiPetrillo, a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Elizabeth Smith, was also named a Copenhaver-Thomas Fellow.

Read the full article on the Dartmouth-Hitchcock/Dartmouth Medical School 2010 Annual Report.

photo by Mark Washburn