2010 Annual Report - Institute for Molecular Bioscience - University ...

imb annual report 2010
72
In addition, the ECR committee
continued to support an ECR website,
produce a newsletter, and maintain
an active and very positive presence
throughout the IMB. During 2010, the
members of the ECR committee were Dr
James Palmer (President), Peter van der
Heide (Vice-President), Natalie Eriksson
(Treasurer), Amanda Stanley (Secretary),
Dr Cassy Spiller (Friday Lunch Mediator),
Dr Eva Kovacs (Website Coordinator), Dr
Andrew Brooks, Dr Andrea Bugarcic, Dr
Michael Hanzal-Bayer, Dr Elaine Julian,
Dr Karin Kassahn, Vicki Metzis, Evan
Stephens and Dr Rehan Villani.
THE WORKSHOPS RUN BY THE
ECR committee were complemented
by a set organised by the Postgraduate
Program, designed to assist students
in overall career development.
These included IMBcom’s three-day
BioBusiness Retreat for the third-year
PhD students. Once again, feedback
from the retreat was extremely positive,
with participants really enjoying the
information and interactive sessions.
Congratulation must go to Maggie Hardy
(King group) who won best individual
pitch at the retreat, the combination
of Angeline Chan, Marco Inserra,
Lindsey McFarlane, Tim Pan and Tom
Whitington, who won the overall best
Biopitch and Daniel Shaw who won
the 180 0 award for demonstrating the
biggest change in attitude during the
event.
We also offered our students an
introductory statistics course run by
Carl Sherwood from the School of
Economics at UQ, which provided 18
hours of tuition at IMB over eight weeks.
Students from QBI, AIBN and DI also
attended the course and overall we
had over 50 registrants. In addition, Dr
Joan Leach from the School of English,
Media Studies, and Art History at UQ,
who is also the Convener of the Science
Communication Program on campus,
delivered two sessions on scientific
writing in October, which proved to be
very popular. This was run in conjunction
with the SCMB Honours coordinator,
Dr Horst Schirra, and it is hoped this
program will expand in 2011.
SAM MURPHY: LAVA FIELD
An electron microscopy image of mylinated nerves in the retina of a bamboo shark.
Myolin sheaths form rivers of larva surrounding nerve cells which make gaping holes
and hot rocks in a volcanic landscape.
Bronwyn Adams, our Marketing and
Communications Officer, organised
several training sessions for students
chosen to be IMB Science Ambassadors
(see page 81) and we again conducted
the IMB Three-Minute Thesis challenge
in which our 2 nd year PhD students
gave presentations as part of their
Candidature Milestone.
THE IMB, ONCE AGAIN, HAS
been extremely fortunate to have
Professor Rob Capon continue in his role
as the IMB Postgraduate Coordinator
and IMB representative on the UQ RHD
Committee of the Academic Board.
Part of this role involves informing the
rest of the IMB about changes to the
administration of RHD recruitment and
candidature. For example, in 2010 the
UQ Graduate School re-introduced
scholarship rounds for international and
domestic students.
This year, Professor Capon also served
as an Elected Member of the UQ
Academic Board and the Institutes’
Elected Member of the Academic
Board’s Standing Committee. Although
all these responsibilities are voluntary,
he continues to take on these many
additional tasks with enthusiasm and
dedication in order to help shape a
vibrant future for research science on
campus.
His commitment to the IMB
Postgraduate Program (and in fact all
student matters) is amazing, and was
highlighted in 2010 by the launch of his
brainchild, PEBBLES, the web portal
to the IMB postgraduate database.
PEBBLES, created in conjunction with
OzData Solutions, provides a secure and
easily accessible link for IMB academics
to keep pace with their student
commitments, creates a repository for
reports and notes and allows for the
real-time generation of milestone reports
online during student interviews. These
can be freely shared and endorsed
by IMB members of the candidature
committee, triggering the automated
generation of completed administrative
forms for submission to the Graduate
School to complete each Milestone
process, both ensuring best practice in
providing feedback to students and also
markedly lessening the administrative
burden.
Needless to say, the original IMB
database and its new incarnation as
PEBBLES is continuing to be adopted
by other schools on campus, with
several new schools purchasing the
package in 2010. This innovative and
constructive approach is yet another
example of how Professor Capon
ensures the IMB Postgraduate Program
continues to remain fresh and proactive
for its student body.