My life as a researcher. Fact or Fiction. How did I get here? Biomedical Research My life as a researcher. Fact or Fiction. How did I get here? Introduce, Who has alr decided that you wanna do research? Why? What do you think is research all about?

What is Biomedical Research? Investigation of the biological processes in healthy and diseased individuals in order to find ways to improve the prevention and treatment human diseases. Impove the quality of life with new discoveries

My life as a researcher Part I: My own experience and may not be the case across the board.

Project-based experiments. . . Cells (In vitro) Animals (in vivo) Humans (clinical trials) FDA approved Experiment A B C 1) What do we do everyday? We don’t have a daily or weekly routine. 2) We do things based on projects and within each projects are experiments. 3) Hierarchy of scientific research

Malaria Aim, method, results

Bio-Imaging Aim, method, results,

Writing papers Presentations Teaching Writing papers: report of your findings, reviewed by a panel of specialist in the field, also a reflection of how well your research is. Presentations: faster way of exposing to others what you’ve found, Poster, oral, conferences, funding agencies, networking Teaching: Once in a while you need to teach students, supervise them. Teaching

Part II: Fact or Fiction?

FICTION (I) Being a researcher means I will be able to change the world quickly. FACTs Most, if not all, scientific discoveries involve a team or a few teams of people working together. Having international collaborations are common. Your research is but a small piece of a much bigger puzzle. Research is very time consuming.

FICTION (II) Once a particular scientific discovery is made, stop working on it, find something else to research on. FACTs Different research groups can have different points of view There is no one finding to rule them all: Differing opinions do exist eg. cancer stem cells

FICTION (III) Scientists are so smart that know exactly what they are doing. FACTs More often than not, they do not know whether what they are doing will work. Trial and error. They are doing Research, not Re-Search.

Salary in the research field Time = Work Done Power Money = Work Done Knowledge Share Roughly how m Doing it for the money

Part III: How did I get here?

Education Secondary School Junior College Interest in Biology but… Biology was not offered Junior College Still had interest in Biology but… Did Physics and Chemistry

University Graduate studies Pursued Life Sciences under the Faculty Science. First formal education in Biology. Graduate studies Optional unless… You want to determine your own direction of research

In a nutshell: Research or not, take your time to decide, Go find out more, this field is really wide. Interest and passion, not money should be your guide. When you’re certain this is for you, do everything it takes, to get you inside. Good Luck!

Questions?