Hillary W.H. Lo @HillaryLoWH

As a 5th-year #UofG Applied Human Nutrition (AHN) student, Hillary Lo has been actively involved in research throughout her undergraduate studies. Her passion has led her to pursue a PhD in Nutrition after graduation. Read her Looking Glass article: bit.ly/4i2ui0g

Thank you for sharing your story @HillaryLoWH!

🧬Carriers of autosomal recessive conditions: Are they really 'unaffected?' 📰Published in @JMG_BMJ ✍️Hames A, Khan S, Gilliland C, Lo H, Magda K, Keathley J Stay tuned for more upcoming research in this area from our group @UofG_HHNS!#nutrition #genetics jmg.bmj.com/content/early/…

Nature rejected her paper for not being original, University of Pennsylvania (her employer) demoted her, and yesterday Katalin Karikó won the Noble Prize in physiology. In mid-2000s, Karikó and her Drew Weismann submitted their paper on mRNA (messenger Ribonucleic Acid) to Nature. Nature desk rejected their paper for being "an incremental contribution" only. The paper was later published in another journal, Immunity. Earlier in her career at the University of Pennsylvania, Karikó was demoted because her applications for grants kept getting rejected. But Karikó persevered and kept on going. In 2013, she joined BioNTech, a German company founded by two scientists, Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci. In 2018, BioNTech partnered with Pfizer to develop mRNA vaccines against the influenza virus. When the COVID-19 hit the world, Karikó's research helped Pfizer to produce the first vaccine against the disease. I don't know how the Nature editors who desk rejected Karikó's paper and the Penn administration who demoted her feel about Karikó Nobel Prize. Takeaway: Many academics and scientists worry about getting published in "prestigious" journals. Instead of worrying about prestige, we should try to put our work out as quickly as possible like Karikó did. Once you put your work out without caring about prestige, two good things happen: 1. Your work will lead to newer opportunities. 2. You will start getting feedback from the scholarly community, which you can use to iterate and improve. Here's another interesting Nobel Prize story. Peter Higgs, a British physicist, joined the University of Edinburgh in 1956. By 1964, Higgs has published his groundbreaking work about subatomic particles. After 1964, Higgs published less than 10 papers. When his department would ask him how many papers, he published in a given year, he would reply "None." It happened so often that he stared feeling like an "embarrassment to the department." The University of Edinburgh, however, never fired Higgs because in 1980 he had been nominated for the Nobel Prize. Higgs retired in 1996 and stayed on as an emeritus professor at Edinburg. In 2012, experiments conducted at the CERN laboratory confirmed Higgs work and the existence of Higgs Particle. And in 2013, Higgs was awarded the Noble Prize in physics and the University of Edinburgh got rewarded for being patient.

📢 SEASON 5 BEGINS! 🎙️ "Healthy Habits, Happy Homes" Podcast 🥼Evidence-Based Advice, Tips, Tools & Interviews with Experts! ⛹️‍♀️HELP YOUR FAMILY DEVELOP HEALTHY HOME ROUTINES! 🎧 Listen Here: guelphfamilyhealthstudy.com/healthy-habits… 🍏Guelph Family Health Study 🏛️ #UofG #UofGCBS

PKU carriers may have unknown health & cognitive risks, which researchers are trying to better understand. If you are a PKU carrier, or have undergone genetic testing and know that you are NOT a PKU carrier, you are invited to participate in a brief survey uoguelph.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3v…

Amazing attendance by current and past UoG alumni at the 2023 CNS Annual Scientific Conference @CNS_SCN @UofG_HHNS @FRAN_UofG #CNS23QC

A PhD is mostly about thinking. So if you’re not physically doing something, it doesn’t mean that you’re not working. Make sure to give yourself credit for the time you spend thinking. That’s still work. #PhDVoice @PostdocVoice

We should normalize just how good PhD students are. You already have a bachelors (maybe a masters too). You’re already highly qualified, and now you’re researching something that very few people IN THE WORLD can do. You’re literally one of the best in the world in your field.

How To Use Email To Network Effectively In Academia: Nowadays, there are more ways of networking with people than you can even keep track of. But one way is severely underutilized by academics, and that is emailing. Sure, we use email all the time to communicate with people we already know, but how often have you emailed another researcher you don’t know, or even have someone in common with? Considering how frequently we use other networking platforms like LinkedIn and ResearchGate, we don’t use email for this purpose very much. As such, using email to expand your network is very effective because there aren’t many people doing it right now. So, how do you use email to expand your network? The answer is slowly. Some people are very successful at using emails to expand their network, others aren’t. Those who aren’t usually make at least one of two mistakes. The first mistake is that they try to achieve too much, too quickly. For example, let’s reverse the roles in the following situation to gain a better understanding of what the person being emailed is thinking: It’s Wednesday morning, and you’ve had dozens of emails already flooding in. You then receive another email, this time from someone whom you’ve never met, and asking for a position in your research group. So many questions then flood your mind about this person: Who are they? What are their skills? Do I like them? Will they be a good fit for my research group? Do I even have an opening? Do I know someone with an opening? Do I have time to address this? ...and so on. All of these questions flood in within a second. Who wants to do all of this work to answer these questions when you’ve got a million other things to do. And most of those million things are due soon, and hence, are more important right now. Instead, imagine if you receive an email from someone you’ve never met that went like this: "Dear Prof. …, We haven’t met, but my name is … I am emailing you because I do research in the same field as you, [Insert the field/topic], and I am simply trying to meet other people in my field, including yourself. All the best and hope to stay in touch, … [Add any credentials and information that are relevant in your sign-off]" This second attempt is far easier to deal with. All the person has to do is send a quick email back with a short response. Easy! Does this email immediately get you a position in this person’s group? No. But does it get your foot in the door that could lead to a position in the near future? Yes. By building your relationship slowly, you stand a far better chance of getting a position in their lab. This was the first mistake people often make when trying to network through emails. The second mistake is that their emails are often bland and boring. The email I wrote above is okay, but it could be better. For example, how about the following: "Dear Prof. …, We haven’t met, but my name is … I am emailing you because I do research in the same field as you, [Insert the field/topic], and I am simply trying to meet other people in my field, including yourself. I have read your research on [Insert field/topic] and really liked it because it helped me understand ...[Insert exact point] better. Because we research the same field, I thought you might find the following research of mine useful: [Add whatever link to your research here]. It covers ...[add a one line description of the exact question it covered] All the best and hope to stay in touch, … [Add any credentials and information that are relevant in your sign-off]" In this second email, there is not only a short introduction of yourself, but also something of value to the person you’re emailing – new information about a topic they are researching too. Every researcher wants to know more about their own field! This second email is not boring, it’s very interesting. From here, you can start to build your relationship. Just remember to make each exchange of value to the other person you are emailing otherwise they will not want to stay in touch. If you want to read more about how networking benefits your career and how to do it effectively, read our book, “100 Tips For Doing Your PhD” where we cover this, as well as 99 other tips to make other aspects of your PhD, like staying motivated, getting a job, and having a good work-life balance much easier and better. Read it here: Ebook: phdvoice.org/product/100-ti… Paperback: amazon.com/dp/B0BXMYVYCF (We also translated it into Arabic here: phdvoice.org/product/100-ti… And Spanish here: Ebook: phdvoice.org/product/100con… Paperback: amazon.com/dp/B0C1DN9ZG4)