Daily Archives: Friday August 24th, 2018

Apply for grants – Use Your Talents

This summer, we received the great news that Randi Bertelsen was awarded an ERC Starting Grant (K2-News week 33). In addition to obtaining a solid economical basis to build her own research and become a principal investigator, Randi’s grant acknowledges the quality of the research community she is a part of, our department and The Faculty of Medicine.

Funds from The European Union, The Norwegian Research council, The Norwegian Cancer Society, and other funding bodies, as well as our production of publications and candidates, provides the bread and butter for K2. In addition, external funding is necessary in order for investigators to conduct experimental research at all. Grants are also an important parameter when assessing applications for positions and other resources – and it will be even more important in the future.

The parable of talents (Matthew 25) is probably known to most of you; “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away”. It may seem unfair, but the parable is applicable to research funding. The road is always steepest in the beginning. For a young person or young environment it can be difficult to obtain the most competitive grants like the FRIPRO program of The Norwegian Research Council. Perhaps a better strategy is to apply more low-hanging fruits like The Regional Health Authorities of Western Norway grant program, Health and Rehabilitation programs or funds aimed at specific disease groups or treatments.

K2 and the faculty have worked systematically in recent years to improve applications and grant success rates. We have employed research advisors and built up internal procedures for application assessment and budgeting. Weekly overviews of grant opportunities are published in K2-Nytt. All these efforts are to make it easier for you to apply.

The next big opportunity is the Helse-Vest call ending on 15 September. Read the call and submit your application, so that you can get return on your talents.

Good luck

Eystein
Vice head of department

ISSOTL2018: Towards a learning culture

In October 2018, UiB is hosting the annual conference for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL). Instead of offering our annual UiB Learning Conference, UiB wishes to invite our staff to participate in a pre-conference workshop at ISSOTL – free of charge!

The focus of the conference is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL): the process of undertaking systematic inquiry into our own teaching and our students’ learning in higher education. The six pre-conference workshops, led by experienced scholars, take place October 24th, and include:

Morning

  • Get started with SOTL, Andrea Webb and Melanie Hamilton
  • The SoTL Commons: Cultivating a SoTL Culture on Your Campus and Beyond, Brian Smentkowski, Laura Cruz and Balbir Gurm
  • Using self-determination theory (SDT) to inform professional development, understand why active learning works, and foster the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), Chantal Levesque-Bristol, Lucas Jeno and Vigdis Vandvik

Afternoon

  • Innovative methodological approaches to SOTL, Stephen Bloch-Schulman, Peter Felten, Johan Geertsema, Yahlnaaw/Aaron Grant and Heather Smith
  • Writing for Publication in SOTL, Mick Healey and Kelly Matthews
  • International perspectives on engaging students in SoTL, Lucy Mercer-Mapstone, Chris Ostrowski, Paul Taylor and Sophia Abbot

Read more about the workshops and the conference here

Register for one free workshop here.
Note: Registration is binding; your department or unit will be billed for no-shows.

Intrigued? Excited? Consider attending the whole conference – it is a rare opportunity in Bergen!

Early Bird registration ends on September 1, 2018. 

Come and experience:

  • 4 plenary talks by Terje Mørland, Elizabeth Minnich, Renuka Vithal, and Torgny Roxå
  • Over 200 papers presenting new research and visions for teaching and learning
  • 28 workshops demonstrating how to implement SoTL concepts and strategies
  • 14 panels offering multiple perspectives on SoTL issues
  • 100 posters displaying research findings and offering opportunities for interaction

Preliminary program here

Follow us on twitter: @issotl18

 

 

New CCBIO course “Cancer-related vascular biology”

The registration link is now ready for the brand new CCBIO course: “CANCER-RELATED VASCULAR BIOLOGY”.

Thorough understanding of general and cancer-related vascular biology is regarded important to understand processes like cancer growth, sustainability and progression, and is suggested to be a relevant target for therapy in various diseases. Through this new three-week course set up as part of the CCBIO/Harvard INTPART partnership between the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and CCBIO, the participants will meet and discuss with international experts who have been in the frontline of vascular biology research for decades.

Some of the topics that will be covered: Basics of vascular biology; vascular biology related therapeutic approaches; biomarkers in vascular biology – from discovery to clinical application; lymphangiogenesis and vascular biology in non-cancerous diseases. Complete program will soon be announced on this web page, where you also can find more information.

The course is open for all interested, such as Master students, undergraduate students of the Medical Research Program, PhD students, postdocs, researchers and technicians.

(The course is currently awaiting approval as a 10 ECTS course). Priority will be given to undergraduate students in case of fully booked only. No course fee.

The course runs three separate weeks this fall, with a mix of lectures, discussions and assignments:

Course week 1: September 17-21
Course week 2: October 1-5
Course week 3: November 12-16

Research seminars by the Harvard faculty which are part of the course, will also be open to audience not following the complete course. Separate information will be issued of these when date/time and abstracts are available.

If you have any questions, please contact the Bergen course coordinator Elisabeth.wik@uib.no

 

New publications

Here are recent publications with contributions from K2 based on last week’s search on PubMed (and optionally articles that have not been included in previous lists). This time the list includes in total 3 recent publications. The entries appear in the order they were received from NCBI. If you have publications that are not included in this or previous lists, please send the references to Hege F. Berg.

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