Self‐ownership,relational dignity,and organ sales

Material property has traditionally been conceived of as separable from its owner and thus alienable in an exchange. So it seems that you could sell your watch or even your kidney because it can be removed from your wrist or abdomen and transferred to another. However, if we are each identical to a living human animal, self‐ownership is impossible for self‐separation is impossible. We thus cannot sell our parts if we don't own the whole that they compose. It would be incoherent to own all of your body's parts but not the whole body; and it would be arbitrary to own some but not all of your removable parts. These metaphysical obstacles to organ sales do not apply to the selling of the organs of the deceased. The human being goes out of existence at death and is not identical to the body's remains. Any objections to selling the organs of the deceased must instead be due to dignity rather than metaphysical or conceptual considerations. But the remains lack the intrinsic dignity of the human being, instead possessing, at best, relational dignity. Relational dignity would not provide sufficient reason to prohibit life‐saving sales.     

Who owns your body? Legal issues on the ownership of bodily material

Who owns your body and parts removed from it? Can you legally sell your bodily material – or information derived from it? Can you legally prevent other people gaining access to your excised bodily material, including your blood relatives who might need your tissue or genetic information for their own genetic tests? What legal remedies are there if people take or use your bodily material without your consent? And why are the answers to these questions vitally important for scientists?     

At the interfaces of epidemiology, genetics and genomics

You come onto the court prepared for tennis but your partner seems to be ready for rugby. Neither of you is at all sure what it is that your opponent wants to play. The only recourse is to teach each other the rules of your own game and then decide whether you can collectively invent a new sport. Welcome to the dialogue at the intersections of epidemiology with genetics and genomics.     

A brief review

This article serves as a brief history and review of EBM—how EBM developed, its strengths and limitations, and the need for constant improvements. Hopefully, this review will have enhanced your understanding of EBM and its importance and stimulated you to apply EBM to your own practice. As more data and therapies become available, and as clinical guidelines continue to evolve based on EBM, we should expect patient outcomes to improve.     

How to safely maintain equipment where hazardous materials may lurk

The best protection is preparation. Assess any equipment/device that requires repair or maintenance for potential contamination or source of injury, such as sharp edges. Know where your protective apparel is located and use it. Review decontamination procedures and keep disinfectants available. Know your employee report of injury program and seek medical care whenever you have concerns regarding potential injury or exposure. Know your policies and procedures and where to find them if you need further information. Your infection control staff should be available 24 hours a day. The standard personal protective equipment that your employer is required to make available to you should include gloves, masks, eye protection, and gowns. In addition, if you are expected to enter a negative pressure room while a patient is in Airborne Precautions, you must be properly fit tested with an N95 respirator prior to entering the room. This respirator is very similar to a normal mask, but is able to filter out particles such as the TB bacterium. Infection control boils down to 2 commandments: 1. Wash your hands! 2. Use your head/common sense: If it looks soiled--clean it. If you have concerns--ask for clarification. If you think you have been exposed--seek medical assistance.     

Explain Bioinformatics to Your Grandmother!

What are you working on? You have certainly been asked that question many times, whether it be at a Saturday night party, during a discussion with your neighbors, or at a family gathering. Communicating with a lay audience about scientific subjects and making them attractive is a difficult task. But difficult or not, you will have to do it for many years, not only with your family and friends, but also with your colleagues and collaborators. So, better learn now! Although not usually taught, the ability to explain your work to others is an essential skill in science, where communication plays a key role. Using some examples of the French Regional Student Group activities, we discuss here (i) why it is important to have such communication skills, (ii) how you can get involved in these activities by using existing resources or working with people who have previous experience, and (iii) what you get out of this amazing experience. We aim to motivate you and provide you with tips and ideas to get involved in promoting scientific activities while getting all the benefits.     

Spinning plates and juggling balls

A PhD thesis is a project with an established goal and a deadline. As such, the tools, strategies and insight of professional project management can be used effectively to improve both research success and personal well-being.A project is a “temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result” [1]. Although this is a generic definition, it pretty much describes any PhD research project. There are many ways to manage a project effectively and efficiently. Unfortunately, most of us are so busy with our science that we forget about the importance of planning and management to our own success, sanity and health. Instead, we approach our first three years of genuine scientific endeavour wide-eyed and unprepared to juggle the hundreds of tiny balls that make up a PhD. Several techniques from the realm of ‘project management'' might therefore be helpful for PhD students who need to plan and manage the many competing demands that doctoral research can place on them.A PhD comprises both the research itself and the acquisition of skills and knowledge that will facilitate your future career. As such, it is of paramount importance to establish your own objectives early on. For example, alongside dividing your project into work packages—smaller projects that might be discrete or might build on each other—it is also essential to define which so-called transferable skills—additional knowledge and experience that might improve your job prospects—you feel will be of greatest use to you, depending on what you want to do after your PhD. The importance of these skills is becoming more widely recognized and taken far more seriously, and you should find that your supervisor is willing to give you the time to pursue them—your institute or university usually requires that he or she does so. More importantly, you should give yourself the time to invest in these skills, as they are going to be vital to everything you do once your PhD project is over.Doctoral research requires a multitude of skills, most of which you will inevitably lack when you commence your PhD programme. The first step is to identify the gaps in your knowledge to plan what skills on which to focus. This will allow you to acquire them in good time, either through professional activities—shadowing a postdoc, teaching undergraduates, joining journal clubs and blogging—or through both internal and external courses and workshops to improve communication, presentation, writing, networking and other skills. In addition to your planned skills acquisitions, you will also have situations arise, in which you need to acquire new skills quickly. The more you plan training activities and skills acquisition in advance, however, the smoother this aspect will be of your PhD. By way of example, part of my own PhD project relates to statistical analysis of data. An early analysis highlighted several areas in which I had to improve my skills, including hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis and χ² testing against standard distributions. Having identified these gaps in knowledge early on in my doctoral programme, I could plan ahead accordingly when and how to acquire these skills.The full scope of your PhD project is usually unknown at the outset, and even the direction of your research might well change before you are finished. ‘Rolling wave planning'' is a technique that allows you to take these facts into account and plan the short-term future in detail, with a high-level provision for medium- to long-term activities. For those new to developing project schedules, I advocate a simple five-step approach. First, make an ordered list of high-level activities needed to achieve your goal. Second, expand this list by adding lower-level activities for which you have a detailed understanding of the scope, for example work to be performed in the next six months. You now have a work breakdown structure. Third, turn this work breakdown structure into a dependency-driven list by adding associations between the activities, for example by adding links to precursor activities that need to be completed before another activity can be started. Fourth, estimate the duration of each activity and extrapolate the start and end dates beginning with the first scheduled activity. Finally, as you progress through your research, and the scope of future activities becomes clearer, update the project schedule with these low-level activities as they become known. This approach of generating a hybrid-level project schedule, and updating with detailed activities as the scope becomes clearer, is known as ‘rolling wave planning''.…we approach our first three years of genuine scientific endeavour wide-eyed and unprepared to juggle the hundreds of tiny balls that make up a PhDThere is a range of professional software to help develop project schedules, but there are also various freeware tools available. Alternatively, you can use one of the many word processing or spreadsheet applications to make a simple Gantt chart. Along with the technical scope of your doctoral research, it would also be useful to include milestones that your institution enforces; for example literature review submission, formal progress reports and thesis chapter outlines. Including these in your rolling wave planning will allow you to keep in mind the bigger picture and the formal aspects that must be completed for your PhD, in parallel with the progress you are making towards your specific research subject.It is of course a cliché, but it is true that ‘failing to plan is planning to fail''. Of course the fluid nature of research makes it difficult to estimate accurately the time that it will take to complete various experiments, especially as a novice researcher. I therefore believe that although experiments do overrun and PhD projects can change, developing a project schedule is not a futile activity. By having a plan, even if it is made up of ‘guesstimates'', you can forecast roughly how much time you have left for your research and roughly what you can realistically hope to achieve. After all, without a plan, how can you predict when you will complete your research, submit your thesis and ultimately gain your PhD?Doctoral research requires a multitude of skills, most of which you will inevitably lack when you commence your PhD programmeThe serious consideration of scope is necessary in any project, but even more when you are simultaneously project manager, research scientist and key stakeholder. This raises various crucial questions regarding scope management: what is my doctoral research all about (the goal), and what work do I need to do to meet this goal? Once this has been agreed between you and your supervisor(s), it is essential to manage the scope of your project—the breadth and number of experiments you will perform—and how this will achieve your goal(s). Furthermore, be specific—knowing exactly what you want to achieve will keep you motivated until you get there.Project managers often use the concept of the triple constraint to manage work: scope, time and cost are intricately linked in a project and the different level of focus that each is given affects the perceived quality (by others) of project deliverables (Fig 1). Project managers understand that any deviation in one of the triple constraints changes one or both of the others. This is where the project schedule really comes into its own by allowing you to forecast when you will complete the agreed goals of your PhD project. For example, is your doctoral programme for a fixed-term period? If so, then once a project schedule has been agreed that uses all of the time available, any project overruns will cause an overrun to the overall PhD. The two main possibilities for a PhD student to manage this situation and bring the projected completion back into acceptable timescales are either to work longer or to reduce the scope or goals of the project, either by conducting fewer experiments to answer the same question or by modifying the depth of the question being asked. This leads to the issue of whether there is a minimum set of goals that need to be achieved, or whether several agreed activities are ‘nice to haves'', but are not crucial for the overall PhD. I believe that your supervisor(s) are best suited to answer questions about the minimum goals and the scope needed to achieve them.Open in a separate windowFigure 1The project management triangle as applied to a PhD. Three competing constraints influence project management: time, scope and cost. The time constraint reinforces that projects are temporary endeavours, and that in most cases have defined timescales (absolute deadlines). The cost constraint refers to the budgeted amount allocated to the project that, from the perspective of doctoral research students, will predominantly be focused on the amount and duration of the stipend awarded, but might also incorporate various expenses such as bench fees, conference fees and consumables. For those changing career, the cost might also comprise an element of salary sacrifice. The scope constraint refers to what must be done, produced or developed to meet the objective of the project, which in the case of a PhD generally comprises the actual doctoral research to be performed, development (and submission) of the thesis, publication of one or more journal articles, presentation at conferences and potentially teaching. The triple constraint principle highlights that any change to one of the constraints will have an impact on one or both of the other constraints. For example, increased scope typically leads to increased time and cost; tight time constraints usually mean that an overrun in activities (such as experimentation) might have a knock-on effect of requiring the scope to be reduced to submit your thesis on time, or increasing the overall amount of time required to complete your PhD. Similarly, a tight budget could mean you cannot gain access to various resources, resulting in either increased time or a reduction in scope. Recently, a fourth component of the project management triangle has been introduced highlighting that along with the three constraints competing with each other, they also interact to form a fourth dimension of quality.If you need to complete your doctoral programme within a specified time frame, then you need to manage your goals and scope mercilessly—do not allow additional research questions or extra experiments to take away precious time. This does not mean that you cannot deviate, but any deviations need to be managed. Remember, whether you wish to remain in scientific research or not, the PhD is a stepping-stone to your future career and not the end goal in itself. Once you have achieved the goals agreed with your supervisor, it is more beneficial for you to write-up your doctoral thesis and move on [2].Good communication is essential in every area of work, but even more so for a PhD as you are simultaneously learning how to research along with doing the research. Often, access to your supervisor is limited by constraints on his/her or your time, which means that clear communication is vital. Do not assume that your supervisor knows every intricate detail of what you are doing; he or she might have a large group in which each member is looking at complementary aspects of a more general topic. It is, therefore, your responsibility to ensure that all your stakeholders—supervisors, postdoc leads and any others involved—know what you are doing and, more importantly, why you are doing it.This is another area in which the apt use of technology can maximize efficiency. Subject to institutional licensing, collaboration tools such as SkillsForge or Evernote can improve communication between stakeholders. For example, meeting minutes, action points to be followed and research results can be uploaded for sharing. Supervisors can then review the material at a convenient time to ensure that they stay up to date with the progress of each student within their research group.As PhD students usually aspire to become research scientists, it is of paramount importance that you learn the correct application of the scientific method and the context in which your work is being done. Before jumping into practical work—wet-lab experiments or computational modelling—it is important to understand the meaning and relevance of your project in relation to existing knowledge and the underlying science. For example, the hypothesis-driven research life cycle in systems biology [3,4]—my own field—advises that computational models should be developed on the basis of wet-lab data relating to the underlying biological system. Almeida-Souza and Baets state that a PhD in science is an opportunity to learn how to tackle problems scientifically and, as such, requires the development of skills in critical thinking, hypothesis formulation and experimental design [5]. I believe that the requirement for these skills is universal across the sciences, and that molecular biosciences and computational systems biology are no different.The serious consideration of scope is necessary in any project, but even more when you are simultaneously project manager, research scientist and key stakeholderTherefore, before the first wet-lab experiment is performed, or the first line of code is written, it is essential that we understand why the experiment is important and what results we might expect to support our initial hypotheses. Furthermore, regarding computational systems biology, I believe that it is also essential for wet-lab and computational researchers to collaborate to ensure both have a consistent understanding of the data and the purpose of the computational model. After all, for the most part, computational models are developed for their predictive capacities and to allow hypothesis generation for subsequent wet-lab experimentation. Baxter et al have extensively covered this area and advocate not only designing the project up-front, but also the need for quality control [6].You need to manage the scope and goals of your PhD mercilessly and, at the same time, be flexible enough to grasp new opportunities. Conversations at conferences, for instance, can open up opportunities for collaboration and take your research in a direction that you had not considered previously. In my case, I was invited to turn a conference paper relating to my masters degree into a full paper for a special issue of a well-known bioinformatics journal. Although it was not related to my doctoral research, the prospect was too good to turn down. I therefore discussed the idea with my PhD supervisor, and once we were in agreement, I updated the project schedule to incorporate this new activity, trying to mitigate as much as possible the resulting slippages to my doctoral research. In essence, I had performed an impromptu risk–reward analysis and decided that the reward that would be gained from publishing this work outweighed the risk of a slight overrun of my PhD thesis. It must be noted that I was lucky in this instance, as my PhD supervisor also supervised the research project during my master''s degree, so a full paper would be beneficial for both of us.A project risk is “an uncertain event or condition, that if it occurs, has an effect on at least one project objective” [1]. The positive side to risks is that the likelihood of their future occurrence can be mitigated by planning in the present. Once a risk is realized, however, and its effects begin to be felt, it has turned into a project issue. The first step in trying to manage risks is their identification. Risk identification in this context is the process of determining which events, if they occurred, would affect your research. In the context of a molecular biosciences PhD, I believe that general risks relate to access to resources, such as people—postdocs and collaborators, for example—reagents, cell lines and shared equipment. For example, if your work uses fluorescent proteins within single cell analysis, how would you be affected if the fluorescence microscope was booked out by another research lab? Similarly, in computational systems biology, if the design process for your computational model requires access to wet-lab data, what would the effect(s) be if this was not available?Once risks are identified, it is important to develop risk response plans. By using the above example of access to a microscope, what should your response be if you cannot gain access? The initial risk response would be to liaise with the other research lab to understand their requirements and ascertain whether you could gain access at a mutually convenient time. Alternatively, another approach might be to work outside normal office hours, either throughout the evenings or on the weekend, subject to health and safety procedures at your institution and your own health and well-being. I believe that a degree of creativity is often required when developing effective risk response plans.A PhD thesis is a hefty document that might run to many hundreds of pages. They are generally not written as a single large document from start to finish, but as chapters. In the molecular biosciences, a thesis consists of an initial literature review early in the doctoral programme, work-in-progress documents for materials and methods, experimental results throughout the middle section, which is followed by analysis and critical evaluation towards the end of your experimental work. Whether through software tools or through your own manual methods, such as keeping a configuration log and keeping a copy of each version of your working documents, it is essential that you maintain an up-to-date repository of all your notes. I have found through experience that it is beneficial to save not only the final versions, but also each of the working drafts of documents generated throughout your PhD. Ideas previously discounted, and thus removed from more recent versions of documents, might once again take centre stage at a later date.The positive side to risks is that the likelihood of their future occurrence can be mitigated by planning in the presentThis can be aided through the development and use of a project library with a logical folder structure to facilitate easy access to documentation. Noble [7] provides an in-depth discussion of organizing your computational biology project—in particular the value of version control—but the concepts are transferable across disciplines. Furthermore, do not forget to back-up your work, and without seeming too pessimistic, back-up your back-up!Finally, look after the most important resource: you. Exercise, diet, alcohol, caffeine and holidays all affect your well-being. Holidays and time away from the lab or office allow you to take a step back from the detail and reflect on your experiences and progress. Sometimes, time off allows you to process issues subconsciously and develop new approaches to overcome problems that you have been tackling for extended periods of time without success. Finally, holidays also help you recharge your batteries and enthusiasm to return to your project with fresh vigour. If you have sensibly and reasonably planned time off alongside your work, you will be able to enjoy it.Although a PhD requires consistent commitment, you simply cannot—and should not—work at full capacity all of the time. Issues arise periodically throughout any project, and if you have no reserves of energy—either mental or physical—you will be unable to tackle them head on with the step change of performance that is required. Furthermore, doctoral research is a marathon and not a sprint; we all experience the symptoms of burnout from time to time, and sometimes it is better to walk away for a short period to recharge than to carry on, become stale, and ultimately slow down.To conclude, I wish you good luck with your doctoral research, and I hope these techniques help you to manage your PhD project through to successful completion.? Open in a separate windowRichard Alun Williams     

A patient's guide to choosing unconventional therapies

Unconventional therapies (UTs) are therapies not usually provided by Canadian physicians or other conventionally trained health care providers. Examples of common UTs available in Canada are herbal preparations, reflexology, acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. UTs may be used along with conventional therapies (complementary) or instead of conventional therapies (alternative). Surveys have shown that many Canadians use UTs, usually as complementary therapies, for a wide range of diseases and conditions. Reliable information about UTs is often difficult to find. Your doctor may be unable to give you specific advice or recommendations, since UTs are often not in a physician''s area of expertise. However, he or she will usually be able to provide some general advice and help supervise your progress. For your own health and safety, it is important to keep your doctor informed of the choices you make. This document is intended to (a) provide you with questions to consider when making your treatment choices, (b) help you find information about UTs, (c) help you decide whether a specific UT is right for you, and (d) provide tips to help you evaluate the information you find.     

Watch out guinea pigs, here I come

We live in an age of increasing emphasis of do-it-yourself, as a mere glance at the TV schedule will prove. Why not apply this same principle to your research? By becoming the guinea pig of your own experimentation you will be following a noble precedent--though maybe not a sane one!     

Claude Bernard Distinguished Lecture. Becoming a truly helpful teacher: considerably more challenging, and potentially more fun, than merely doing business as usual

Few medical faculty members are adequately prepared for their instructional responsibilities. Our educational traditions were established before we had research-based understandings of the teaching-learning process and before brain research began informing our understandings of how humans achieve lasting learning. Yet, there are several advantages you may have. If your expertise is at one of the frontiers of human biology, your teaching can be inherently fascinating to aspiring health professionals. If your work has implications for human health, you have another potential basis for engaging future clinicians. And, thanks to Claude Bernard's influence, you likely are "process oriented," a necessary mindset for being an effective teacher. There are also challenges you may face. Your medical students will mostly become clinicians. Unless you can help them see connections between your offerings and their future work, you may not capture and sustain their interest. To be effective, teachers, like clinicians, need to be interactive, make on-the-spot decisions, and be "emotional literate." If you aren't comfortable with these demands, you may have work to do toward becoming a truly helpful teacher. Program changes may be needed. Might your program need to change 1) from being adversarial and controlling to being supportive and trust based or 2) from mainly dispensing information to mainly asking and inviting questions? In conclusion, making changes toward becoming a truly helpful teacher can bring benefits to your students while increasing your sense of satisfaction and fulfillment as a teacher. If you choose to change, be gentle with yourself, as you should be when expecting your students to make important changes.     

Plant antioxidants: colour me healthy

Plants make a variety of compounds in response to environmental stress, many of which function as antioxidants when consumed. The plants' own defences against oxidative stress can be used for your benefit, prolonging your life by acquiring their protection. By eating plenty of vegetables and fruit, you may help to significantly reduce the risk of many age-related degenerative diseases.     

Affordable biocomputing for everyone: using the Internet,freeware and open-source software

How to build your own complete working biocomputing platform with nothing more than a desktop computer and an Internet connection.     

Vision in venture: Angels of innovation

Convincing someone to risk money is often the first tangible evidence that a new technology has real market potential. While there’s no shortage of impressive new technologies or startups in Israel today, money to kick them up a notch is in short supply. Private investors took a hit during the recession, but the Israeli angel community is bouncing back and becoming increasingly sophisticated as it expands to include people who made their fortunes in the hi-tech/biotech sectors and understand the business.

Since angels frequently provide more than money to new ventures, these experienced players often help young companies save precious time and money by steering them through regulatory mazes and leveraging contacts to secure the additional resources needed to propel projects forward. But what’s in it for angels? What motivates them to invest in risky ventures that often fail or take years to yield a return on investment? If you’re an ambitious young scientist with promising ideas of your own, read on.     

Analytical quality--what should we be aiming for?

ISO 15189 5.5.1 "The laboratory shall use examination procedures, ... which meet the needs of the users of laboratory services and are appropriate for the examinations. Requirements for analytical quality include: understanding the analytical goal; seeking an assay that fulfills those goals; establishing your own performance with that assay; setting warning and action limits for your assay; applying quality control tools to every important step.     

Causing Physical Change to Create Art

The presentation involves students in a hands-on analysis of artifacts to create a time line of their local area's past societies. This exercise is more of a unit rather than a one-time activity. Procedures, ideas, and background for developing your own unit are presented in this article. The purpose of this unit is to engage students in applying the scientific method to archaeological research. Students will gain experience in designing and conducting their own investigations.     

Learn from the Best

What is more inspiring than a discussion with the leading scientists in your field? As a student or a young researcher, you have likely been influenced by mentors guiding you in your career and leading you to your current position. Any discussion with or advice from an expert is certainly very helpful for young people. But how often do we have the opportunity to meet experts? Do we make the most out of these situations? Meetings organized for young scientists are a great opportunity not only for the attendees: they are an opportunity for experts to meet bright students and learn from them in return. In this article, we introduce several successful events organized by Regional Student Groups all around the world, bridging the gap between experts and young scientists. We highlight how rewarding it is for all participants: young researchers, experts, and organizers. We then discuss the various benefits and emphasize the importance of organizing and attending such meetings. As a young researcher, seeking mentorship and additional skills training is a crucial step in career development. Keep in mind that one day, you may be an inspiring mentor, too.     

Organizing a PhD symposium—an inside view

Planning a symposium organized by PhD students is a challenging prospect. Insight from the organizers of three such symposia sheds light on the highs and lows of the experience.When we took on the responsibility for our respective annual PhD symposia (Sidebar A), none of us had any idea how much we would have to learn about organization, management and logistics; how many e-mails would be sent; how many deadlines missed. In the end, however, organizing a PhD symposium was in many ways the most instructive part of our first year as PhD students. We had the opportunity to meet and speak with brilliant scientists and we learnt how to coordinate, plan and execute different tasks efficiently with a good team spirit. Both the contacts we made and the skills we acquired should prove useful in our future careers. If you have the opportunity to get involved in organizing a symposium, we hope our experience will help you in making a start.

Sidebar A | The conferences we organized

The 3rd PhD Symposium in Computational Biology and Innovation hosted at the Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Ireland (5–7 December 2012).The 14th European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) PhD Symposium hosted at EMBL campus in Heidelberg, Germany (24–27 October 2012).The 8th FinBioNet PhD Symposium: Revolutionary bioscience: from advanced technologies to personalized medicine hosted at the University of Tampere, Finland (2–3 October 2012).Perhaps more than any other kind of meeting, a PhD symposium is a great opportunity for early-stage researchers to be exposed to a broad range of science and to meet fellow PhD students and potential collaborators in a friendly atmosphere. By organizing one, you will contribute both to your own career and to those of everyone involved. Many university graduate programmes and societies encourage the organization of such events.If you have the opportunity to get involved in organizing a symposium, we hope our experience will help you in making a startThe amount of work involved, however, is huge and requires the coordination and cooperation of a committee. Your first step, then, is to recruit that committee. An announcement to pique the interest of local PhD students is a good idea to get started, followed by the cooption of members from different areas, groups and institutes to improve diversity and broaden the committee''s knowledge. It also helps to divide the committee into different teams, and to elect a chair, vice-chair and team leaders to keep things on track. Defining clear responsibilities and setting deadlines is vital, but keep in mind that you will need to be flexible, as committee members might find they have more or less time than they planned. In addition to research, both internships and placements are common during the early phases of a PhD and you might unexpectedly lose core committee members along the way. In our case, losing a committee chair meant that the vice-chair had to take over most of the coordination and invest more time during his or her absence.In general, keep in mind that the people you are working with are not full-time employees. It is unlikely that anyone on the organizing committee has done something similar to this before, and so time must be set aside to bring people on board and get them up to speed. Some of your committee members will prove capable of working independently and will require little management; others might be overwhelmed by the demands of their research and will require assistance and micromanagement.In addition to research, internships and placements are common during the early phases of a PhD and you might unexpectedly lose core committee members…You therefore need to monitor people and be prepared for setbacks. As you will collectively bear responsibility for the symposium, work left undone will often fall to other committee members or to you if you are the chair or vice-chair. Just how much slack you have to pick up will depend on your management skills. As long as you have a plan and a clear overview of what needs to be done, management should be straightforward, if not always easy. A well-managed symposium will be a pleasure to organize. A poorly managed one will become a stressful and unpleasant experience.Dividing the labour correctly is the first crucial step. This should happen as early as possible. Sidebar B lists important categories of tasks that must be managed. Large areas—finance, participants and speakers—will probably need sub-committees of their own, while smaller areas such as website management and design might need only one or two people. A large symposium might require a team of 12 people for speakers alone, with one assigned to each speaker. Ideally you will have previous symposia hosted at your institution to use as a blueprint. If not, contact another institute and ask them for an outline. Above all, each task must have a committee member clearly responsible for it, as ambiguous instructions and diffusion of responsibility will result in inaction. Predicting how much work will be involved is difficult, and it is all too easy to under-estimate, leaving you understaffed on the day of the event. Too many staff is far better than too few, and you will find that the ability to be flexible and reassign people to tricky areas or problems is vital to your success.

Sidebar B | Important committee tasks

Speakers—contacting speakers, soliciting abstracts and direct assistance to speakersParticipants—selecting plenary speakers and editing abstracts for the abstract bookFinance—fundraising and book-keepingPR—marketing through e-mails and posters, and securing sponsorsPosters—organizing posters on the day and judging any competitionsCatering—providing food and refreshmentsDesign—designing abstract booklets, posters and logosTransport and accommodation—arranging transport and accommodation for speakers (and participants)Website management—ensuring that the website is updated regularly with information about speakers, sessions and travelWithout the right content—speakers, topics and networking opportunities—no symposium will succeed, whether it is organized by PhD students or seasoned professionals. With a committee formed, the most important task is to decide on a scientific theme and a title for the symposium. It is always good to seek suggestions from your peers and mentors, especially because this will raise awareness that the symposium is going to take place. How you ultimately settle on a theme is down to you, but a voting system might be helpful. Remember, however, that the people organizing the symposium need to be confident in its direction and vision. Once a theme is chosen, the next step should be to set the number of sessions and agree on topics for each of these sessions (Sidebar C).

Sidebar C | Deciding on a topic and title for your symposium

• The subject of the symposium should be broader than most academic conferences.You want to avoid competing directly with specialized conferences, and instead appeal to a broad range of PhD students.
• Avoid being vague—at the same time, it is vital that a PhD student in any field will read your poster and think ‘this conference is for me''. Moreover, they will need to be able to convince their group leader of it as well.
• Be aware of competitors—the topics of the symposium should not overlap with symposia that are going to be held around the same time.

Once you have settled on your theme (or themes) and set a date—keep in mind the dates of other symposiums and any public holidays—you need to begin recruiting speakers. Invitations can be sent out by e-mail and should be followed up after a week or so either by e-mail or, preferably, by telephone. Be audacious in inviting speakers—we were often surprised how willing top-tier speakers were to attend specifically because we were organizing a PhD symposium. There are two advantages for them in attending these kinds of events: the atmosphere tends to be more relaxed than other prestigious conferences, and senior attendees can interact with and influence the emerging generation of scientists. Therefore, be confident to select and invite high-profile speakers first. They will usually have personal assistants who respond to their e-mails and invitations and manage their busy schedules. Remember that you will probably receive several rejections, so take these in your stride. You can also ask the speakers to suggest the names of other suitable people to invite. Bear in mind that good speakers tend to run on extremely tight schedules, so they need to be contacted early. They should not be expected to stick to the first deadline given, or the second, or any other deadline. They will also need to be reminded gently every now and then to send their abstracts and other information. Do not be afraid to use connections you might have for ideas and information on speakers: professors, admins, old supervisors and industry contacts will all probably help in finding people and getting them to say yes.When choosing a keynote speaker, young principal investigators and accomplished post-doctoral fellows are also excellent choices. Young investigators have often achieved success by advocating new or controversial ideas and methodologies, and their presence at a symposium can enliven debate. They can also offer advice to students more immediately relevant to success in today''s scientific climate. In this vein, it is beneficial to have speakers from different stages of their scientific careers to provide a variety of perspectives in discussions.It is a good idea to have a backup plan with a small list of local and national speakers for each session in case a speaker cancels at the last minute. In all three of the symposia that the authors were variously involved in organizing (Sidebar A), there were last minute difficulties or cancellations. For example, last minute travel changes might be too expensive for your budget to cover, or planned travel might not work out as a result of weather conditions or illness.The risk with a back-up plan, of course, is that you might end up with too many speakers and find yourself in the embarrassing position of having invited someone and not actually needing them. There is no simple answer to this, but try to have a good personal relationship with your backup speakers and be upfront with them about the circumstances in which you are inviting them.Finally, PhD student symposia should be a platform for students to acquire knowledge and present their work, so make sure you include poster sessions and student presentations. They are also an important opportunity for your peers to impress future employers, make contacts and gain insight into the ‘hot'' research areas and future opportunities. Student talks can be chosen from among the submitted abstracts.With your topic chosen, teams defined, organizers recruited and speakers selected, the real work of planning sessions, sorting out speaker invites and travel, arranging catering and so on will begin (see the timeline depicted in Fig 1). It is important to start planning early—up to a year in advance—but as every good manager knows, long-term goals will be forgotten, so short-term goals are crucial to success. Three weeks is a good rule of thumb for the maximum length of time you can set for a deadline. The whole committee should have a shared checklist of everything that needs to be done, when and by whom. You should have a clear record of who has agreed to what responsibilities and everyone should know whose job it is to chase things up if deadlines are missed. This should be enough to ensure that the work gets done. If someone seems incapable or unwilling, then simply transfer his or her responsibility to someone else.Open in a separate windowFigure 1Timeline of symposium organization.Regular meetings will allow you to check in on each committee member and will facilitate communication more effectively than e-mail. Video-conferencing will need to be well-coordinated if it is to work. Distribute an agenda before each meeting and stick to it. Minutes should also be taken during each meeting and distributed afterwards by e-mail. Above all, make sure that the various teams are communicating—ask your committee members what they are doing and what information or help they need to get it done. Special care should be taken to ensure communication if committee members are geographically separated.Predicting how much work will be involved is difficult, and it is all too easy to under-estimate, leaving you understaffed on the day of the eventThe success of your symposium will be measured in a few ways. The most obvious and important will be the quality of the talks, the networking opportunities provided and whether or not the attendees had an enjoyable and interesting time. However, you will also be judged on your finances, so you need to have a clear view of how much you can spend. Handling such large amounts of money can be intimidating, so keeping good records and staying on top of things is the only way to feel comfortable about doing this and coming out the other side.The money you obtain from fundraising, sponsorship and grant applications cannot be accurately assessed early on, but you should account for it as best as you can. If you have the luxury of blueprints from previous symposia, get hold of their final budgets for guidelines on general expenses such as food, advertisement and printing (see Fig 2 for the example of our experience).Open in a separate windowFigure 2Financial breakdown of our symposia. Two different types of symposium are represented. The ‘Example income breakdown'' and ‘Example expenses breakdown 1'' are based on the example of the University College Dublin Symposium, the funding for which was external (grants, sponsorships and registration fees). ‘Example expenses breakdown 2'' is from the FinBioNet Symposium, which is supported by several doctoral programmes in Finland and, thus, grad students from participating programmes in Finland can attend free of charge. As such, it includes full payment of accommodation for speakers and attendees, and is a special case—a 50/50 split between flights and hotels is unusual for a symposium. An important message in the charts is that catering will probably take up half of the expenses of a symposium, and keynotes and speakers probably around a quarter.The attendance fees you will receive can deviate significantly from your projected numbers. This can be mitigated to some extent by early registration deadlines with discounts to encourage the majority of your attendees to register as soon as possible, as well as an easy and efficient payment system and interesting keynote speakers. Regular discussions of the budget are also crucial to keep on top of things.In terms of raising other money, consider submitting grant applications to as many societies, universities, trusts or foundations as possible. They will have a fixed timeframe in which you can apply for grants: for example, 3–6 months in advance for smaller grants and more than 6 months in advance for substantial sponsorship. It is important to have confirmations from invited speakers and estimates of attendance numbers before applying for grants.To save money, it is also beneficial to book the flights and hotel accommodation for invited speakers well in advance, rather than leaving it to them. The organizers of the PhD symposium held in 2012 at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, for example, were able to cut down the transport costs of their speakers by more than half compared with the previous year simply by booking in advance and using budget airlines. Flights within Europe with the wrong non-budget airlines can cost as much as three or four times more. If the invited speakers are left to choose their own flights, the budget for speaker travel might be bigger than expected.Commercial sponsorship will also help you balance your books. When approaching sponsors, aim for a mix of sponsorship levels and offers. Do not ignore the small sponsors, but make sure that you provide the right opportunities for the big ones to pay extra for certain privileges. A large sponsor could be the essential cash injection that your symposium needs to get a brilliant keynote speaker flown in from the USA, or food that actually tastes as good as it looks.If you are lucky, your predecessors will have been able to secure one or more big companies for sponsorship in previous years, so be sure to use the contacts that you already have. If the representatives liked your event, they will probably recommend it internally. Big companies also tend to give more non-money items. Offer them the opportunity to sponsor prizes or provide items for the conference bags. Even gaming-related companies will readily provide you with gadgets if you can manage to get them interested or tie one of their products to your symposium. Smaller companies will not have a big yearly budget to fund events, but if your symposium has a specific focus, contacting related companies close to your city might give you a greater chance of getting them interested.…the atmosphere tends to be more relaxed than other prestigious conferences, and senior attendees can interact with and influence the emerging generation of scientistsIn general, you need to keep your sponsors happy. They need to have a place to interact with your attendees, a booth for product advertising and a short presentation during the symposium. For smaller symposia, it might also be better to arrange specific sponsorship deals directly with a company, rather than relying on trying to block sell traditional tiered sponsorship—silver, gold and platinum levels. For the PhD Symposium in Computational Biology and Innovation in Dublin for example, Logitech agreed to donate three of their high quality wireless presenters that we could give away as prizes. Always keep in mind that global companies often have small departments that have useful gadgets which can be used as prizes or give-aways.Spreading the word is one of the most important steps in planning your symposium and should be started as early as possible. You should have a conference website that provides information and regular updates about your event. An eye-catching logo tied to the scientific topic also helps. Social networks—especially Facebook and Twitter—and e-mails make it extremely easy to reach interested researchers and PhD students.If your scientific field has an active international society, you should apply for an affiliation. The affiliation can be purely to help with promotion, but financial sponsorship is also possible in some cases and can open the door to more advanced grant applications that require an affiliation with a scientific society.Bear in mind that advertising your symposium too early can mean that interest might wane by the time that registration opens, whilst advertising too late might mean attendees have already made other plans. A good strategy is to spread the word once the date, venue and the first invited speakers have been confirmed. Follow this up by bursts of advertisements just before you open up registration and abstract submission. Most focused research communities have dedicated mailing lists—either regional or international—that will reach a substantial group of interested researchers. Contacting supervisors or programme directors in various universities who have students in a similar field is also a good idea. Ask them to forward your advertisement e-mail to mailing lists or PhD programmes they might know of. Generally, social or viral advertisement is free of charge and can reach far more people than any other medium.On the day itself, organization and a clear division of labour will be doubly important, so if you have already established good communication and working practices in the planning stages, this will pay dividends. If possible, have backup committee members ready to fill in for important tasks. Pay particular attention to speakers and sponsors: you have the reputation of your institute to consider. If possible, each speaker should have an assigned committee member. Make sure that each person knows exactly what he or she is supposed to be doing and leave enough time to account for delays. It is a good idea to do some practice runs before the event itself, as you will not have much time on the day to accommodate major changes. Things you might want to consider include: are there enough signs that direct you from the bus stop to the right building? Is it clear what opportunities there are for social events? What else will participants need? Hopefully you will already have considered these questions when people registered and will have captured much of the information on the registration forms. Similarly, you should have asked attendees to provide the kind of information you will need to know in advance about their dietary needs, disabled access needs and so on.PhD student symposia should be a platform for students […] so make sure you include poster sessions and student presentationsRemember that you are really doing this for the participants. Although the lectures and speakers are important, they are a part of the bigger picture of poster presentations, networking and PhD student talks, which are all equally important. The best conversation starters are social events, so take the keynote speakers out to a pub and invite everyone to join, or organize a dinner for everybody. Formal dinners are nice for large conferences, but a small PhD symposium greatly benefits from its informal environment. The first night, especially, can be a great chance to use for networking and social outings.Once the final talks are finished and the prizes are given, make sure you thank everyone: speakers, attendees, sponsors and supporters, and last but not least, yourselves, the organizing committee. Taking feedback from attendees is important, but it can be equally important to provide your own feedback for the group of PhD students who will organize the symposium next year. If you are part of a recurring event, you have a responsibility to them and should keep good records and be ready to advise them when they need it.Finally, we would recommend treating yourselves to committee t-shirts or hoodies so that you are easily identifiable to the multitude of people who will have questions for you or will need your help on the day. And so that you have a souvenir of all the hard work you put in. Good luck!