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Effective Communication and Preparation for Your Next Oral Presentation

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As we kick off 2022, the New Year means new opportunities to share your research through an oral presentation. Regardless of whether you are a seasoned veteran or if this will be your first time presenting, there is no time like the present to brush up on your presentation style and perhaps re-evaluate that slide deck that you have relied on for so long. Personally, my own presentation style and planning underwent a radical change after I attended a training session by the enigmatic Jean Luc Dumont ( https://www.principiae.be ) during my post-doctoral career at the VIB, Belgium. You can watch one of his training sessions here and although recorded in 2013, remains relevant today ( https://bit.ly/3BLWwbB ). In this blog post, I will share some of key ideas that I found useful that you might also find equally effective as you prepare for your next oral presentation. Preparing Your Slides Your challenge as the presenter is to condense one or even 10 years of research into a time slot that
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In Memory of Hal E. Broxmeyer

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The ISEH community is deeply saddened by the recent loss of Dr. Hal E. Broxmeyer, Distinguished Professor, Mary Margaret Walther Professor Emeritus, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and Senior Advisor to the Director of the National Cancer Institute-Designated Indiana University Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Indiana University School of Medicine (IUSM). Hal was a revered member of the ISEH community, having previously served as President in 1991. Our deepest condolences extend to his family, colleagues at IUSM, and collaborators around the world who are suffering from this loss. More details about Hal’s remarkable career and scientific accomplishments can be found in an obituary in Experimental Hematology in our February edition. To accompany that piece, in this Simply Blood blog please find some additional testimonials from colleagues, mentees, and friends. Hal was the consummate scientist, mentor, and truly a special person. He believed in people and in the joy o
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Reducing Animal Use in Hematopoiesis Research - Recent Advances and Future Challenges

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Hematology researchers are committed to replacing the use of laboratory animals with alternative methods, and where this is not possible, reducing the number of animals used, and refining care to minimise animal suffering (the 3Rs, https://nc3rs.org.uk). Reducing animal use addresses ethical concerns, the expectations of the public that fund research, as well as differences between hematopoiesis in humans versus the animals that we use to model them.   As blood is a liquid tissue, it can be acquired from human volunteers for research with minimal invasion. Donated human blood has been used extensively to make significant discoveries in coagulation, transfusion, and other fields of hematology. In contrast, the production of blood cells occurs in the complex and relatively inaccessible tissue of the bone marrow, and it has proven stubbornly difficult to recapitulate this process outside living organisms.    Much research on hematopoiesis has focussed on hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), w
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Lab Spotlight: The Passaro Lab

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Each month, Simply Blood spotlights a lab focused on the research of basic hematology, immunology, stem cell research, cell and gene therapy, and other related aspects. Get to know these different labs around the world! This month, we are featuring the Passaro Lab ( https://dianapassaro.wixsite.com/imaginiche ) at the Cochin Institute, France. What is the major research theme of your lab? I would say that the underlying question of our projects is understanding the intimate relationship between leukemia and the vascular endothelial microenvironment. Better understanding the niche involvement in hematological malignancies is a fairly hot topic, but only recently people have started looking into endothelial cells. I think they are a fascinating component of any tissue, especially the hematopoietic ones. How long have you had your lab? We started in January 2020, with the arrival of the first master student. From March 2020 we recruited three other members, and we just recently had anoth
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Pivoting from Post-doc to PI - meet the ISEH’s new Junior PI Committee

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As we progress through our scientific career from undergraduate, then PhD to Post-doc, a key inflection point is the transition to an independent faculty position. The journey into this new career chapter is both exhilarating and challenging. On the one hand, you have seemingly limitless possibilities: you can choose your staff and mentor them however you wish, spend your funds to test your new research ideas and push out into new directions, and establish new collaborations and relationships in the field. On the other hand, your science will now need to be balanced with host of new responsibilities as a faculty member. You may find yourself asking how will you attract new staff to your group? How will you manage budgets for each of your projects and people? How will you manage your time as you balance responsibilities of institutional committees alongside publishing and obtaining funding to sustain your group for the long term? Finally, given the scope of your new position, how will y
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Difficult beginnings: transitioning from PhD to postdoc during a global pandemic

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As research centres closed their doors, countries closed their borders and entire laboratories shut for many months, many of us tried to plan for one of the most significant transitions in our scientific path: looking for the perfect postdoc lab. This is no doubt one of the most difficult decisions during anyone’s academic career, but how to do that during a global pandemic? In this ISEH blogspot, I explore how new postdoctoral fellows moving across the world to join new laboratories have experienced the pandemic and how this is likely to impact their future scientific careers. Dawn Lin finished her PhD in Melbourne at the end of 2019, and right after, she started planning her future postdoc when COVID was about to take over the world. In November 2021, she had just began her postdoctoral position in the lab of Prof. Andreas Trumpp at the HI-STEM and DKFZ in Heidelberg, Germany. “ The pandemic has definitely changed my plan, and I decided to stay in Australia for a little longer. Init
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Lab Spotlight: The Van Galen Lab

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Each month, Simply Blood spotlights a lab focused on the research of basic hematology, immunology, stem cell research, cell and gene therapy, and other related aspects. Get to know these different labs around the world! This month, we are featuring the Van Galen Lab at the Division of Hematology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School located in Boston, MA, USA! How long have you had your lab? We started in August 2019. How many members make up your lab? Students/postdocs? There are currently six trainees. We have two postdocs, two technicians, a visiting PhD student and a part-time undergraduate student. What is the major research theme of your lab? In the broadest sense we focus on normal and malignant hematopoiesis. We develop and apply new technologies to study the process of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) differentiation in human cells. A molecular understanding of changes that occur during aging and transformation of the blood system will inspire new therapies tha
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