Molecular Podcasting with Darren Lipomi Darren Lipomi

Topics include generating ideas, finding the right funding agency, working with program managers, the grant proposal as an experiment in psychology, what goes on behind closed doors, and how to write concisely and convincingly.

I spoke in this episode with Maynard Okereke. Maynard is a trained civil  and environmental engineer who has developed a second career in  scientific communication for young people and particularly young people  of color. He arrived at this interest from previous careers in  engineering and then acting and music. He is also a seasoned  entrepreneur, forgive the pun, with his own line of flavoring salt which  are vegan and number one selling brand on Amazon. He is the host of  hip-hop science as his alter ego, Hip Hop MD. He is a renowned public  speaker and advocate for diversity in STEM, He is a true Renaissance  human being, and it was my honor to check in with him.

In this video, I discuss how to write an effective and engaging statement of purpose, how to structure your essay, and how to use your  writing to compensate for potentially weaker sections of your  application. Thanks to the California Forum for Diversity in Graduation Education for the Invitation to give this talk. This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation  CMMI-2135428. The views expressed are those only of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the sponsor, host, or UC San Diego.

In this talk, I discuss strategies for research and writing, how to know  how much you should put in a paper, how to manage conflicts with  co-authors, and how to respond to reviewers.  



Darren Lipomi, PhD Professor and Associate Dean for Students Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego

lipomigroup.org

This is an unusual episode for me. Rather than responding to questions about graduate school, in this video, I responded to an interviewer performing an ethnographic survey about how researchers in bioengineering and bioengineering-adjacent fields view certain controversial subjects like human modification.  0:50 Would you be in favor of a prenatal treatment such that it would be possible for children to live 200 years?  2:04 What if we could guarantee no inequities, and anyone that would want it could allow their children to live 200 years?  2:36 Why wouldn’t you want to live 200 years?  3:03 Would you accept an intervention that would increase your cognitive capacities permanently?  5:16 Do you think all technological advancements improve society?  6:43 What would you change to improve society and human well being if not advance technology?  7:12 What are the barriers to technological interventions to societal problems?  8:10 What would you change about the human body if you could?  9:31 How do you respond to the idea that humans should live forever?  10:51 How about the idea that it is humanity’s destiny to take control over its own biology?  11:40 What do you regard as the appropriate relationship between humanity and the natural world?  12:35 Is it good that the human species is limited biologically?  14:03 Would you say that a human being is similar to a machine?  15:13 Do you think science should seek to understand everything?  16:02 Should humans be modifying nature?  16:50 Are there any biological species we should be modifying?  19:32 How does your work fit into the broader field of bioengineering?

0:00 How do you get your research published in high-impact journals?  

2:05 Grad students and postdocs are busy. How do you vet undergraduate  researchers so that they are productive and not breaking equipment?  

3:56 I noticed that you had a mini MBA on your resume. How valuable do you think business training is in academia?  

6:25 Can you describe ways in which criticism from your students has  landed particularly heavy and changed your approach to teaching and  mentoring?  

9:58 What is a Venn diagram and how has your Venn diagram showing the overlap of teaching, research, and service changed over time?  

11:43 Is funding between researchers distributed equitably? And what would you do to change the way science is funded?