Events

The Principal Investigator (PI) Crash Course is a two-day intensive boot camp of seminars, discussions, and hands-on activity sessions to provide exposure to fundamental leadership and management skills and tools needed for success in your lab. This two-day intensive crash course integrates the principle skills that future and new PIs did not develop during their post-doctoral training, but will be necessary to survive as a new Lab leader and manager. Whether you are a doctoral student, postdoc, new PI, or looking to start your own lab, as a lab leader you will immediately be confronted on daily basis by a variety of situations that you must be prepared to handle. This crash course will provide you the tools you need to start your lab on the right foot. By the end of the workshop, participants will be familiar with the following topics: Negotiation skills for a new position/promotion/collaboration/publication Staffing skills for job posts/candidate screening/interviews/hiring Leadership and mentoring skills in the Lab People management: day-to-day/conflict resolution/misconduct/promotions/layoffs Time management: balancing research, teaching, service/when & how to say No Project management: planning/tracking progress/meeting deadlines/introduction to management software Network creation and maintenance: mentors/collaborators/supporters Real-life lab leader success stories and best tips from early-stage and experienced investigators Audience and Requirements Senior post-doctoral students and associate research scientists from any institution about to start their independent position search are particularly welcome to attend, and we strongly encourage new and recent PIs to participate as it is never too late to get an overview of the survival skills that you will need throughout your career. Additional Information Subscribe for updates on new Crash Course details and registration deadlines. Contact the PI Crash Course team. Capacity is limited. Paid registration is required to attend.

The Institute of Human Nutrition and the Department of Pediatrics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) will hold a Celebration of Life service and reception in honor of Dr. Richard J. Deckelbaum. Dr. Deckelbaum was a distinguished physician, scientist, and educator. He served as the former Director of the Institute of Human Nutrition and was the former Chair of Pediatric Gastroenterology at CUIMC. He recently passed away, and this event will celebrate his contributions and legacy. We invite everyone who would like to commemorate Dr. Deckelbaum's life and work to join us in service and reception in the Alumni Auditorium and Schaefer Gallery.

Join us for our monthly EQUIP lecture series. Sharon Rikin, MD, MS will discuss Leadership and Stakeholder Engagement for Learning Health Systems Research. Registration is free and open to all. Dr. Rikin's work focuses on implementing evidence-based medicine into practice and collaborating with clinicians, researchers, and educators and to create a culture focused on high quality care. She is committed to improving health systems by making it easier for clinicians to deliver evidence-based care, particularly for communities impacted by health disparities.  

The Herbert and Florence Irving Institute for Cancer Dynamics will continue its seminar series on the topic of mathematical sciences underpinning cancer research. The monthly seminars take place on the second Wednesday of the month, 2:00-3:00 PM EST. The presentations are open to the Columbia community (in person and online) and to researchers outside Columbia (via Zoom). On Wednesday, January 15th (2:00 PM ET), IICD welcomes Cole Trapnell, Associate Professor, Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington. Seminar hosted by José McFaline-Figueroa. The seminar will take place in person in Schermerhorn Hall 603 (Morningside Heights campus). If you wish to attend the seminar remotely, please register using the following link: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEvcuCqrD8jGdyUzycUFquK7lEvmqMvfOWc Title: Embryo-Scale Single-Cell Chemical Transcriptomics Reveals Dependencies Between Cell Types and Signaling Pathways Abstract: Organogenesis is a highly organized process that is conserved across vertebrates and is heavily dependent on intercellular signaling to achieve cell type identity. We lack a detailed understanding of how developing cell types in each organ and tissue depend on developmental signaling pathways. To address this gap in knowledge, we applied highly multiplexed, scalable and temporally controlled in vivo chemical perturbations to comprehensively dissect individual signaling pathways’ (BMP, FGF, Notch, RA, Shh, TGF-β & Wnt) roles during organogenesis in the zebrafish embryo, allowing us to detect signaling pathway regulation even in very rare cell types. Focusing on the development of the pectoral fin, for example, we show how this database leads to novel understandings of cell type specification by intercellular signaling during development. This resource will be widely applicable for investigators wanting to quickly assess the role of the major signaling pathways during the formation of their tissue of interest. Bio: Cole Trapnell is a Professor of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. He received his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Maryland and has formal training in both computational and experimental biology. As a graduate student with Steven Salzberg and Lior Pachter, Dr. Trapnell wrote “TopHat” and “Cufflinks”, two widely used tools for transcriptome sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis. He also co-developed (with Ben Langmead) the ultrafast short read alignment program “Bowtie”. As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Trapnell augmented his computational work with experimental training focused on analysis of cell differentiation, and developed “single-cell trajectory analysis”, an approach for studying cell differentiation using single-cell RNA-Seq. Dr. Trapnell’s lab has introduced computational tools extracting biological insights from single-cell data, such as “Monocle”, as well as experimental workflows for ultra- scalable single-cell molecular profiling experiments. The lab has used these tools to explore pancreatic islet development, olfactory neurogenesis, and thyroid hormone-dependent pigmentation, and is currently applying them to dissect the genetic program of zebrafish embryonic development. Dr Trapnell is a recipient of ISCB Overton Prize (2018), NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship (2015), and Damon Runyon Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientist (2014).