Planning Your Scientific Journey (iBiology)

Being successful as a science graduate student or postdoc involves more than acquiring knowledge, reading the literature, and doing experiments. It also requires important skills in picking a good question, planning a strategy to answer the question, seeking advice, and communicating your results. Unfortunately, many of these skills are not formally taught in universities, and you have to learn them “on the job.” At iBiology, we thought that it is important to address all of these topics in a series of courses which we will roll out sequentially. The first course, “Planning Your Scientific Journey,” addresses how to ask a scientific question and plan your research project. It is aimed primarily at biology graduate and undergraduate students but is also useful for postdocs, staff scientists, faculty, and anyone else who could benefit from reviewing these topics.

By the end of the course, you will have:

1. Criteria to evaluate a research question.

2. A plan for how to approach your scientific question and other research goals.

3. An agenda for a meeting with your mentor to get feedback on your plan.