Webinar: Get Into Grad School
Date: August 28, 2024
Time: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm Eastern Time
Registration Deadline: August 26, 2024 (11:59 PM ET)
Overview
The Society for Developmental Biology is hosting a webinar for students interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in developmental biology or related fields. In this webinar, you will interact with faculty from SDB’s leadership who have a wealth of experience in Ph.D. program admissions, as well as current doctoral students who recently went through the admissions process. This event is designed for current undergraduate students and post-baccalaureates looking to learn more about U.S.-based doctoral programs, the key elements of a compelling graduate school application, and the interview process.
The webinar will be presented by SDB Past President Victoria Prince (University of Chicago) and SDB President Carole LaBonne (Northwestern University). There will also be a panel discussion, featuring former SDB Trainee Representative and graduate student Madison Martinez (University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center) and graduate student Michael Wen (University of Chicago).
Registration
SDB Members: Free
Group (classroom): $100
Non-members: $30
Become a member today and take advantage of the wide range of membership benefits.
The seminar will be recorded and made available for a limited time to
SDB members. The link to the webinar will be sent to registrants closer
to the event date.
SDB Disclaimer
The views expressed by our panelists during the webinar are those of the individuals based on their personal experiences and not necessarily of the SDB. The goal of this session is to share information that will be useful to all graduate school applicants; we cannot provide individualized mentorship to participants.
The webinar will be recorded and available for a limited time to registrants. Attendees will not have microphone or camera access during the webinar; written submissions of questions may be shared during the Q&A portion of the event.
If you have any questions about the webinar, please email sdb@sdbonline.org.
Speakers
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Victoria Prince |
Vicky Prince is a Past President of the Society for Developmental Biology. She grew up in England and graduated with a B.S. degree in Biochemistry from Imperial College. She was a graduate student at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, and completed postdoctoral training at King’s College, London and Princeton University, before establishing her independent lab at the University of Chicago in 1997, where she is now Professor of Organismal Biology & Anatomy. Prince lab research has focused on vertebrate axial regionalization—primarily using the zebrafish model—making important contributions in Hox genes, hindbrain patterning, consequences of gene and genome duplications, and pancreas development. Ongoing projects are focused on neural crest and anterior lateral line development. Vicky is committed to training and mentoring. She served as Dean for graduate affairs at UChicago Biosciences from 2010-2022, directs an NIH T32 Developmental Biology Training Program, and co-directs UChicago’s myCHOICE (Chicago Options in Career Empowerment) program. |
Carole LaBonne | Carole LaBonne is the current President of the Society for Developmental Biology and the Erastus Otis Haven Professor of Life Sciences at Northwestern University. Her lab focuses on development of the skin epidermis, whose pattern of regularly spaced, coordinately polarized hair follicles provides a powerful, genetically tractable and versatile mammalian model system to decipher the mechanisms of tissue morphogenesis. |
Madison Martinez | Madison is an incoming fifth-year doctoral graduate student at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. She received her B.S. in Biology at the University of Arkansas in 2020 and immediately went into graduate school that fall. She had two amazing research experiences during her undergraduate career: being a research assistant in Dr. Daniel Lessner's lab at University of Arkansas for two years and being a summer research intern through the summer undergraduate research program (SURF) at UT Southwestern in Dr. Linda Baker's lab. Both experiences were instrumental when it came to applying for graduate school. Madison is currently in Dr. Jane Johnson's lab at UT Southwestern where she studies the gene regulation of an important neural developmental transcription factor, ASCL1. She holds many leadership positions including the Society for Developmental Biology Graduate Student Trainee Representative, student mentor for two high schools in the Dallas area, and seminar coordinator for the Alliance of Women Scientists (AWS) club on campus. |
Michael Wen | Michael is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Development, Regeneration, and Stem Cell Biology graduate program at the University of Chicago. He grew up in South Africa and Taiwan and graduated with bachelor’s degrees in biology and sociology from Duke University. During his time as an undergraduate, Michael worked for over three years in the lab of Dave McClay at Duke and for a summer in Chen-Hui Chen’s lab at Academia Sinica in Taipei. His two research experiences led him to decide to apply to graduate programs in developmental biology. Before joining the University of Chicago for his Ph.D., he pursued a master’s degree in zoology at the University of Oxford in the lab of Aziz Aboobaker. His prior research experiences not only helped him during the graduate school admissions process, but also currently in his graduate work where he studies cell fate decisions within the neural crest in the labs of Vicky Prince at UChicago and Andrew Gillis at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Outside of the lab, Michael is part of the Graduate Recruitment Initiative Team (GRIT) at UChicago, is a fellow of International House, and helps organize the monthly student-selected speaker series for his graduate program. |
