HR Award – Activities

Taking a visit from collaborating pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences as an opportunity, the Women in Science group, together with researchers from Gilead, organized a career-cum-scientific workshop aimed primarily at junior researchers (postdocs and PhD students) to provide them with an insight into R&D careers in industry.

Speakers Meghan Holdorf and Michael Mish recounted the twists and turns of their scientific careers, as well as delving into their stories on HBV surface antigen and lenacapavir in HIV treatment, respectively.

“Don’t expect your career plans to be set in stone in advance and be prepared to adjust them when unexpected opportunities arise.” This recommendation resonated, as did the observation that academic scientists often hoard projects, whereas, in industry, projects are more collaboratively developed.

The IOCB’s postdoc initiative, after being dormant for a couple of years, started the academic year with a series of meetups to open up a discussion space for postdoctoral researchers, research associates and technical staff.

At their first meeting, the postdocs focused on introductions and on mapping the needs of IOCB postdocs, as well as setting an agenda for future meetups.

The second of these two meetings focused on skill and knowledge sharing, enabling researchers at IOCB to build an in-house peer support network for sharing technical and transferable skills.

The Women in Science at IOCB initiative hosted the next speaker in the Dana Hocková Lecture series. This time we were treated to an exciting talk Stranger things – the unencoded part of RNA by Prof. Štěpánka Vaňáčová from CEITEC in Brno. After joining a handful of our early career researchers, students, and postdocs, for a lively discussion over lunch, Štěpánka talked about the twists and turns of her scientific career at the informal career seminar. 

The overall impression was of someone who really loves here science and finds it exciting. Particularly memorable was her insight on how important it is to switch mentors several times during your career and to take on the great traits of these mentors when you eventually lead your own team, and not to forget to support more junior researchers in return when you get to this point.

You can read more about the lecture here.

IOCB’s Women in Science group hosted the inaugural lecture of the Dana Hocková Lecture series. Named in memory of our colleague Dana Hocková, who passed away in May 2021, this was a special event where Dana’s colleague Petra Břehová paid tribute to her scientific work in a stunning tour of her chemistry research over the years. This was followed by Hana Dvořáková, founder of Experientia Foundation and a colleague of Dana’s from their time in Antonín Holý‘s laboratory, discussing her career journey in research and beyond, dipping into the theme of doing science whilst bringing up a family, as well as on the beginnings of her philanthropy journey.

Throughout the talks, the desire for junior scientists, especially women, to have role models around them to be inspired and mentored by, was evident. This is why we are pleased that this was the first one in a series of planned lectures and talks by such role models.

Future events in the Dana Hocková Lecture series will take the form of a research talk in the morning, followed by a career journey talk and an informal networking session in the afternoon.

In November, the PhD student representative Terezie Páníková, together with Oldřich Hudeček from IOCB Communications organized an „alternative career options“ seminar with five external speakers to allow the PhD students and postdocs to explore potential career routes outside academia.

The career options that the early career researchers were able to learn ranged from contract research and forensic analysis through working for a funding organization to science communication and science diplomacy.

The event was popular and attended by approximately 70 people.