Dear GDBBS Alumni,
This is a great time of year, and a wonderful reminder of what our work is all about.
On May 8, Emory and the Laney Graduate School hosted its graduation celebration. It was a wonderful event, held at the Performing Arts Center, with the hooding ceremony presided over by Dean Lisa Tedesco and Interim Provost Stuart Zola. Over the period including Summer 2016 through Spring 2017, the GDBBS graduated 75 of our trainees, a fine new crop of PhDs in Biological and Biomedical Sciences. Among this group, three graduates also received their Certificate in Translational Science, broadening their training and career horizons.
Our graduates are heading off to wonderful careers as Medical Writers and Medical Science Liaisons, to training programs in clinical diagnostics, and to further postdoctoral training in academia, industry, and government labs, among other great career trajectories.
We at the GDBBS recognize this moment as bitter-sweet, as the students that we have come to know so well have now fledged out and are off to their exciting futures. We now look forward to hearing about all the great things that our newest alumni will accomplish, and hope that our current alumni will welcome them into the fold.
Another big event took place in Atlanta on Earth Day, April 22, 2017: The March for Science. As you likely know, the primary march was being held in Washington, DC, on that day, but sister marches took place in hundreds of cities, across the globe. Atlanta’s March for Science was held near Candler Park, and was attended by an estimated 12,000.
The GDBBS worked alongside of the Emory Science Advocacy Network, led by BCDB Program student Jarred Whitlock, to get the word out about the March and to encourage our students and faculty to join the fray.
A few hundred of our students and faculty made it to the March, and added their voices to the call for support of science and reason across the nation. Many of them wore Emory – LGS t-shirts, provided by the graduate school, along with some lapel buttons that are still appearing on backpacks and lab coats all across our city.
Special thanks to Profs. Malú Tansey and Tom Kukar for their contributions to the organizing committee. It was a pleasure to see so many smart and committed scientists and scientists-in-training at this event, and we encourage those interested in maintaining momentum to join the “Beyond the March” movement. Alumni are needed! Please contact the GDBBS for further information, if interested.
We wish all of our alumni, old and new, the very best.
Nael A. McCarty, PhD
Director, GDBBS
Laney Graduate School