It is the year that will be (2017 edition)

Happy new year everyone. Now, before we get started, it seems that scientific bloggers may be dangerous in Germany: Leonid Schneider has been sentenced by a Bavarian court (without representation) to stop questioning the result of some medical researcher’s work, or face 6 months in prison. I’ll have to ask our legal department if the same would happen to me if I’m critical of someone else’s work.

Onwards and forwards: what’s the plan for 2017?

1. Firstly: publish. I need to keep my academic street cred up, and so it’s time for publications. We submitted the Round Robin paper already, so far it’s on the editor’s desk. More papers should be written this year, though, since just one is never enough in this day and age.
2. Secondly: funding. I’ll be trying to apply for external funding once more, which I haven’t since 2013. Again: academic street cred.
3. Apart from such administrativa, I’ll be actively collaborating with others out there to do some actual work, including ISO and CanSAS standardisation, USAXS testing, SAXS machine building, data correction and data analysis. We’ll also be looking at some very interesting practical systems. It’s a very large amount of work, but fortunately I’ll be applying for help with that this year. That means that we’ll have some job openings in our group for some of these tasks, for a post-doc or two and a Ph.D. student or two. If you’re interested, or know a suitable candidate, drop me a very short line. Candidates from minority groups (including escapees from Brexit) will be very welcome.
4. Additionally, I’m spending about half my time on the secret project. I’ll be opening up about that later this year. It’s going to be big, in a small way, and very cool!
5. This year there will be travels. Diamond’s on the list for at least one visit: testing the USAXSv3 instrument, Perhaps there’ll be the San Fransisco CanSAS meeting, and perhaps a Tokyo ISO meeting. Additionally, there’s a couple more lectures to give here and there, which should also be exciting as always.
6. And lastly, but not leastly: holidays. I’ve actually booked a holiday this year. It’s only a week long, but I think it counts. Like many of us, I also suffer from regular depression, impostor syndrome, and chronic stress. Although those topics are sort of taboo in our line of work, they really shouldn’t be, and it’s time to discuss them, and get to grips with their symptoms and alleviating treatments. We’re scientists, we can figure this out. I already found out that commuting by bike helps greatly, paperwork does not, holidays might… What are your tips or ways of coping?

So that’s that, Now, onwards and forwards without delay, we’ve already done 1% of 2017!