Recommendations
Science Advocacy (Canada)
Canadian graduate students and postdocs cannot afford the cost of living. Federal funding for Canadian graduate students and postdocs has not changed since 2003. With 20 years inflation, this situation is unsustainable, and the future of Canada's research is threatened. What to do? Canadian scientists and academics need to contact the federal government, explain how low pay for researchers is affecting their work, and request that Budget 2024 increase support for TriAgency funding organizations (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC).
Contact your members of parliament
Make a call
Write a letter (templates)
Schedule a meeting or tour of your lab
Sign this petition, closes Nov 27, 2023 (Here)
Increase value of graduate & postdoc awards by 50%, and index to inflation
Increase number of graduate scholarships 50%
Increase number postdoc fellowships 100%
Increase budget for grants awarded to faculty (≥ 10%/yr over 5 years) to increase student and postdoc pay
Stay involved by following Support Our Science for the latest recommendations and check out the CAPS/ACPP website for resources pertaining to the Canadian postdoc experience.
Sustainability in Science
How we design our experiments matters: Planarians are low cost, low maintenance animal models with no bioharzard risk. They also require few materials and little energy to maintain, thus greatly reducing their environmental impact as research model.
Mammalian tissue culture relies on fetal bovine serum (FBS) and other animal products, while planarians do eat calf liver, I used 10x fewer cows/year working with planarians compared to cell culture.
Events
Cell Bio 2023 (ASCB) Keynote, December 2nd: Cell Biologists and Climate Change: What Can Cell Biologists Do to Address Climate-scale Problems? Natalie Kofler, Manu Prakash, Daniel Goodwin. Learn more.