Laidlaw Scholars Network

Hi fellow scholars, This Saturday we will hold our 2nd community call where we can share about our research, life, and any topic of your interest. Join the call via https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/81653523186. And join our discord channel to learn more about the H&M community!

Lately, I've been receiving application results from my graduate program applications for my master's programs in bioinformatics and biomedical engineering. I am lucky enough to be admitted into graduate programs at Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie Mellon University, and ETH Zurich. Here are some key takeaways from the tedious application process, I'll try my best to be less cliche: 1. Keep your application organized. I used a notion table to organize the file, timeline, and checklists for all the programs I applied to so that I can keep my mind clear of the status of my applications. Check out this article for some templates; 2. Leave time for research. The most time-consuming part of the application is actually choosing the best programs and supervisors for you. Start early on navigating through university websites and lab pages for the topics/programs of your interests; 3. Use forums wisely. Forums such as GradCafe and college confidential can be useful in providing some scholarship/program database. But bear in mind every year situation changes and doesn't be obsessed browsing through those forums as it may heighten your anxiety; 4. Logic and Story. For personal statements/SoP, tell a story of clear logic is the strategy I choose for my application. Though it may vary from program to program, showing your professionalism and tailoring your writing to the program generally help. Also, short sentences can be powerful. I'd love to hear about your stories and tips for applying for grad schools (Masters, Ph.D., MD, etc). We may also have a panel talk on grad school applications in the future. Before that, Laidlaw hosted a panel talk before on this topic, check it out if you're interested.

Hey guys! Just wanted to share with you a challenge that I am personally taking on via Twitter. If you attended the "Pursuit of Productivity" community conversation that I hosted, then you know how much of a Twitter-fan I am. There's just something about public accountability that I really love about Twitter, amongst other things. If you're looking for (somewhat) daily paper summaries, then check out this link, and consider following me and others on Twitter! It's a great platform to build off your academic profile actually :D

Hacking Global Surgery: National Interdisciplinary Forum for Global Surgery & Health Are you a student interested in different aspects of global health or global surgery? Wish to be inspired by 6 leading professionals in the fields of global surgery and health, engineering, innovation, ethics, law,​ politics, and advocacy? Incision UK and Lifebox GSA UK are delighted to invite you to a free, online interdisciplinary forum on the 27th and 28th of March 2021 for 2 days of talks and a hackathon, all starting with a documentary screening on Friday evening!   Our fantastic line up of professionals will give talks on different fields of global health and surgery, covering:  Surgery and Academia – Professor Kokila Lakhoo Ethics and Law – Dr Rahul Jindal Engineering, computer science and innovation – Dr James Chandler Politics and policy making – Dr Che Len Reddy Epidemiology and Statistics – Dr Bethany Hedt-Gauthier Advocacy and NGO – Ms Kris Torgerson   The weekend also brings the hackathon challenge!  You will be grouped into multidisciplinary teams and provided with a particular problem to tackle. At the end of the meeting, each group will have the opportunity to present their work to the rest of the audience and our panel of judges who will choose the best innovation. The winning team will receive a prize, certificates and feasible projects will also be considered for mentorship!   Hackathon places will be limited so make sure you sign up as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.   For registering use the ticket link (https://www.tickettailor.com/events/bupras/487540) or scan the QR Code.  Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/52nx138W

When one thinks about the traditional premed, they think of a student heavily focused on their grades, extracurriculars, and about helping others. One of the biggest struggles pre-meds have is having a life outside of that bubble—trying to balance the demands of medical school admissions with just enjoying the journey. This is personally something I have been struggling with. In retrospect, I believe that biting off more than I can chew (because everything is so interesting to me) really takes away from the contributions I can make to a few things that really reflect my priorities and values. I find (i) listing out these priorities, (ii) having protected time dedicated towards yourself, and (iii) always asking 'why am I doing this', really helps me stay grounded and have a life outside of premed. Let me know if anyone has any other coping strategies or advice!

Some recent news I've come through about dream research Scientists are able to communicate with people in their lucid dreams. Recently scientists conducted a series of experiments to ask candidate simple math questions when they are lucid dreaming (dreaming while being aware of dreaming). And their answers, in the form of particular eye movements, are recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) signals. Among the 158 candidates, around 18% give the right answers. This can potentially open the door for people to understand how brain functions in dreams. New algorithm to tell patterns in dreams. Recently scientists have developed a new algorithm, based on the publicly accessible dream-report database, to tell the mental well-being of the candidate. By breaking and categorizing words appeared in the dreams, scientists have developed a automated program to analyze a series of mental health factors, including average aggression, positive to negative emotion ratio, etc. And the results matched up 76% of the time. Sounds interesting? Should I make a post about dream research? Let me know!

Hi beautiful fellows, As the monthly theme released on clinical robotics, we are looking forward to hearing about your thoughts on the topic. We will hold a (causal) webinar to talk about this topic on Saturday, Jan 30th at 08:30 AM EST / 02:30 PM BST / 09:30 PM HKT. Feel free to join us and enjoy some cyber snacks while talking about those robotic shape medical machines which will eventually overrule human governance in the future.  Here's the link for the webinar:  ⁨⁨https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/88135024283⁩ Hope to see you this Saturday! Till then, my friend, stay safe.  Jieran

Hello everyone! I'll be hosting a Journal Club on this paper on Saturday, Jan 16th at 08:30AM EST / 02:30PM BST / 09:30 PM HKT. This will be the link to the Journal Club – everyone is welcome to attend! Hope to see you all there!Brandon

Hey everyone! Long time no post (is that how you say it?). Jieran and I are going to be kicking it off once again with around two posts a week, and we would like to invite you to put your thoughts out here too. There's no set structure for this — just anything you would think would benefit the rest of the community of Medicine and Health scholars. I'll personally try to attach a cool med article at the end of mine too. I write a weekly newsletter (which I would like to shamelessly plug HAHA), where I most recently talked 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson, a professor at my institution (the University of Toronto). Here are his first four rules: Stand up straight with your shoulders back — a metaphor suggesting that you command confidence/respect through your behaviour, similar to “achieving what you believe in” Treat yourself like someone you’re responsible helping — we would much rather stay on course when giving our pet their pills then take our own. Take care of yourself. Befriend people who want the best for you — too many times, we give people too many chances to “earn friendship” and thus surround ourselves with suboptimal friends Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not who someone else is today — there isn’t any point dwelling on what you can’t control. Make the standard of improvement relative to yourself. I want to talk about Rule #4 specifically in medicine, because that's where I think a lot of "pre-meds" experience hardships and "minor" setbacks — when they set their sights on other people's accomplishments and repertoire rather than focusing on what you yourself are capable of. Don't worry, I think we all fall victim to this at one point or another of our career.  It's important to keep focus on what you can control, rather than deriving your motivations or even your perception of yourself on the progress of others. Let us know how this personally affects you and what your strategies are in combatting this! Oh, and here's the miracle of medicine at work: Married Docs Remove Girl's Lethal Facial Tumor in 'Excruciatingly Difficult' Procedure

One of the interesting things (among many) that my psychology course has brought forth is the fact that intelligence doesn't predominantly come from your educational environment, rather, it comes from genetics and family environment. Now, this got me thinking quite a bit, because that would ultimately invalidate the prestige of institutions of Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, UofT (had to put that in there), and other schools known for their academic rigour.  While I do agree that genetics does contribute the most – the stereotype of being smart if both of your parents are doctors (although I am not a big fan of that stereotype) – I do believe that there are some environmental factors that heavily weigh in. The environment in which you are raised in, your family, arguable plays an overshadowing role. Although intelligence, in the sense of which I am describing it, may not be clarified by the natural ability to recall and remember things, I do believe that embedding these core foundations of work ethic, perseverance, and resilience is critical in shaping the mind to learn, and thus obtain intelligence. With the growing age of technology and the easy access of information nowadays, the question now becomes: how does one apply the use of their intelligence to solve the world's biggest problems. Curious to hear your take on this!

If anyone is interested in pursuing a career in medicine, one of the first things that come to mind is the responsibility, sacrifices, and work required of you whilst your pre-med years. This "pre-med" culture comes with a lot of good things––personal development of your time management and productivity skills, exposure in a variety of extracurriculars, and unique opportunities to prepare yourself prior to getting into a medical school. However, it does come with lots of unideal circumstances too––a competitive environment, imposter syndrome, a continuous chase for "the next thing", and I'm starting this discussion thread because if any of you are like myself, we've been surrounded by the challenges we face as a premed student.  Let's make this a safe space to talk about some of the challenges we face navigating this unique space. This is to scope out some perspectives so that we can all help each other out and dive deeper into ways of mitigating the potential toxic environment and culture that is around "pre-med". What are some of the things you struggle with? What are the things you are happy about, as a premed student?

Hi fellows I want to start this thread to discuss how to get good grades for college/coursework. For medical students and premed students, GPA is nonetheless one of the most essential assessment criteria. If you have any thoughts/experiences on getting good grades/nailing exams or simply efficient learning in general, feel free to share it here. I personally found the advice from Youtuber Ali Abdaal quite helpful. The two strategies he suggested, active recall and spaced repetition, works quite well for bio-related courses. Active recall emphasis encouraging you to recall the material from your memory as opposed to passive-review of content, and spatial repetition help you to keep record and store the knowledge in long-term memory. Check out his video for details! Any other thoughts on GPA and grades? feel free to comment here. :)

Hello everyone! Jieran and I are very excited to kick off the new year with our Medicine and Health Subject community. To kick things off, we have our first introductory meeting tomorrow Here's the link to our brief meeting tomorrow (Jan 9th, 2021), happening at 8:30AM EST / 2:30PM BST / 9:30PM HKT. We're hoping to see you all there! Furthermore, check out this event on an Innovation Mindset hosted by the Alumni Society!