Does it ever feel like you only hear about important deadlines when it is too late? I frequently feel that way, so in this series, I am going to remind graduate students of some upcoming deadlines, as I did for Science Exchange in Graduate Student Award and Conference Opportunities and Innovative Research Awards for Young Investigators.

These upcoming funding, conference, and award deadlines are focused on the graduate student audience; however, many may also apply to postdocs, undergraduates, or young faculty as well. Profiled below is funding to attend the Green Chemistry & Engineering Conference, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Meeting, a grant for public outreach of Analytical Chemistry, an Organic Chemistry Graduate Fellowship, and the ACS Western Regional Meeting.

The BSR is proud to announce its annual Spring Seminar speaker and date.  The seminar will take place on Thursday, May 2nd at 5:00pm.  It will take place in Stanley Hall, room 421. As always, it is open and free to the public. We look forward to seeing you there!

This year we will be joined by Edwin Dobb, former senior editor and acting editor in chief of The Sciences, a publication that has been the recipient of numerous National Magazine Awards, and is viewed by many as the best general interest science magazine ever published in the U.S.  An independent writer for more than 20 years, Dobb has written about the environment and many other topics for Discover, Audubon, Mother Jones, and The New York Times Magazine, and many others. For several years, he was also a contributing writer at Harper’s.

Recently, a search through the winding canals of Amsterdam would reveal more than the usual Dutch cheeses and Stroopwafels. You would discover tools for scientists to enhance communication, expedite publication, and engage annotation. Tis the city where Beyond the PDF2 Conference (#btpdf2), funded by Elsevier and hosted by FORCE 11 (the Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship), took place March 19^th and 20^th.

Librarians, techies, professors, researchers, publishers, and students gathered in an older Dutch building Pakhuis de Zwijger to share novel ideas on how scientific communication should change with the advances of technology. A live twitter feed projected on the right wall, artists drawing cartoon visual notes on the left, and the traditional podium and PowerPoint in the front only to fool onlookers into believing this was a traditional conference. Not so! With the full program on Lanyrd showing speakers and their Twitter usernames, everyone watching (either in person or on the live stream) knew otherwise.

While many interesting topics where addressed, there were a few that stood out…