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Okay, cool. I think we’ll get cracking. So, just to say thank you on behalf of the EA, so Early Career Network board for joining us this afternoon.
My name is Niamh Arthurs and I’m one of the board members, along with Bram and Lisa, who you’ll see on screen. Bam, Bram, Lisa, give a wave. And today, it’s a really nice kind of informal session today.
We really want to feed our enthusiasm and energy and encourage any or all of you who are watching and tuning in today or watching this back as a recording to apply for the Noble Nordisk Foundation New Investigator Awards. And who better to tell us about the process and tell us about how they found and their personal experiences than our recent three award winning speakers that we have here today. But before we get on to that, I’m going to actually hand you over to Lisa, who’s going to talk to us a bit more about the Noble Nordisk Foundation, who’s provided support to EASO for the development of our Early Career Network.
And that includes activities such as this e-learning series. But the Noble Nordisk Foundation does not have any influence over the content that features in this e-learning series. So, yeah, just a reminder that today’s webinar is being recorded.
Please share the link with anyone who you think will be interested or feel free to watch it back again. And please, for anyone who you think might be interested, encourage them to join our network, our WhatsApp group as well, if you want to be added to that, if you’re not already in it. And our, I suppose, our whole hub or point of this network is to promote knowledge, experiences, skills and opportunities for maybe studying, for working, for travelling, for learning among students and early career professionals in obesity.
So, yeah, I’m going to hand over to Dr Lisa Hagee now. Thanks Niamh. Hi, everyone.
My name is Lisa. Thanks for the introduction Niamh. So I’m just going to take a couple of minutes to go through the activities that are available and opportunities that are available to the Early Career Network members before I then go on to telling you a little bit more about the application process, the eligibility criteria, etc.
The awards for the EASO Noble Nordisk Foundation New Investigator Awards. Then we’ll hand over, like Niamh said, to our previous award winners to hear a little bit more. So there’s lots of exciting new opportunities available to the members of the Early Career Network.
The first being travel grants. So historically, we’ve had travel grants available for the European Congress on Obesity. So if you haven’t received one before, please do look at our website and you’ll be able to find some more information on how you could apply.
You must have submitted your abstract to ECO and I’ll tell you a little bit more about the deadlines in a second to be eligible for this grant. But it is something that’s out there and available to support early career people to attend the Congress. We also have a new set of travel grants under the ECN Development Fund.
So these travel grants are available to ECN members to attend conferences that are of interest to people who are researching obesity, but might be in a different area. So cardiology, endocrinology, etc. If you want to attend other conferences to present your obesity related research, you can apply for this travel grant to support that.
It also supports if you want to attend specialist training that will develop your skills for your obesity career. The next thing is, which is about to launch, we have an ECN exchange programme. So ECN members will be able to apply to visit specialist research centres across Europe to learn specialist skills that they might not be able to get at their current research centre.
So there’s going to be a list of different centres that are available for the exchange and applicants will be able to review the list and see if there are any places that are of interest. Maybe you want to learn a specialist skill in clinical management, or maybe you would like to shadow an endocrinologist and see what their kind of day to day is. Or maybe you would like to learn something on more of the kind of public health side.
There’ll be lots of different opportunities to kind of do that through this new exchange. So keep an eye on the website because it’s not yet launched. We also have our best thesis award, which is a slightly different award to this.
But if you have recently completed your PhD or are just in the completion process, please look up that award on our ESO website too and find out how you can apply to that and then hopefully be invited to the upcoming ECO to present your best thesis research. So I’m going to share my slides and I’ll just talk you through some of the introductory information about what we’re here to learn about today, the ESO Novo Nordisk Foundation New Investigator Awards. So if you excuse me for two seconds while I set my screen sharing up.
OK, Niamh, could you please tell me if you can see this OK? Yeah, we can see it, Lisa. OK, great. So I’ll just speed through.
And if you have any questions, we can talk about it in the Q&A session after we hear from the speakers. So the next slide. So we have the ESO Novo Nordisk Foundation New Investigator Awards, and these are offered annually in four key areas.
So basic science, clinical research, childhood obesity and public health. Each award includes a 300,000 DKK research grant, which is approximately 40,000 euros to fund new research in obesity over the next year. Each winner will be supported to attend and speak at a special award session at the 2025 European Congress on Obesity, which is going to be in Malaga.
And that is if you’re successful for winning one of these awards, you’ll be invited to present. Then the four award winners will be invited to present again at the next ECO to talk about your research updates and tell the delegates what you did with the accompanying research grant. So ESO has established an independent assessment committee to review the nominations for these awards and select successful candidates.
And financial support for the prize comes from the Novo Nordisk Foundation. So this is the advertisement for ECO 2025. As I said, it was in Malaga.
And just as a note, if you’re thinking of submitting an abstract separately to this award or maybe your colleagues would like to join, the deadline is the 12th of January 2025. So the review criteria for these awards. These awards are given out on the basis of excellence and clear commitment to the chosen area of obesity research being demonstrated in the applications.
So if you are interested in applying for the award, you should have either completed your PhD within the last five years or received your MD within the past eight years from the application submission deadline date. Let me just submit more people. Okay.
Recipients must work in a university, hospital or another not-for-profit research institution in Europe throughout the one-year award period. Okay, so the application. I’m not sure if you might have had any time to browse the ESO website and look at the application form yet, but I’ll just quickly go through the kind of questions that are asked.
So you’re asked to report your kind of standard personal information. And as part of this section, you need to justify why you should be considered for the new investigator awards in, for example, basic science or public health, whichever category you choose. But this is just a 300-word section.
You’re also asked to list your top five publications where you’ve had a significant authorship role, if they’re available, and describe your role, indicating whether you’re the first or last author, etc. And it would also be great to include your impact factor for the journal listed. You’re also asked just details on your most recent education and employment history.
So for the application itself, for the research grant, each of these questions is just a 250-word space for the answer. So the first question is, what research questions would you address with the grant? How would you engage patients or citizens in this research? How might this research influence policy? How might this research have a societal impact? And how will you translate findings for public understanding? So this example was from the basic science section, but you can review it. It’s already open and available on the EASO website if you would like to review the application for yourself.
So we are going to hear from our previous award winners or some of the previous award winners today. So I won’t keep you for too long. But I just wanted to say congratulations to our previous award winners.
Some of them have been able to join us today. And also our more recent award winners. And this is a nice picture just after they presented at the past ECO.
So hopefully we’ll be saying congratulations to the 2025 award winners. And it could be somebody or a few people in this webinar. So just to highlight, you need to submit the application by the 16th of December this year.
And as I said, if you have any questions, we can discuss them at the very end of the webinar. That’s it for me. And I hope you enjoy the session.
Brilliant. Thanks so much, Lisa. So there’s a lot of links in the chat.
And sometimes I find when there’s so much information and you’re trying to do a zillion things at one time. And be a multi-skilled tasker or multitasker, skilled at multitasking. Sometimes it’s helpful just to copy and paste the links into a blank email for yourself.
Or a blank Word document that you can come back to them later if you want. Because there’s a lot of information going on in the chat box there. So we’re going to move on to having our Novo Nordisk Foundation New Investigator Award winning speakers.
I feel like I’m at the Oscars introducing them. Our first is Dr. Cintia Folguera Cobos, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research. Carlos in Spain.
So Dr. Folguera Cobos, if you want to share your slides. OK, perfect. Thank you for the invitation.
And this is a good opportunity to the New Investigator Award to apply. And to know that it’s something that I don’t know when I applied to this award. I don’t know if you see my presentation.
Yeah. Do you want to put it into? Yeah, there we go. And actually, just before you start, I forgot to mention if anyone has any questions or if you have any comments or, you know, things that would be nice to discuss at the end.
This is a really nice informal platform. So please pop them into the chat and we’ll answer and discuss through at the very end of our three award winning speakers. OK, thank you.
So I’m Cintia Folguera and I’m the head of this foundation New Investigator Award the last year in basic science. But I became in this science when I was very young. As a girl, a smaller girl, I always wanted to investigate.
And that’s why I decided to study biology in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. And I did a work in neuroscience. And I focus my PhD project in understanding how new hypothalamic signals could affect the body metabolism and obesity.
So I moved to Madrid to start my postdoctoral research four years ago. And I have these two grants from Spanish grants. But after three years, these two grants are only from three years.
So I decided to apply to this New Investigator Award in order to obtain these grants and this award to complete my personal salary. So it’s in 2023 when I decided to apply. This is the first time that I applied to this New Investigator Award and I obtained this.
Maybe my main problem when I decided to apply is what which is the project, which is the project, because it’s only one year. It seems that only in only one year we need to do this project. And it’s known that in the metabolism, there are so many pathways that alter the energy balance and occurs this obesity.
So I think that it’s for you that you want to apply this year. It’s maybe a clear and a novel project, but not simplify the project because you have only one year to do the project. I have some ideas to after apply, before apply.
And I focus in this part, that is the thermogenesis, that it’s known that in the control of the energy balance, it’s important to activate this thermogenesis. And we focus in the brown adipose tissue to activate this energy expenditure. So I focus in the mitochondria that in our lab we have different models, different animal models.
And we have one of them that we observed in cardiac function that the lack of one of mitochondrial proteins affects the metabolism. So I decide to know more about how this mitochondrial function affects this adipose tissue in order to how affect the patients with obesity. And we focus in a novel therapeutic approach, not focus in the same that all the people known that control the thermogenesis, that is this protein, that’s UCP1.
So my project was focused in a novel therapeutic approach, focused in this independent process that has previously described. But I think that it’s better to focus a clear and novel project and not with a simplified in your application. Because I think that this application I apply for another grants and another awards.
And I think that this Novo Nordisk Foundation New Investigator Awards is very easy. The application that Lisa explained before, it’s very easy to submit. It’s all up to you.
You need to obtain signatures from your institution, your supervisor. You need only to complete your experience, these five articles that you obtained during your PhD. And you need only to complete up to you.
You don’t need support letters for another institute or another college. So it’s easy to apply. And also it’s a great opportunity because I present the project in Dublin.
And now this year I come to Venice also to present the results. So it’s a great opportunity to attend the European Congress of Obesity. And also the next year that is in Malaga in Spain.
I think that it’s a good opportunity to attend this Congress. And also this project, it helps fund your own project. Because you are the principal investigator that you apply and you are the main researcher of this project.
For me it’s very easy to manage the award. Here I repeat that it’s a novel project but also a realistic project because you need to do the project. Because you want to present the results the next year.
And it’s true that for me when I applied it’s only a year. But I have different problems and I say to you I extend my salary to complete this project. And the Novo Nordisk Foundation is very flexible with the timeline.
And I extend this year to another one. So this is good because other foundations are not so flexible. And also as I said before I allocate this award to my salary cost.
It’s important to control how you spend the money. But it’s not like other foundations that you need to put very specifically how you spend the money. And also the application to manage the funds is very easy to work.
And when I finish this month I don’t need to submit an economic summary. Only a schematic or in the terms of a scientific report. Not an economic report.
And this is so easy. And for me it’s a good opportunity because thanks to this new investigator award that I received in basic science last year. It’s a way to give me more visibility in the field.
And also for me it’s very important because I met different people and I established new collaborations. And I create a new network of contacts with this European Association for the Study of Obesity. And also I learned to manage my own project.
So I think that it’s very important because this helps me to continue to obtain new funding and new opportunities in my career. So that’s all for me. This isn’t the first time that I applied and I obtained the award.
But it’s true that as Samuel Beckett said, ever tried, ever failed. No matter, try it again, fail again, fail better. So it’s my message.
And if I can’t, you can too. So for me, I finish here. And maybe Sini has more.
Brilliant. Thank you so much. That’s a really nice path from start to finish through.
I hate the word journey, but adventure maybe. Thank you so much, Dr. Cynthia Fulgera-Cobos. As I said, if there’s anyone who thinks of anything that might be interesting to discuss, it doesn’t have to be a question necessarily.
It can just be a ponder or something that our award winning speakers have maybe triggered or stimulated your thoughts on. So thank you much, Dr. Cynthia Fulgera. You can take a break now and get a drink of water.
And I’m going to hand over to Dr. Sini Heinonen. Dr. Sini Heinonen is an MD and a postdoctoral fellow at Helsinki University Hospital in Finland. Over to you, Dr. Heinonen.
OK, thank you and hello to all. So I will start sharing my screen first and then you can. OK, let’s start the presentation.
I hope you will all see this. So thank you, Cynthia, for an excellent presentation. So you talked a bit more on your journey to here and on the project.
So I was thinking I could maybe talk a little bit more about then exactly like applying for the award. So what I felt like important in the beginning was that you just need to trust yourself, even though it feels maybe a bit stupid. But then still, like I sometimes thought when before applying the award that, yeah, that maybe my project is not significant enough or maybe it doesn’t have enough complexity.
But then in the end, you are the expert in the field. So you kind of know that what is needed in obesity research and why your topic is important. And then also that it might be more important than you personally think, because you maybe see all the flaws or you maybe see all the things that are still unanswered.
But also that you can apply like without any previous award or specific degrees. So it’s kind of open to everyone. And it’s only about like how you format the application, that it is a significant project to you.
And of course, the obesity society. And also, I want to say that it’s worth a try. So if you would ever apply, so you don’t get anything.
So I also thought that maybe I wouldn’t apply because I’m not good enough to apply. But then I did and I got it. So that’s I think it’s the first message that you should just apply and keep applying.
And then there will be multiple maybe grants or things that you don’t ever get. But some of them you will get if you apply. And by each applying, you will make your research plan better and better and better.
And answer maybe some of the questions that then will lead you to next award or research grant. So there may be some technical instructions. What I felt was important that there are several awards, of course.
So you should like check that where are you eligible in a way which fits best your aims and your research like plan. But also that you can also match your research plan and your interest a little bit towards what is asked in that particular grant or award. So and this instruction maybe applies to other fundings too.
So it’s not necessarily only this award, but sometimes. So you need to look what are they searching for or if the grant or funding or award is where are they specifically directing the funds. And then you need to address that need if you’re only talking about your own research.
So it might be not necessary enough, but you need to address some need that the funders are wanting from that specific award or grant. And I think here for the new investigators award, it’s something that your research plan needs to be unique. And then also that you need to be the perfect person to fulfill that plan.
Then also that it might need some time and rewriting and maybe other people to look at it. So it’s worth a try, but it would be better if you start early. So for me also, it lasted a long time to develop it.
Then, yes, what I also thought was in this application at least was very important that you only need to see what is essential. And the word count is pretty tight. You can’t babble a lot.
So you should kind of make every word count. And what I tried to concentrate on when I applied was the abstract or the 300 word or is it more words this year. But the 300 word abstract is why you and why this research and then your research plan.
There are also other parts which are, of course, equally important on how does this affect public health or. But then in the end, if they don’t, if it doesn’t resonate with the reviewers from your abstract. So they don’t go on looking into that, how it is significant for public health.
So that’s like that’s where I would like aim when you are really applying. So you would aim for having a really good summary abstract. They probably also leave multiple applications and there needs to be something that sticks out.
Why this is very important. Then they will go on reading your research plan if that is good. So then they will go on reading the rest.
That’s like my personal opinion. So maybe someone else can say other kind of things or instructions. Then visualization is always good.
And then trying to explain in a very simple language, because they will not be experts, even though you are the expert of your field. So they will not be the experts of your field. They might not know why it is important or what are the technical terms.
And this, I think, applies to every kind of funding. Then what is also important is that you have clear objectives and then you have clear measures, how you will answer each of them. Like you have really stated what you do and then in the next phase you somehow do.
But how do you do it? And then if you already have some preliminary data or so, if it can be visualized, that is good. But I think here it was quite limited, so only probably text was allowed. But sometimes if it’s possible to visualize, so that always kind of increases the value.
Then one thing that I think here and also other applications is always that you need to specify where do you use the money. Why do you need it? Not just that I need the money, but why and what you will do with it. So you need to really specify it well, because someone will give you that 30,000 euros and they want to know where does it go, where do they invest it.
So where would they give 30,000 euros? So then actually this is maybe already partly said, but it is tight, so you should use the space well. And also read it through multiple times if there are like repetitions, so that only use the words that you really need. Language models are really good help, but maybe you are already very familiar with them to make it sound professional.
And then always this kind of, if you want to think that how you would really tell it to a common person in three to five sentences. Why is it important? Why should it be funded? Why it’s unique in the world? Why you are the best person to do it and what will it bring new to the knowledge? And this thing needs to be really clearly stated somewhere. Why this one? Because if reviewers are busy, they don’t read a lot, but they read something that is there, stated in few really understandable words.
And then it’s also about selling it. And here also that you need to be the right person. And then I sometimes think about like this kind of questions that would I give this 30,000 euros? And if yes, why? And if not, so what’s the problem that I wouldn’t fund 30,000 euros for it? What should I correct? And then what is also important.
So if you have someone else to read it through for you and say that they understand or not, that is a very valuable thing. It can be also someone who is completely on different brands of science. It can be from similar kind of brands or it can be someone who doesn’t do science at all.
That often gives insights into what you have missed, because we are sometimes so into our own area that we think things are obvious and then we don’t explain. And then also others don’t get it, why it’s so important. And then about how to manage and use the money.
So I personally feel that that is not of so much worry. So you just use it how you will feel that I need this kind of equipment and personal and lab supplies. And always you can’t know beforehand whether something will result into real results.
It can be that it goes into vain, the laboratory experiment didn’t succeed or like that you invested a wrong person and they quit or something else happens. But this is the nature of the research. And then I personally think that all the money that you put or spend to educate yourself, to get some new info, learn from things.
So that is worth it. And usually at least hopefully part of the money will be used very well so that you can proceed your research well. But this is what I would like to say.
And if you have some kind of questions on this or something else that you will want to ask from my getting the award or my career path until this. So please feel free. Thank you so much, Dr. Hainan.
So virtual round of applause. And again, just to remind everyone, please put comments, questions, anything like that into chat. And we’re going to move on to our final speaker of today.
So I’m delighted to introduce Andrew Abagay, who is an associate professor of clinical epidemiology and child health and a principal investigator of the Your Fit Child research group in the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Exeter in the UK. So, Dr. Abagay, over to you. Thank you very much.
I hope you can hear me and also see my slide. Thank you so much. Yep.
So thank you Cynthia and Sini for the presentation so far. I guess I just have to put a personal touch to the application and then my session might act as a motivational opportunity or a source of inspiration to you. So just follow me as I tell a story.
So my part is just a story. So, accidentally, I saw the advert just two weeks before the deadline. So imagine, but today, this is September 17.
The deadline is in December, right, for those that will apply for the 2025. So we have about three months to play with. But I had just two weeks.
I saw the advert two weeks and then I just booked my calendar. But I was so busy with many other things that I remembered to apply two hours before the deadline. It was quite interesting.
And then so what happened was that because, as I think Cynthia mentioned and also Sini, the application form is quite easy. So within two hours, I was able to, that’s two hours on the last day. That’s a Friday.
So you can see on the slide that I submitted my application just six minutes to the deadline. Now, when I submitted my application, I was not even sure if it went or if I’m going to be considered or something like that. And well, that’s just my story.
And the questions are these. Please justify in no more than 300 words, we’ve seen it again and again, why you should be considered for the award. For me, my answers were these.
So I tried to put a personal touch to this so that we can see how we can answer this question when it comes to our time. So these were the ways I fill in my answer to the question. I summarized my previous findings and then I highlighted previous scientific conferences that I have gone to and the awards I’ve received in childhood obesity.
I also noted the media interviews and press releases from the research I have conducted previously. And I talked about the novelty of my study, especially applying sophisticated statistical approach. And I ensure that I informed or I noted in that 300 words that almost all my papers are either first author or single authored paper.
And I also noted there that I have an extensive research network in childhood obesity across the globe. And with that, I concluded by pointing out, bringing the attention of whosoever is going to review that application, that on the basis of what I’ve done before, this is what I’m going to do next. So that’s like a signpost for the future.
So it’s just like a story of what they didn’t know about me to what they now know and what they should expect to know in the future. So that’s how simply I answered this question. So question two is a follow up to question one.
So in question two, what do you see? You have this kind of question on your top five publications. So since you are the researcher, you should be able to easily know what’s your top five publications. For me, it was a little bit easy because we just, I think about that time, maybe a week before the application deadline, we published a paper in Nature Communications.
So that becomes my first paper. And then we had other papers in Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, another one there as well. And then another paper in Appertention and then another paper in American Journal of Physiology.
So with this, I knew, well, I have, I could consider top five because it tells a story uniquely of childhood obesity. But what I think I want to point out is that since the question also includes, lists the impact factor of the journals of the papers that you have listed, I recognize that the 2023 impact factors of these papers, when you add them together, amounted to 41.3. So research wise, that’s a kind of significant number. So if you have papers that you have above 40, your impact factor, that shows that you are doing something quite serious and somebody might just begin to think that we need to fund this person.
And then the next are the questions about, oh, what would be your next research question you want to address? So it’s quite easy because you have already said what you have done. And then you also know the gaps that remains. And then this question, four to seven, that talks about your influence in the society, public influence, societal impact, citizens.
It’s something that you cannot start writing theoretically. It has to be something that you are already involved with. So for me, I have been involved with a lot of media exposure.
And so what happens is that it’s so easy to tell and write a story that this is what has happened before. These are my interaction with citizens. People call me and ask about what I have done.
And so I can also tell that when I do more, this is what is likely going to happen. So it’s much more about practical. And then you can just sell out what you want to say.
But if you don’t have any experience before, when you write theoretically, it is very easy for the reviewers to see that you are only theorizing. And then they cannot really believe what you are saying. So you have three months in this application process to do something worthwhile, to create something, to interact with the society, to be able to translate to what you have done, especially in child obesity for public health understanding.
I think with that, you can be able to answer this question quite easily. So now, how about the decision of the award? So you may call it a coincidence. I leave that to you to fill in the gap, or you call it like maybe a supernatural incidence.
What happened was this. On the 2nd of February, I had a short nap. I slept in the afternoon from between 12 to 12.30. And I had a dream.
In that dream, I saw in my house a lot of plaques of the awards that I have received previously. I think I brought one with me. I hope you can see one of those.
So I have this plaque. So I have quite a number of them. But then, in that dream, I saw that there was a trophy I had never had physically in my physical world.
It was not in my house. And then I said, how did this one get here? Who is the owner of this one? What does this mean? So I was asking that question, and then I woke up. Now, when I woke up, I just looked at my phone.
It was 12.30 in the afternoon, Finnish time. And I saw that I had received an email alert by 12.24, six minutes before I woke up. And here is the email.
Could you imagine that? So is this a coincidence? Is this a supernatural incident? So I think you can answer the question yourself. So I was amazed because I didn’t know what to do. So to my understanding, the trophy I saw in the dream actually was the email coming, right? That’s just very interesting.
And so, I think a few days later, the Novo Notice Foundation now writes and congratulates, and then also tells about how you need to sign a grant agreement with the Novo Notice Foundation. They are the ones that provide the funding. They are not involved in the application process at all, or application review.
Then the Novo Notice Foundation tells you to contact your school, your financial secretary, to register on the Novo Notice Foundation grant number application portal, and then they can transfer the funding. They always have a deadline. So that is about maybe three months after the award has been announced.
So what happened was that, so how did I use this fund? So when the funding was transferred to my university, so my university created a project for that purpose, and then a contract was signed, depending on how I want to use it. So part of the money was used for my salary, and then some of the money was also used for expenses. So every month I get a payment just to focus on this research, because I have some other things to do.
And one thing I will say is that our exchange rate may influence the amount, the total amount you eventually get depending on the currency you are using. In my own experience, the 300,000 DKK translated to 39,000 euros. So finally, I think that we started working on the project.
Remember, you are going to list what you are going to do, what you are going to use the grant for. And I remember that the first thing I wrote there was that I’m going to look at the effect of children being sedentary on a problem with liver fat. And that was my first question.
And incidentally, we have answered that question and published a paper in NPJ Gut and Liver. And in that paper, we discovered that children spend six hours per day sedentary. By the time they are a young adult, they spend nine hours per day sedentary.
That drives severe liver statuses, liver fat, and likely liver cirrhosis. That’s a damage of the liver prematurely. And it is explained, 15% of that story is explained by inflammation.
So this paper has been presented in Boston a few months ago in the U.S. at the Endocrine Society Congress. And I was opportune to be granted the privilege again to present the work as a press conference to journalists all across the United States. So that’s what happens.
So this grant provides for us visibility. And look at it. I was also put on the cover page of the Endocrine Society magazine that I need to fight for the kids.
So I’m also here still fighting for the kids. So special thanks to ESO and the Novo Notice Foundation for funding my research grant. Thank you very much.
And I can take your questions. Brilliant. Can we have everyone do whatever emoji you’re feeling right now? Hopefully it’s some kind of inspiring emoji for our three speakers.
So we’ve got some clapping hand emojis. Anyone else feeling like there’s any other type of emojis you want to express right now? Loads of clapping hands. Oh, nice.
I like a thumbs up. Heart. Very good.
Party poppers. Celebrating. Stars in your eyes.
Brilliant. And can I have a show of maybe hands? Is anyone now thinking or considering applying? Do you like a hand? Or like a thumbs up? Yeah? OK. We’ve got a few.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to name everyone. If you’re not considering or maybe not yet, maybe not for this year, that’s absolutely OK.
But it’s good to be aware of such awards and of such opportunities. And I think like three speakers we’ve had, you’ve really given very different insights. Of course, your clinical areas are quite different, which I think from your presentations and your words, what you said really shows that it can completely take different paths.
So we had basic science from Dr. Cynthia Fulger-Cabos. We’ve had clinical research from Dr. Sini Heinonen. And then we had child obesity from Andrew Abagay at the end there.
So I think it was brilliant to kind of see how different all of your work is and how they’re all equally or individually just absolutely brilliant. So well done to all of you. And now I’d like to open up the floor to see if we have some discussion.
Or if there’s anything else that anyone wants to come off mic and feel brave enough to say. It can be a comment. OK, so we have a question.
For the travel grant, can you apply for the grant when the conference is already beginning October? Dr. Hegley, if you want to take that one. Yes, so the travel grant is obviously separate from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Awards, just in case anybody missed my kind of introductionary information at the start. But you can apply for the travel grant and the travel grant applications are actually reviewed periodically throughout the year.
So the first deadline for the first round of the travel grants is actually in the first of October. So if you have already been accepted for the conference that you are presenting your research at and you’ve submitted your abstract and it’s been presented, you can submit your application and hopefully receive a travel grant. It obviously is up to the review board, but please do submit if you would like that kind of support.
Thanks, Lisa. Yes, Deidre, if you’d like support. We all like support.
That’s what we’re here to do. We’re the Early Careers Network. We’re here to support one another.
Yes, Theresa May. Can I ask, if you get a travel grant or any type of grant one time, does that eliminate you from getting future ones or can you apply as many times as you like? So the travel grants, now that we have different ones, please do feel free to apply as many times as you like if you don’t receive one, but then when you receive one from a specific type of grant, just so that there’s enough opportunity to share the kind of support with the ECN members, you wouldn’t be eligible to receive another one in the kind of close future. So there are different options available, but I think it would only be one per person for each kind of grant.
Sorry. Thank you. No problem.
We have another question. Participating in the Thesis Award, should we wait for the results before we send the abstract to the conference? So with the Best Thesis Awards, that’s separate to these awards that we’ve highlighted here today. For the Best Thesis Awards, we do need the full PhD for marking purposes, but the deadline for that is months away.
So you’ve still got lots of time, and you will definitely hear from us. We’ll be popping into the WhatsApp group. You’ll see it in EASO communications and on social media as well, and we’ll highlight it at future webinars when to look out for that.
Good luck, Marilyn. Yeah. Best wishes, Marilyn.
It’s been quite the journey. I think we’ve known you all throughout your PhD. I feel like we’ve gone through it with you.
Best wishes with it. There was another question in the chat about, is the five diabetes-related publication a hard requirement for the Novo Nordisk application? And also, is their funding open to ECNs working at the research assistant level and who are not currently holding a PhD? Because most of the requirements on the forms and stuff seems to require a PhD. And Lisa, Dr. Hagee, thank you so much for answering.
I’ll just say what you said, because it might be useful for other members to hear. Can I just… Sorry, I’ll just jump in. It’s for the Novo Nordisk Foundation New Investigator Awards.
So it’s the foundation of Novo Nordisk that provides the grant money. And Lisa, do you want to talk through your answer? Yeah, I’ll go for it. What a pleasure I do.
Yes, no problem. So the… Let me see. So the application asks for five of your best publications.
So please do submit the five. Just a note that it doesn’t need to be diabetes. It’s whatever publications are relevant in your research area.
If you don’t have five, please do just list your top four, top three, the ones that you’ve published and make clear what your kind of contributions as an author were. And you can only submit what you have. So please do feel free to still try, even if you don’t have a list of five.
And Bram is after spamming the chat box. Loads of links. Thanks, Bram.
Thanks so much for sharing all of those. So please, as I said earlier on, copy and paste those links if you feel like it. If you feel maybe even not right now or maybe you’re, you know, heading off into the sunset for your evening.
But you might come back to those links later. You might think about applying at a later stage. You might know someone who would be relevant or interested in applying.
So please copy those links and keep them somewhere safe. If no one else has anything else to say, let’s just come back to our speakers, our three speakers. Is there any final words of wisdom that you’d like to impart today? You’ve been fabulous so far.
So, I mean… Maybe I could say that the most important is maybe that you do apply. As Andrew also said, like, so in two hours you drafted an application that won. But it can be also, for me, it lasted longer time.
It was a longer process. But most important is that you do apply and that you think that your own research is significant and important. Because probably it is.
It is very important. But sometimes it’s really difficult to make it in words. Like, why it’s important and make it in concise words.
But so that’s the most so that you somehow need to deliver the message. And there are these kind of things that say it in five sentences, say it in three sentences, explain to someone who doesn’t know a thing. So then they can sometimes help.
Yes, I agree with Xinyi. And also, if we can’t, you can too. And I think that you could win more than the time that you spend in the application.
Because I think all of you agree that it’s very easy to apply. So we invite you to try and apply of this New Investigators Award. For me, I would say that the application or the review process, especially because I should be probably the last person who submitted application on the charity diversity aspect.
And if the review committee were able to get to my own application, it’s an indication that there is fairness in the review process. And so don’t be discouraged. So because I began to think.
So what happens to the first, maybe first 70 people who submitted also to Child Obesity? When they were scoring them, they would say, oh, this is going to be the one. This is going to be the one. But you didn’t know that mine is still coming at the back, right? So I want to encourage you that there is always room for improvement and the best is yet to come.
So keep on trying. Thank you. Wow.
That was a brilliant round. So lovely. That’s really inspiring and really energizing.
Thank you so much to the three of you again. And thank you all so much for attending. So our next ECN webinar will be on Tuesday, the 24th of October.
And in the meantime, please keep in contact with us on social media. Please look out for different abstract events. And also, if you know of any upcoming opportunities for and if you know of anyone looking for PhD students or for jobs in the area of obesity, please let us know because it’s really, really important that we keep sharing those news of those opportunities amongst our network.
That’s what we’re about. That’s what we’re here for. So please complete the evaluation form that you’ll get after this webinar, because that’s how we plan future webinars and how we know what might be worthy of or of interest to you to cover.
So we greatly appreciate your feedback. And we greatly appreciate your time and for joining. Thanks so much for being part of the network.
Thanks, everybody. Thank you, everyone. Bye.
Bye.