More than 90 people applied to join the eLife Early-Career Advisory Group (ECAG) when we announced in May that we were looking to add six new members to the group. 22 people were shortlisted for the vacancies, and following a vote by current ECAG members and the eLife Community Ambassadors, the following six early-career researchers were appointed to group.
Yaw Bediako is a research fellow at West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana. He explores how host-pathogen interactions uniquely shape the immune systems of individuals living in Africa, with important implications for both infectious and non-communicable diseases.
Bediako is interested in exploring how innovations in open science could be used to improve equity in scientific communication, providing opportunities for resource-limited researchers to improve on the quality of their research outputs and help build sustainable research capacity in low and middle income countries.
Florencia Fernández Chiappe is a PhD student at the Biomedicine Research Institute of Buenos Aires, where she studies the neuronal circuits that drive sleep homeostasis in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, with an experimental approach that combines behavioral analysis and patch clamp electrophysiology in the adult brain.
"I would like for science to become more equitable, and thinks that building an open-source research communication system that is both transparent and ethical will be fundamental to making science more equitable" – says Fernández Chiappe.
Carolina Quezada is a postdoctoral researcher in the Center of Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile. She works on generation of biological solar cells using biomolecules from extremophile bacteria.
"I would like to see more scientific collaboration networks, open science, and gender equality" - says Quezada.
Julia Riley is a postdoctoral fellow at Stellenbosch University in South Africa supported by the Claude Leon Foundation. Her research focuses on the behavioural and evolutionary ecology of reptiles and amphibians.
Riley would like to increase involvement in and publication of science from unrepresented countries and minority groups, and to encourage greater transparency and reproducibility in science.
Sarvenaz Sarabipour is a postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the United States. She builds multiscale computational models of receptor signaling networks in cell and tissue contexts that will enable the design of specific systems-level molecular vascular interventions to control angiogenesis.
Sarabipur says that she “would like our research environments to be open, kinder and more inclusive.”
Andy Tay is a neuroscientist studying magnetic biomedicine. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and will be starting an independent position at the National University of Singapore in 2020.
He is looking to have a hand in creating better support systems for early-career scientists in publishing, science communications and job market navigation.
The six new members join a strong group that is already involved in shaping a number of initiatives that aim to create a research culture that is healthy for science and for scientists.
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