A new year, a new resolution to blog more. Of course, it never translates into me being more productive. However, I am starting with a new blog post to kick off the year and as part of it I thought I would review what I learned in 2012 and what I am excited about for the coming year. My major discovery last year was the world of epigenetics, acquired through a writing opportunity to cover the COST conference on Personalized Medicine that took place in Cyprus last June. The conference was definitely the highlight of my work year and I hope to do it again this coming year if the follow-up goes ahead. The conference was designed to bring together practitioners of diverse disciplines to discuss personalized medicine from a number of perspectives and I was lucky enough to
interview many of the participants and write up the
summary of the conference. Physicians, physiologists, engineers and philosophers were just a smattering of the perspectives represented. The field of epigenetics (the study of heritable influences on the genome, caused directly or indirectly by environment and experience) was new to me, and I talked to as many 'experts' as I could about it and I came away convinced that the next major breakthroughs in medicine will be in epigenetics. I also came away feeling that the most significant current hurdle we must address as scientists and physicians is overcoming our inability to put the complexity of our current health environment into manageable and communicable frameworks. We will only be able to do this if we start to think about problems holistically and top down, rather than from a reductionist perspective which by definition, is bottom up. The Parmenides Institute in Munich is at the forefront of this quest and on my wish list for 2013 is a visit to see
Prof Albrect von Mueller at the institute to learn about the work and the tools being developed to expand cognitive reach in children and adults.
In mid 2012, I started a new job as scientific director of a medical communications agency; while I loved freelancing, I needed a regular income to pay for college and for health insurance. I miss the freelancing lifestyle, but the new job is fun too. I traveled quite a bit and already have much more planned for 2013. I also learned more than any normal person ever needs to know about the GI system. This coming year we have plenty of other areas of interest in the offing, including my favorite, neuroscience. I am also exploring new business opportunities with a few friends, and I'll have more on that over the next few months.
In August last year, I wrote an invited
editorial for the Personalized Medicine journal on crowdsourcing science and am following up with something similar in a cancer journal in the first quarter of 2013. Crowdsourcing has its place in research but I think it needs to be used carefully. I'm looking for good examples in cancer at the moment if anyone has anything they'd like to share. I will place a link on the blog when this one is published later in the year.
I'm always positive about the new year even though I don't much care for
New Year's Evening festivities. I like to look forward, and this year is
no different. This year I'm going to work towards a few more publications as well as getting some of my less nerdy works published. I hope to explore some academic connections and play my role to get the new business going. With some luck and hard work, I might even finish the book I started 18 months ago.
Overall, I plan to write much more this year (as I do every year!), but this year, I MEAN it. Ha, ha. We'll see
