AAAS and partners debut new online networks for clinical and minority ...(ide resources. Jos Fernndez communit...),Health

Jos Fernndez, community manager for CTSciNet and MySciNet, said that there "is a large group of scientists looking for professional resources to help them connect with scientists at all stages--from mentors, to colleagues, to the next generation of researchers."

"These resources," he added, "provide a virtual campus for scientists spread out across the world."

Fernndez explained that the networks contain features similar to those offered by Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other social networks. But since it is monitored by Science Careers staff and populated exclusively by scientists, science trainees, and science career experts, science professionals are likely to find CTSciNet and MySciNet considerably more focused.

CTSciNet, which stands for Clinical and Translational Science Network, focuses on building a network of scientists and trainees who wish to speed the translation of scientific breakthroughs into real-world therapies--including scientists from all disciplines with clinical or basic science training, or both. Also welcome are people from other fields, such as business and clinical medicine, who wish to explore the possibilities for turning science into new and potentially profitable new technologies.

In translational medicine, scientists take research preformed in the laboratory and apply it to create practical applications for improving human health and quality of life for all. In recent years the pipeline of new drugs, for example, has stagnated even as important breakthroughs, such as the sequencing of the human genome, have opened up vast new terrain for scientific investigation.

CTSciNet users can join discussion groups on clinical trials, commercialization and entrepreneurship, ontology and bioinformatics, and many other subjects, and read articles on paying off graduate school debt, the academic tenure process, M.D.-Ph.D. dual-degree programs, and how basic scientists c
'/>"/>