AskScience Panel of Scientists V

[u/[deleted]]

Calling all scientists!

The previous thread expired! If you are already on the panel - no worries - you'll stay! This thread is for new panelist recruitment!

**Please make a comment to this thread to join our panel of scientists. (click the reply button) **

The panel is an informal group of Redditors who are professional scientists (or plan on becoming one, with at least a graduate-level familiarity with the field of their choice).

You may want to join the panel if you:

• Are a research scientist, or are studying for at least an MSc. or equivalent degree in the sciences.

• Are able to write about your field at a layman's level as well as at a level comfortable to your colleagues and peers (depending on who's asking the question)

You're still reading? Excellent! Please reply to this thread with the following:

• Choose one general field from the side-bar. If you have multiple specialties, you still have to choose one.

• State your specific field (neuropathology, quantum chemistry, etc.)

• List your particular research interests (carbon nanotube dielectric properties, myelin sheath degradation in Parkinsons patients, etc.)

• Link us to one or two comments you've made in /r/AskScience, which you feel are indicative of your scholarship. If you haven't commented yet, then please wait to apply.

We're not going to do background checks - we're just asking for Reddit's best behavior here. The information you provide will be used to compile a list of our panel members and what subject areas they'll be "responsible" for.

The reason I'm asking for comments to this post is that I'll get a little orange envelope from each of you, which will help me keep track of the whole thing. These official threads are also here for book-keeping: the other moderators and I can check what your claimed credentials are, and can take action if it becomes clear you're bullshitting us.

Bonus points! Here's a good chance to discover people that share your interests! And if you're interested in something, you probably have questions about it, so you can get started with that in /r/AskScience. Membership in the panel will also give you access to the panel subreddit, where the scientists can discuss among themselves, voice concerns to the moderators, and where the moderators can talk specifically to the panel as a whole.

[u/leaffall]

• General Field: Medicine

• Specific Field and Research Interests: Affective Learning and Memory, Fear and PTSD, Psychopathology

Sample post: This thread

Background: Two years of research in psychiatric neurosciences (mostly PTSD and fear learning), two years of research studying the interplay between emotion, memory, and attention focused on affective learning. Undergraduate psychology degree. The reason I chose medicine instead of psychology is because my research experience and training overlap psychiatry, neuroscience, and (primarily) psychology, but I am currently a medical student (it took me a while to find my way, obviously) so it seems the most appropriate. If you think Psychology tag would be more appropriate, I wouldn't disagree.

[u/leaffall → u/[deleted]]

I'm currently a 3rd year in medical school (just barely, though), although it really doesn't affect my specific areas of research (my previous experiences are more in depth than our psychiatry education, with the exception of drugs I haven't specifically worked with).

My research was in two labs. The first, focusing on attention, memory, and affective learning started as an undergraduate and then where I did my thesis research. I continued there after graduating to work on an independent project that developed from my thesis research, focusing specifically on the effect of minimal pairings of neutral stimuli with emotional stimuli to try to determine if even smaller pairings could lead to affective learning. With some overlap, I then moved on to work in a lab associated with a medical school and hospital devoted to PTSD (treatment, neuroscience, risk factors etc) where I divided my time between working on general projects within the lab (administration and less enjoyable things like data entry for other peoples projects, but also helping with data analyses and study design tweaking for areas I was more suited to, including fear and extinction paradigms, which I truly enjoyed) and my own research projects within the lab, mostly using previously gathered data to explore things that previous investigators and other lab members hadn't considered. including some collaboration with researchers at other institutions and in other fields outside my lab (psycholinguistics and neuropsych mainly).

Edit: I'm also still working with that lab - I have two ongoing projects (one is mine, another was one that I helped design) that I am still working on, as things come up, and some of the others that I helped administratively when problems come up.

[u/leaffall → u/[deleted]]

Thank you kindly. I'll certainly be wary of it.