During this conversation, panelists shared advice and perspectives on how to get your research published. Our panel included a former research scientist who now works as an editor in peer-review journal and two active researchers and professors with a prolific publication records who have also served as reviewers for peer-review journals. 

Panelists

Dr. Rebecca M. Calisi-Rodríguez studies how brain activity changes during parenthood and in response to stress. She was awarded her M.S. from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2006 and then her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2010. As a postdoc, she was awarded an National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (2010-2013) and the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship (UC Berkeley, 2013-2014). She was a faculty member in the Biology Department of Barnard College of Columbia University from 2014-2015 and joined the faculty of UC Davis in 2015. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior. Dr. Calisi is a Faculty Scholar of UC Davis' Environmental Health Science Center and the Center for Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives in Science. She is a faculty member of graduate programs for the Animal Behavior Graduate Group and the Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology Group. Her lab is currently funded by the National Science Foundation. Dr. Calisi's interests include vertebrate reproductive neuroendocrinology, animal behavior, genomics, and environmental health. She also enjoys spending time with her family, dancing, biking, horseback riding, and drinking tasty local vineyard libations with good company.

Dr. Daniel Colón-Ramos was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He completed his B.A. at Harvard University, his PhD in the lab of Dr. Sally Kornbluth at Duke University and was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Kang Shen at Stanford University. The Colón-Ramos lab is interested in how synapses are precisely assembled to build the neuronal architecture that underlies behavior. To address this, they developed tools in the thermotaxis circuit of C. elegans. Their system enables unbiased genetic screens to identify novel pathways that instruct synaptogenesis in vivo, and single-cell manipulation of these pathways to understand how they influence behavior. As mechanisms underlying synapse structure and function are conserved, the research program seeks to enhance our understanding of synaptic cell biology in higher organisms, which may be important for disease.

Dr. Masha Gelfand is currently a Scientific Editor at Developmental Cell, where she loves reading a wide variety of cell and developmental biology, traveling to meet scientists from across the world, and shepherding great through the publication process. She attended college at Washington University in St. Louis, double-majoring in Biology and German, and then earned her PhD in 2012 from Harvard Medical School, studying angiogenesis in the developing mouse brain. Her broader love of biology then took her to join Developmental Cell as an editor, where she’s now been for 5 years.