January 9th 2019

It was a joy to return to my Ph.D. school (University of California, Davis) as the first destination of my one-year academic leave from Kuwait University. Beside reviving the memories and feelings associated with the place, I was eager to meet friends, colleagues, and mentors. I stayed, sadly, for only one day but had a chance to walk around the main campus and meet people despite the rainy weather.

For lunch, I was invited by the Grahns (Robert and Jennifer Grahn) to eat at Sophia’s. It is the best Thai restaurant in Davis, in my opinion. The lunch special of shrimp curry hasn’t changed over the years and my taste buds haven’t forgotten the delicious flavors. Rob and Jen Grahn are a couple of my dearest friends in Davis. I have shared the office with Dr. Robert Grahn throughout my Ph.D. years and shared much of my general and scientific thoughts as well as my feelings and frustrations. It was unusual for me and for them that our lunch extended for nearly two hours but I enjoyed every second of it and I hope they did.

Although not sure that walking would assist in the digestion of my tasty lunch, I walked around the nice small downtown of Davis and to my surprise I saw the Framers Market, which takes place Wednesday afternoon and Saturday morning of every week. The Farmers Market was one of the frequently visited locations of my family where we can try and buy different food items in addition to fruits and vegetables. My son, Ali, also has enjoyed the playgrounds and the company of other kids. On my way to the main campus, I passed by the 3rd and U Cafe where I used to join REHAB journal club on Fridays afternoon for a free learning experience. 

A visit to UCD always starts with the Memorial Union. The place has changed a little since my graduation with more spacious foodcourts and a newly renovated larger bookstore. Drowning in my memories, it was a challenge for me to avoid all the bikers on campus. Davis is known to be the bicycle capital city in the United States and the campus is almost car free on its internal roads. Everyone rides a bike at UCD including faculty and if one decides to walk instead, a class or a meeting will definitely be missed. I remember re-learning how to ride a bike when I first joined the Ph.D. program of the Genetics Graduate Group (now known as the Integrative Genetics and Genomics – IGG – Graduate Group). When you are in Davis, do what Davisians do and ride a bike.

I walked my way to the office of my dissertation committee member and mentor, Jeffery Ross-Ibarra, at Robbins Hall. Jeff, as we call him, has been an inspiration for me as a scientist. He is a population geneticist and in love with studying corn. He taught me population genetics and was one of the many reasons why I love the topic. Also, He has been my inspiration to establish a journal club at Kuwait University (EHRAB) based on his entertaining and intellectually valuable REHAB. Two things stand out as the most memorable lessons that I learned from Jeff. The first lesson was scientific humility. I learned that by his ungarnished comments and questions, which were at the time quite hurtful but much needed on the long run and for a true scientific maturity. The second lesson was to be in love with the organism one studies. I still remember vividly my last conversation with him before my return to Kuwait after my graduation. He asked me “why camels?” His question was in reference to a statement that I made during my exist seminar that I am interested in studying camels when I return home. The first answer that came to my mind was “the camel has waited a long time for me to study it”. Of course my answer wasn’t along the lines of the first lesson that he taught me, humility, but it was may be a reflection of my determination and passion to study the camel and just like his passion to study corn. Without any prior appointment, I walked into Jeff’s office to see him standing in a chair-less room. Yes, he has a standing desk with two large computer screens. He told me that this was his treat for becoming a full professor. Nothing in the office changed. The nice vertical chalk-board is still in the same location and the corn samples and photos decorate the office elegantly. We chatted for about half an hour before I handed him a little gift from my camel lab. The gift was T-shirts and keychains/car mirror hanging accessory with a camel design.

From Robbins Hall I walked to the haunted building (a claim or a joke) Storer Hall where the office of my other dissertation committee member and my dear mentor, Bruce Rannala, resides. I knew before my arrival that Dr. Rannala would be in town. However, I wanted to walk to his office just like I used to when I was a student. Bruce, as he likes me to call him, has taught me statistics and was the first to introduce me to R programming. I still remember setting behind my friend Carolyn Yrigollen and leaning to the right wall of the classroom. When Bruce plotted a histogram using R, my first question was “is it possible to change the colors?”. He smiled and replied that a lot of things can be modified. I laugh when I remember this incident because for all the statistics that he was introducing to us, my only question was to the plotting, much to my love and fascination with visualization.

At about 4 o’clock, I drove to UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory (VGL). I had an appointment with my friend Rob (Robert Grahn) to meet old friends at the testing lab, to get introduced to the director (Dr. Rebecca Bellone), and to get a quick tour to the facilities, and equipments of the lab. I was familiar with the lab in general when I did the genotyping and sequencing aspects of my Ph.D. projects using their machines. Beside all the new machines and the automated systems for DNA extraction etc., I was particularly amazed by the number of samples that the lab houses and the way these samples are organized. Thousand and thousands of biological samples are stored from several species. I discussed the setup of my camel biobank (Cdrom Archive) with Rob who provided me with valuable suggestions and recommendations. I hope that my visit to the VGL puts the seeds for future camel specific collaborations.

I had the pleasure of giving a workshop on scientific poster design at the University of Florida, Gainesville (Feb 8th 2019) where I was hosted by the Dr. Samantha Brooks and Brooks Equine Genetics Laboratory. Below are the general guidelines that I prepared for the participants of the workshop.

1. Keep in mind:

• Science is communicated by different ways such as peer-reviewed scientific articles, review papers, book chapters, books, scientific talks, or scientific posters. Each mean of scientific communication targets a specific audience and aims to deliver/report different scientific content.
• The scientific content of your poster may not be as developed and complete as that of your future scientific papers. Your poster can be as simple as the layout of future experiments.
• Scientific posters are not scientific papers and do not need to follow the standard sections (Abstract, Introduction, M&M etc.). You may be tempted to follow such model of scientific layout due to its wide usage in poster design.
• The text content of your poster does not need to be in a paragraph format. As mentioned above, your poster is not a scientific paper. I highly suggest that you use bullet points of concise short sentences rather than long and complicated paragraphs.
• Too much text in your poster is not attractive and is not a sign of sophistication or a high-quality work. On the contrary, in many cases it is both repulsive to the audience and a sign of desperation to fill the poster area.
• The general audience (people out of your specialized field) will only glance at your poster and will likely spend ~15-20s (if you are lucky) looking at your poster whereas colleagues within your specialized field will be familiar with your work and will likely seek you to engage in lengthy scientific discussion. In both cases a lot of text material is a deterrent from any short or long scientific discussion.
• Large scientific conferences display hundreds if not thousands of posters. Your goal is to catch the eye and mind of as many scientists as possible, which may initiate future collaborations or simply enhance your science with ideas and constructive criticism.

2. Poster design software: Many softwares can be used for the design of your poster. I recommend using Microsoft Powerpoint due to its wide usage at academic institutions by faculty and students.

3. Poster layout: Both landscape and portrait layouts are used to design scientific posters. However, a portrait layout is preferred especially in large scientific conferences since the posters’ display area is limited and more portrait than landscape posters can be displayed in the same area.

4. Poster size: 46 inches height x 34 inches width (~100cm height, 80 cm width).

5. Poster margins: Leave ½ inch (1cm) margins from all sides of the poster. Your poster material will be placed in 45inx33in design area (98cmx78cm).

6. Font type: Use a basic font that can be easily read (ex. Arial).

7. Font color: You need a font color that provides the greatest color contrast with the poster background color (see below). I suggest using black font color for most of the written content of your poster. You can use other colors for certain words/sentences to emphasize importance or a specific relationship to graphical content.

8. Font size: The font size will vary depending on the poster section. However, with the exception of the authors’ affiliations, figure/table legends, acknowledgments, and possibly the references, all sections should be typed with font size at least 28pt. This will make the poster readable form ~5 feet away. Remember you don’t want to get people very close to the poster because it will reduce their interaction with you and may block other interested individuals from having visual access to your poster.

9. Poster background: Avoid having a colored background or a background photo. Consider leaving the background white. This will concentrate the focus of the eye on the material of the poster (both writing and figures) rather than the background. This will also provide you with a lot of freedom in the design process.

10. Title: Use a short catchy title in a large font size (>60pts). Your scientific poster is not a scientific paper to be titled with details and does not need to be easily searched and cited. The title should be attractive to individual passing by the poster or glancing at the conference’s program.

11. Authors: Write the names of the authors in the order agreed upon by the research team (font size 36pt). Underline the name of the presenter. The presenter may not be the first author. This may happen when your advisor takes your work to large scientific conferences. After each of the authors’ names place a number in a ^superscript. The superscripted numbers will be the reference for the affiliations of the authors (font size ~24pt). You can be creative with the display of the affiliations. You do not need to give every institution/department a separate line under the author line. You can simply separate the numbered affiliations with a comma.

12. Logos: Choose good quality logos of your institution or lab. It is preferred to choose a logo with a transparent back ground. There is no standard location to place the logos and it all depends on the design. I suggest that you scale the size of the logo proportionally to the height of the title lines.

13. Abstract: Most scientific conferences require the submission of a ~ 250 words abstract for your poster, which will be printed in the conferences program or uploaded to the conference’s webpage. Thus, there is no need to include the abstract in your poster. You can use part of your submitted abstract in the poster but not in its entirety and not in a paragraph format.

14. Objectives: The objectives section is the first most important section of your poster. You need to pay extra attention to the formulation of your sentences and the writing of concise and clear objectives. The entire poster will be focused on the various ways to achieve the objectives. I suggest that you highlight this section with an attractive color and make the font bold (font size 32-36 pts).

15. Hypotheses: Your hypotheses may be included in the objectives section and highlighted. The inclusion of a hypothesis (if you have one) makes your poster easier to explain from your side and easier to read and understand by the audience.

16. Figures: Your figures are the second most important part of your poster. Unlike your scientific papers which represent your work in written words or your oral presentations which are largely aided by your spoken words, your posters are largely visual representations of your science. Your audience will mostly look at your poster rather than read it and in many cases you will not be around to explain the content verbally. Thus, it is essential to present your work in clear figures and diagrams that are both attractive to the eye and self-explaining to the mind. Your figures may have different forms (plots, diagrams, pictures etc.). I recommend that you generate the plots and diagrams with a transparent or white background. This will ensure the perfect blend of your figures with the overall background of your poster (see poster background above).

17. Tables: I suggest that you avoid inserting tables in your poster. Tables are generally detailed summary of your work or your scientific findings. The location of such details is not your poster but your scientific papers. Also tables generally occupy a large area of the poster (if displayed with a reasonable font size) which can alternatively be used for more important graphical or written content.

18. Photos: If you study an organism and you do not have a good quality photo, you can obtain one from sources that authorize the photo usage for non-commercial use such as Flickr creative commons images (https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/) or Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)). Make sure to mention the name/account of the owner of the photo in you acknowledgments or in the figures’ legend.

19. Conclusion: The conclusion(s) section is the third most important section of the poster. It should give a general summary of the findings in a concise sentence or few sentences. The conclusions should include the general take home message of your scientific work.

20. 30 seconds summary: I highly recommend that you include a section that provides a 30 seconds summary of the entire content of your poster in few words or a sentence. This may need some experimenting and activating or over-expressing most of your creativity genes.

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See the implementation of these guidelines in our posters

If you found this workshop helpful and enhanced your scientific poster design experience, please share a pdf file of your future poster design with me (hhalhaddad@gmail.com).

I have asked Ikhlas Mohammed (a recent graduate of the biochemistry master’s program and a student of Dr. Jamillah Zamoon) to write a detailed summary of her experience as a graduate student at KU and a guide for future graduate students.  Below is what Ikhlas sent to me (un-edited).  Thanks Ikhlas!

Your guide for dealing with necessary nonsense work, when in doubt call 24987385 which is the graduate school number for instructions

1. When you are done with 12 credits register for Thesis 1 the next semester.
   1. In the same semester as your first time registration for Thesis 1 hand in:
   2. AC1 (deadline is 3 weeks after start of semester) and
   3. AC2 which includes the proposal & the 1000 KD (deadline 5 weeks after start of the semester)
   4. Both forms should be given to the graduate secretary Lena and she will deliver them to the graduate school but do follow up with her
2. Next semester register for Thesis 2 and plan to submit the 5000 KD proposal
3. Continue to register for thesis 2 even on your final semester, and once you reach your final semester (go to graduate college 2^nd floor and see the dates for the graduate committee, these are the days by which if you don’t hand in everything you will not be considered for graduation till the next committee meeting which should be fine unless you finish around the summer because there is a committee in June but the next one is in Sept or Oct so you can’t graduate if you don’t catch that one) and you are ready to hand in your thesis (First let me just say congratulations that was a very very long road!! )
   1. Fill in AC4 (now this paper is supposedly confidential so you are only allowed to see page 1 of it)
   2. Collect the signature and stamp of your committee (only the signature of committee, the program director and vice dean of academic affairs signature Lena will take care of them):
      1. Your supervisor + 2 other academic people (the one with the higher academic rank put his/her name in the convener space and the other one in the member space).
   3. AC4 is handed in with your printed bound thesis + CD (that has the thesis obviously) and transcript and major sheet
      1. (Both transcript and major sheet you can find them from the college of graduate study room 33 transcripts require 1 KWD stamp and make sure the major sheet is stamped by the employee).
   4. Your supervisor needs to hand the thesis, transcript, major sheet, one CD (containing thesis in both PDF and word format) include these sentences in the CD cover

Kuwait University

Title of thesis

First version

Name + student id

Department/College

Month/Year

And AC4 to Lena, which will address it to vice dean, and he will send it to the college of graduate studies.

4. Once the thesis is handed in the first time it normally takes 3 days to leave the department (depending on when is the vice dean there to sign the paper) and once it reaches there, a paper will be sent to the supervisor to state that the thesis did reach them. It will take an additional 3 days for the thesis to be assessed once it is in the hand of CGS.
5. Once the thesis is back (to your supervisor office) you need to make the requested changes, re-print these changed pages and remove the incorrect pages and replace them with the corrected pages (don’t throw away the incorrect pages). Then save the file in PDF format only into total of 4 CDs and together with a letter from your supervisor stating that you made the correction, the incorrect pages (for CGS to compare and make sure that you’ve made the changes), and the CGS page titled “remarks on manuscript” hand all these to the graduate school second floor the reception. Note: you can reprint the thesis if you don’t want to exchange papers, but why waste trees!
6. It normally takes 2 weeks or more for the graduate school to contact the external referee and get his/her approval for the thesis to be sent to them. Don’t waste time and ask your internal committee if they want copies of the thesis so that they can read it while the wait for external reply is going on (Note: university only sends copies to internal referee once they’ve contacted the external or once the report and the thesis is back from the external (I’m not sure which option they go with, but both options are wasting time). Normally they give the external referee up to 1 week to reply if he/ she want to read the thesis in case of no reply or a negative answer they move to the next referee on the list (graduate school does arrange the 5 names on the list as they like and not as your supervisor originally wrote the names in AC4) if all 5 say no and or didn’t reply the graduate school sends a paper to your supervisor to ask him/her to provide them with 5 more names for external referee (hopefully things will not reach this point) and the process is repeated till there is a positive answer.
7. In the meantime while you are waiting for the external referee report to arrive you can always review for the thesis examination, or do a departmental seminar or participate in poster day or participate in a scientific mission to present that poster or watch YouTube videos! Its your time you figure out how to use it!
8. It took 2.5-3 weeks for the external examiner report to arrive
9. Now fill out AC6 and hand it in to graduate college (2^nd floor the reception). You need to first make the adjustment that the external referee pointed out then sign the paper from your supervisor + internal committee. It is preferred (but not mandatory) to hand in this form 2 weeks before your defense data (I hand it in 3 days before so it really doesn’t matter). For the defense time and location, you need signature of you committee, and then to specify the time and location. To book the conference hall (dean office) first talk to the administrator manager (the room next to the conference hall) to confirm that the time and the date is empty. Then take a paper from the photocopy room near (secretary taj’s room) and fill it with your name / supervisor/ today’s date/ the date you want the room and the time and which room you want) then give it to secretary taj so that she will hand it to the correct people.
10. You also at the same time need to take a clearance form from graduate college 2^nd floor room 33, you need to sign this paper systematically from the first to the last person, 1. The program director (Dr. Fadwa), 2. The library (the 2^nd floor science library), 3. The boy’s dorm in shuwaikh, 4. Safety and security department (where you take your student id from) 5. Management department (in building 2 KH near the corridor that leads to the library) 6. Finance department (near gate 7). Also make sure that the all the signatures include a stamp (and sometimes dates too) and the stamp is repeated on the carbon copy. The next two pages can be filled by you with your details (yes the page is repeated twice but you need to fill both pages). Hand in this form to graduate college room 33 also days before your defense.
11. Today is your defense day Woho, I recommend you eating a cake before the defense (or eating one after you are done or eating one before and after the defense)
12. On the defense day make sure that the convener have the AC7 form and that when all members sign they also stamp and include the date, make sure to also later print 10 copies of the signature page only so that all the members can sign it and you can use these pages for your final bound thesis (and have some spares just in case). The convener should type (computer typed not hand written) the report in the second page of AC7.
13. Either the convener sends the AC7 form to the secretary then from the secretary to the program director or the convener sends the AC7 form to the supervisor (who gives a copy to the secretary) and directly hands it to the program director that will send it to the graduate college. (You can send AC7 after your supervisor makes sure you have made the amendments, you don’t have to send it with the rest of the forms (Ac8-10) it is better to be send first since the printing of the thesis and binding will take some days)
14. Next, save your thesis into 3 CDS (1 CD containing the thesis in both pdf and word format, another CD containing only the title page + abstract both in Arabic and English (also in both word and pdf) and a third CD containing the thesis in pdf only) Imp: make sure that the symbols, the font, the table of contents are all ok when converting to pdf. CD1 & 2 will be given later to the graduate college so set them aside.
15. Next, take CD 3 (pdf only) also take the printed signed signature pages with you and go to Al Alamiah center (map attached) (phone number 22414141, Al-Rai, Al Ghazali Road – beside Electrozan (if using gps set it for electrozan because their location isn’t detectable by Google maps then walk for 100m and their door looks like a house door and go to the first floor. They calculate the number of color and non colored pages you have and ask you how many copies you need and what cover for the book to use (the cover depend on what college you belong to) then they ask you to pay some money in advance and it is up to you how much you pay in advance but better not to pay everything just in case something went wrong I’ve paid only 10% of the price in advance) to print your thesis and bound it there. You need to print 1 copy for yourself, one for the supervisor, one for CGS one for program director (Dr. Fadwa), one for the science library (joint program needs to give both libraries) and one for research administration (if you have been funded by them AC2 and they are the ones that need to sign in the AC8 in the financing source). So 5 or 6 copies (or 7 for joint programs) need to be printed there at Al Alamiah center usually take 4 or 5 working days they don’t work on Friday and they only work from 8 am to 4pm.
16. In AC9 just sign part C if you took nothing from the college (software & books) also let the program director sign part B (even if you took nothing he/she needs to sign).
17. In AC10 you need to attach your civil id copy and bankcard copy (add iban number) so that the university can reimburse you later for the thesis printing fees. In AC8 you need to get the signature and the stamp of all the people who are supposed to receive the thesis final form (mentioned in point 15, so one for the supervisor, one for the library one for program director (Dr. Fadwa) and one for research sector as the finance source if they did finance your thesis) give copies of the sign forms (AC 8-10 to both lena and your supervisor)
18. Next take CD 1 & 2 and one signature page and AC8 to AC10 and bound thesis copy (this is for CGS) to the graduate college third floor room 10 to ester she will check if everything is ok then she will hand you back your papers and the book and any extra copies (of the old thesis for refereeing) she have, next give the cd which have the abstract + title page to room 19 (Aisha) on the same floor. She will check if it is correct and sign AC8 and takes a copy and give you back the paper now take the cd with the full thesis + (AC8-10 + signature paper and the bound thesis) to 2^nd floor graduate college reception.  All these papers needs to be handed 1 week before the date of the graduation committee so that you will be considered for this graduation committee.
19. Next you can check with the graduate college (room 35) when you can expect your certificate to be handed to you (usually takes 1.5 months after the graduate committee meeting, also after the committee meeting date make sure to check with them to see if there are any missing papers (for example they need the paper issued by the program director/ the course professor which allowed you to take an undergraduate course)

We discussed during EHRAB (25/11/15) Wang et. al. 2015 about corn domestication. I learned the effects of a single and simple mutation on a phenotype. A SNP in the tga1 gene changes the phenotype from short, small and capsulated of teosinte to tall, big and naked kernels of maize. The paper and the interesting discussion inspired me to make the little sketch below.

Huda Alaskar, B.Sc. Molecular Biology

To earn a degree, beyond your bachelor’s, U.S. graduate schools always state: A student must produce a “significant body of work”.

What does that mean?

Here are our guidelines for what it means to earn a graduate degree under our supervisions. This does not include what KU requires for your course work.  This is what we expect you to master, with our help, before you leave us 🙂

We hope this helps each of us to stay on track.  Please ask yourself these questions as you are trying to graduate.

1. Your training in graduate school is to prepare you to be a free and independent thinker who is capable of producing knowledge rather than only memorizing facts from books and articles. Are you a free and independent thinker?

2. Scientific literature comes in many forms nowadays. This includes articles, books, popular science, websites, etc. Do you read relevant scientific literature?

3. Knowledge, ideas, and thoughts cannot be memorized. Your “significant body of work” comes primarily from the lab. Did you master taking/organizing your lab notes/computer files/literature and all forms of data?

4. The science you do in the lab is not what your PI asks you to do with a specific deadline. Performing experiments requires learning how to coordinate with others plus how to manage your time and the resources. Can you propose/plan/execute new experiments?

5. Nothing in the real world of science is like the figures you see in textbooks. The path to “significant body of work” is not a straight line. Have you learned how to trouble shoot and solve technical problems?

6. Your scientific value comes from the skills you develop and techniques you master. What techniques have you picked up practically? What other techniques have you learned from only listening to your peers?

7. Data Data Data! Your “significant body of work” needs data to come to life. What data have you generated? Is it high quality, reproducible and valid?

8. Generating data is relatively an easy task while analyzing the data and producing clear explanation is quite challenging. Do you know how to analyze and present your data and results?

9. You do not perform experiments in a dusty and dark dungeon. Your experiments should be in accordance with current thinking and findings of your field. Can you integrate your results into the current thinking/literature of the field?

10. Knowledge becomes knowledge by sharing. You cannot become a scientist or produce “a significant body of work” by hiding your findings. You should develop the skills that enable you to share your science and findings. Have you mastered being able to organize your thoughts cohesively to be able to present them professionally to others (both orally = PowerPoint’s, and written= posters, thesis and papers)?

11. Communication, communication, communication! You do not have to like an individual to communicate with. Communication in science is not making friends or befriending others. It is your way to the “significant body of work”. Were you respectful, supportive, helpful and able to “get along” and communicate well with ALL of your lab partners, your supervisors and the lovely administration at KU? (That’s a big task!!!)

12. Seriousness will seriously get you sick. To produce your “significant body of work”, you need to enjoy and have fun doing it. Your graduate school experience is like running a marathon. It will not end within a semester after earning a good grade. For some, like your professors, the marathon will be a life-long pursuit. Did you learn to have fun/appreciate when things were going well, and to stay flexible/determined/resilient when things didn’t go so well?

13. You will not know everything. You will not know everything even in your field. Being smart at this period of your life is not by knowing everything. It is rather by knowing what you don’t know. You should be comfortable to say, “I do not know”. It is okay not to know things and it should be your drive to know more. Have you said, “I do not know” to yourself? Are you comfortable saying, “I do not know but I will look into it” before an audience?

14. GREAT 🙂 You did it!!! CONGRATULATIONS.

Now, we have both done our jobs.

Jamillah Zamoon

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry

Hasan Alhaddad

Assistant Professor of Genetics

One of my mentors once told me:

“Science is a series of failures/frustrations punctuated by data.”     Niels C. Pedersen

It seems to me learning how to make this website involves similar process.  My failures are likely to be punctuated by experience and google searches 🙂