MRS/Optica Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship Information Session
Oct 2, 2024
MRS and Optica (formerly OSA) co-sponsor an exciting opportunity for scientists to spend a year on Capitol Hill as a Special Legislative Assistant in the U.S. Congress. Fellows learn about the legislative and budgeting process, gain experience in science policy, and contribute scientific expertise to the policymaking process.
Join us for this informational webinar to learn about the MRS/Optica Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship, get tips on applying, and hear from current and former Fellows about their experiences as scientists in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Building Organizational Cultures of Mentoring and Wellbeing
Oct 3, 2024
An often overlooked strategy for enhancing individual wellbeing is attending to the design of organizational environments where work and learning occur (e.g., labs, graduate programs, universities). Aligning the aims, leadership styles, resources, communications practices, and policies of learning environments to support a culture of mentoring and wellbeing may be necessary for changing culture. With a focus on labs and graduate programs, this workshop will empower attendees to assess their own organizational culture. Participants will learn how to proactively build equity-minded cultures of mentoring and wellbeing through tools such as lab manuals and graduate program handbooks that establish expectations about work-life balance, forms of support and mentoring available, and professional conduct as it concerns respect for members’ social identities.
Participants will have the knowledge and skills to:
- Recognize dimensions of organizational culture that may affect graduate student wellbeing, especially for diverse groups of mentees. Enable leaders to conduct cultural self-assessment, considering different stakeholders’ perspectives.
- Consider the role of expectation-setting and policy in creating cultures of mentoring, and where policy may need development or evolution.
- Review and begin developing content for a lab manual or graduate program handbook on topics that are important for equity and wellbeing.
- Explore possibilities by which departments explicitly incorporate the value of high-quality mentoring into their organizational incentive structures
Sponsored by American Elements
Broadening Participation and Increasing Impact: Great Science, Small Budget
Oct 10, 2024
Please join our panelists for this important webinar that will support discussions to bring awareness to the bias that often exists when you are selecting collaborative partners, hiring scientists to work in your laboratory or department, and in the publishing process. Often scientists from lesser-known institutions or developing countries who are doing great science are overlooked by members of the scientific community who sometimes hold an affinity bias towards candidates from larger, better-known or more well-funded institutions. The webinar will include discussion about the challenges these scientists face, examples of their impactful work, and case studies on how these underrepresented scientists and institutions have added value to organizations who have partnered with them.
Sponsored by American Elements
Building Inclusive Communities
Oct 24, 2024
How can organizations explore and articulate their commitment to inclusive workplace cultures? To help answer this question, we call on leaders to engage in a process of thoughtful discovery around organizational culture & workplace climate. An organization, in and of itself, cannot carry bias but will reflect the biases and perspectives of its leaders and representatives. Understanding how those differing perspectives are reflected in the pattern and fabric of the areas in which they lead is the first step leaders must take towards establishing a culture that supports and promotes a DEI philosophy.
In this session, participants will develop a foundational understanding of diversity, equity, and inclusion and take an assessment which will help them to evaluate their current work culture, highlighting their strengths and informing them of next steps.
Sponsored by American Elements
Green Cards for Scientific Researchers—How to Win Your EB-1/NIW Case!
Oct 29, 2024
Interested in obtaining a permanent Green Card to work in the United States? Generally, a foreign national seeking permanent residence through employment must be sponsored by his or her employer via the PERM Labor Certification process.
There are numerous routes to employment-based permanent residence that do not require PERM Labor Certification, thereby allowing foreign nationals to avoid this complicated process while also reducing the wait time to obtain employment-based permanent residence.
This presentation will cover and compare the criteria for the EB-1A classification for foreign nationals of extraordinary ability in the sciences, the EB-1B classification for foreign nationals who are outstanding researchers or professors, and the National Interest Waiver (“NIW”) classification. The presentation will also discuss the different types of nonimmigrant visa work classifications.
Machine Learning in Materials Science—From Basic Concepts to Active Learning - MRS Meetings Tutorial Preview
Nov 7, 2024
Dynamically Adaptive Materials
Nov 20, 2024
Details for this event will be announced shortly. This webinar is presented in conjunction with the November 2024 issue of MRS Bulletin.
Sponsored by American Elements