CHARTING A COURSE FOR SUCCESS: INTERNATIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMAGING SCIENTIST CAREERS IN CORE FACILITIES
Global Bioimaging is thrilled to showcase its first GBI Career Path Whitepaper, a game-changing guide with international recommendations for advancing the careers of Imaging Scientists in core facilities worldwide.
Figure 1: What is the Role of Imaging Scientists? The article highlights the diverse range of tasks undertaken by Imaging Scientists within core facilities.
This whitepaper is the culmination of the collaborative efforts of the GBI Career Development for Imaging Core Facility Staff working group, with A*STAR Research Support Center Director Graham Wright, Kerry Thompson (National University of Ireland, Galway) and Yara Reis (GBI/EMBL) leading the initiative stemming from the GBI Exchange of Experience IV meeting in Singapore. The paper addresses the persistent challenges encountered by Imaging Scientists globally and draws on the collective experience of the bioimaging community to provide valuable recommendations.
Key topics covered include articulating the value of Imaging Scientists, recruitment and retention strategies, and supporting professional development. The whitepaper aims to empower Imaging Scientists globally, providing practical recommendations for various career stages and contexts, along with highlighting success stories.
The full article can be accessed here.
Share Your Challenges – Help Build a Landscape Map!
Together with GBI’s ongoing commitment to improvement, we invite the bioimaging community to share this paper and submit their TOP 5 challenges within their institutions, countries, or regions. GBI will continue to collect this valuable feedback to build a comprehensive landscape map of the main topics affecting the community.
Figure 2: Top 5 categories of challenges identified througha global survey, which prioritised the focus of this work: (1) MISMATCH between the classic academic career path and more service-oriented roles; (2) lack of understanding of the VALUE and impact of Imaging Scientists and core facilities; (3) lack of financial/sustainable strategy or insufficient FUNDING security; (4) insufficient dedicated TRAINING and professional development opportunities; and (5) challenges with recruiting and retaining TALENT and expertise. (242 submitted challenges, 66 individuals representing 25 countries)
Access all GBI’s Documents: https://globalbioimaging.org/documents
1Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) & SingaScope, Singapore 2Anatomy Imaging and Microscopy Facility, Anatomy, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Science, University of Galway, Ireland, 3Global Bioimaging, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), 4Euro-Bioimaging, ERIC, 5Waymaker Group
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Global BioImaging (GBI) is an international, open network of imaging infrastructures and communities, which was initiated in 2015 by Euro-BioImaging and partners in India and Australia with the mission to cooperate internationally and propose solutions to the challenges faced by the imaging community globally. Initially supported by a European “Horizon 2020” grant from the European Commission, since January 2020 GBI is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and now includes 13 partners and 59 countries around the globe: Advanced BioImaging Support (ABiS) in Japan,BioImaging North America (BINA), Canada BioImaging, Euro-BioImaging ERIC in Europe, the India BioImaging Consortium, Microscopy Australia, Latin America Bioimaging, the NationalImaging Facility (NIF) in Australia, National Laboratory for Advanced Microscopy (LNMA) in Mexico, South Africa BioImaging, SingaScope in Singapore, National Microscopy System in Argentina, and African BioImaging Consortium (ABIC).
