Get your custom public profile web address

When we first launched public profiles on Epernicus, we looked to implement a simple and egalitarian system for deciding on a user’s public profile web address.  I thought back to my first university network account username — your initials followed by a number!  Simple, right?  Limited typing!  Fair!

Well, the feedback has been clear…  While some of you appreciate the simplicity of the current scheme, others want some freedom of expression. In response, we’ve added the option of specifying a custom public profile web address.  This will work *in addition to* your originally assigned address, so no need to update old references.

Visit http://www.epernicus.com/account/public_profile to reserve your first pick today!

Oh, and my new profile address — http://www.epernicus.com/people/ezrafreedman

Video: Epernicus Talk

Mikhail and I frequently give talks on Epernicus to labs and departments.  In case you missed one of our presentations, you can watch the short video below.

Mikhail Defends

Mikhail (Epernicus co-founder) gave a fascinating and very well-attended talk today on genetically engineered sensors for non-invasive brain imaging for his thesis defense.  Now we’ll get his brain back on Epernicus!

Why should you join Epernicus if you’re on LinkedIn?

Recently, we received the following in an email:

“I am already on LinkedIn – which I find useful.  How is this site different?”

I really like LinkedIn as well as Facebook, and I find them incredibly helpful.  I’ve used LinkedIn to learn about business contacts and research potential hires.  And I spend more time than I’d like to admit on Facebook connecting with friends from all parts of my life (including long lost elementary school buddies). 

Mikhail and I started Epernicus because we realized that the social networks to which we belonged weren’t able to serve our needs as scientists.  The profiles didn’t capture what was important to scientists.  And equally as important, we couldn’t use these networks to help us find expertise in real world scientific networks. 

For example, I have hundreds of contacts on Facebook and LinkedIn.  But neither site can help me find a person in my department who has who expertise with dynamic light scattering or siRNA delivery.  This is why we built Epernicus.

Epernicus connects you automatically with your real world scientific network.  Your real world network is not just the people who you know directly – it’s also the people to whom you’re connected through your department, institution, and advisors (current and past).  This is one of your most valuable resources.  Some of these people you’ve never met before, but you share a kinship with them through your common affiliation.  When you register on Epernicus and enter your affiliations, you are automatically connected with this network.

Epernicus also captures people’s assets – the specific topics, materials, and methods in which they have expertise.  Assets give you a more detailed understanding of a scientist’s skill set, and they make searching on Epernicus a rich experience.

With Epernicus, I can now search quickly through my scientific networks for a specific topic or technique to find the people that I need.   It might be someone I know peripherally in my department, someone I’ve never met at my institution, or a former labmate.  It might also be someone I know (Epernicus can help you learn new things about people you see all the time!).

Locating expertise in your scientific network

When we’re not doing experiments at our bench or practicing in the clinic, we’re often looking for information: What’s the latest with adult stem cells? How do you identify phosphoproteins on a gel? What polymers swell when heated? To find answers, we often have to spend hours searching resources like Pubmed or Google. Occasionally, we get lucky and remember that someone we know has relevant expertise. Getting help from a colleague is often the fastest way to answer our question or solve our problem.

But why should finding a person who can help us be a matter of luck? We all have rich networks of scientific expertise comprising our current and former labmates and people in our departments and institutions. The average scientist’s network contains hundreds of years of research experience; and chances are that someone in your network has exactly the knowledge you need.

We built Epernicus to help you locate the right person in your network with the right expertise at the right time. And with our new and improved search, you can do so more easily than ever.

For example, if you’re looking for someone who could help you troubleshoot a DNA ligation, search for “DNA ligation” on Epernicus. We will show you everyone in your network (and in general) who lists ligations as an asset, has it mentioned in their publication abstracts or otherwise contains it in their profile. You can see how you’re connected and quickly and easily contact the right person. Because you’re part of the same lab, department or institution, they’ll be happy to help you out.

The Epernicus community was launched only recently, but you’d be surprised at the amount of knowledge it already contains. Try searching it next time you’re looking for help!

By the way: Your ability to find expertise in your network will grow as more of your colleagues join Epernicus. Invite them!

What makes you valuable to your scientific colleagues?

You might have noticed the growing number of scientists who have recently joined Epernicus. But did you know that another rapidly growing area of Epernicus is the assets our members have listed in their profiles? As of this writing, there are more than 850 different topics, methods and materials represented on our network.

Looking for someone who does whole-cell electrophysiology? Works on vibrio cholera? Uses BioBrick vectors? Cultres Sf21 cells? Runs experiments in a Franz diffusion chamber? Codes simulations in Python? They’re all here! And chances are they’re in your lab, department or institution.

A major goal of Epernicus is to make it easier for scientists to find help and give help to colleagues in their scientific networks. And your assets represent all the ways you can help the people you know. It’s expertise you’ve accumulated over several years of hard work, and it’s one of the things that makes you valuable in the world of science.

Of course, we know that it’s impossible to remember all your topics, methods and materials in one sitting, so here are a couple tips on adding assets to your Epernicus profile:

- When you sign on, think of the things you worked with in the last couple days and add them (you can add assets right at the bottom of your dashboard page).

- When you see an asset on someone else’s profile that should also be on yours, just click it, then click “Add” and it’ll be automatically added to your profile

On the flipside, when looking for someone with a certain expertise, just do a search. Any assets or publications that include your search term will show up. Click on them to find out to whom they belong. And look for an announcement in the near future about enhanced search, which will make searching your network even easier.

Why we added Clinical Training

Last week, we added a new section to our profiles for clinical training.  A number of Epernicus members are physician scientists, and we wanted their residency and fellowship training to be included on their profiles.  (Take a look at my profile and you’ll see I have included my residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital). 

Including clinical training also creates a valuable and much-needed network for residency and fellowship alumni.  Though many physicians feel a special kinship with others who trained at their institution, it’s not easy to stay connected to these colleagues.  I can recall a number of times in the last few years when it would have been really helpful to search through the Brigham and Women’s medicine alumni network to find people with specific research or clinical interests.  But there was no way for me to do this.  The new Epernicus clinical training alumni networks will help physician scientists preserve their connections and access to this valuable group of colleagues. 

Public Profiles

For years, we’ve heard from scientists that they don’t have their own web page or a way to be known on their own terms.  Some institutions provide researchers with a web page or with space for a short description on a department or lab page.  This is a start.  But in addition to rarely capturing all the information that’s relevant to a scientist’s persona, institutional pages are often challenging to customize or update with any real frequency.  More often than not, they are out of date.

The truth is, whether you’ve got a fancy web page or not, people will still look you up on Google.  Everyone from colleagues to recruiters to the scientist you just met at a conference will rely on the results of web searches to form their impression of you.  And as you may have already found out the hard way, your name can show up in some pretty surprising places on the web (some of which may make you cringe!).

We decided to do something about this by creating public profiles on Epernicus.  A public profile is a limited version of your Epernicus profile that can be viewed by the outside world if you choose.  Public profiles have their own web address (URL) which means that every member now has a professional website under his or her control.  For example, mine is http://www.epernicus.com/vhm.  You can preview your public profile and turn it on next time you log into Epernicus.  A number of you have already done this and are now posting your web address to personal web sites, blogs, Facebook, and more.  In the near future, we’ll make sure that profiles are indexed so people will find your activated public profile when they enter your name in Google or Yahoo!.

A special shout out goes to our Community Builders who gave us valuable feedback on the public profile before it was launched.  If you’ve got ideas on how to make Epernicus more useful for you or your community, we want to hear from you!

It Began at Carberry’s

It seems only a short time ago that Mikhail and I were hanging out at Carberry’s coffee shop in Cambridge and talking about creating an online home for scientists.  What would it be like, we thought, if you had a tool that helped you stay connected with current and former research colleagues?  A tool that would let you search through your scientific networks – your lab or research group, department, institution, past advisors networks, and more – and find the right people with the right expertise at the right time?   Well, if you’re like us, you can probably remember more than a few times in your research career when a tool like this would have come in handy.  With this in mind, we decided to create Epernicus. 

Epernicus is a professional networking platform that helps scientists stay connected to colleagues in their network and find the right person based on specific expertise and skills.  We’ve had a lot of fun building Epernicus and are excited to see how many of our scientific colleagues are joining the community.  Our goal, simply put, is to enhance your research experience.  We want to help you gain efficiencies while making the experience more enjoyable. 

We’ll keep you posted on new developments and features through our blog.  In the meantime, please send us your ideas or feedback.   We always enjoy hearing from you.