Rally Winner Uses Funds to Educate Students

Interview with an IdeaConnection Problem Solver Harrys K.C. Jacob is a graduate student in a joint PhD program with the Institute of Bioinformatics in Bangalore and Manipal University, Manipal investigating cell signaling pathways in lung adenocarcinoma especially in resistant cell lines using high throughput quantitative proteomic strategies.

He has done part of his research training at the Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD in advanced quantitative proteomic and genomic strategies. He is completing his PhD and hopes to graduate by this September.

Harrys has also been involved in studies on understanding several cancers such as those of the esophagus and stomach as well an in understanding signaling pathways from a genomic and proteomic point of view in view of problem solving in better understanding aberrant signaling pathways in cancers.

I discovered IdeaConnection through an advertisement that I had seen online though I cannot remember the source. It was an interesting concept of sharing ideas and improving ideas by community based suggestions that interested me in applying for the IdeaRally®. I was quite cautious in applying as I was not sure of what to expect.

It turned out to be a wonderful experience and the most impressive feature was how an idea could evolve from something very simple to one with several add-on features by including suggestions and ideas from the scientific community.

Once I got an idea of how the rally session worked I informed my colleagues and friends in the scientific community, many of whom then registered with IdeaConnection.

The IdeaRally® is an excellent idea in itself!! The quality of submissions ranged from several interesting and scientifically virgin ideas to others that were a novel take on some already known concepts/ideas though the percentage of the former were much more. I did admire several ideas, however not being in the field of plant biology, I was disappointed in not being able to apply it but will be able to look into other Idea Rallies and better my scientific acumen and apply it to my own work when possible.

Having a facilitator was especially helpful in getting an idea/discussion back on track and primarily in moderating discussion and in keeping us away from reinventing the wheel when an idea has already been discussed and the current discussion was eventually leading to it.

It was a big surprise to be named the rally winner. This was the first time I have won such an award, and I checked it a couple of times to make sure it was real.

A big thumbs up from my side and I will definitely be on the lookout for more such rallies in the future.

It is my aim to focus on not only research but also to educate students who do not have any lack of high end research. In contributing to an IdeaRally®, I could get the following important output:
a. What the current status of a plan of action is from a global perspective.
b. How to better an idea and make it something feasible and realistic (and primarily keep me from building unachievable castles in the air).
c. And for me the most important outcome was to get to use the money as a source of funding to help fund personal efforts to educate students.