Hello and welcome back to the molpigs newsletter, hope y’all had a good time at DNA 27! Feel free to hang out at the molpigs Forum! We are also on twitter!

All the past podcasts and tutorial can be found here. You can also now find our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, Stitcher, TuneIn, and more (as well as manually in your favorite podcast client with our RSS feed)! Enjoy!

If you haven’t yet signed up to the newsletter for our sister project, the Molecular Programming Society, which is currently writing the grassroots textbook the Art of Molecular Programming, you’re missing out! Sign up now!

1. New event coming—Chat with Prof. Damien Woods!
2. Job Advertisements!
3. Seeking feedback!
4. Interested in helping out, sharing something interesting, or have an idea for something we could do?

1. New event coming—Chat with Prof. Damien Woods!

The “Meet the Molecular Programmer” podcast series focuses on casually chatting with professors about their academic and life experiences. We believe that their research can be easily accessed, but the experience behind and wisdom obtained during the path is more valuable and worth sharing to younger students. For our previous “Meet the Molecular Programmer” podcast series, please check it here.

We will get to know Prof. Damien Woods and chat with him on Sep. 30th. Please submit your questions!.

Damien Woods is at the Hamilton Institute, Maynooth University, Ireland, where his group conducts research on molecular computers: collections of carefully engineered DNA molecules that bump into each other and interact in a test tube to solve some computational problem. His focus is on both the underlying computational theory and implementation in the lab. The work is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and Science foundation Ireland (SFI).

He traveled for a bit, doing research in Inria (France, 2016-2018), a long stint at Caltech (USA, 2009-2016), as well as University of Seville (Spain) and University College Cork (Ireland). His PhD is from Maynooth University (Ireland).

He enjoys whiteboarding, pipetting, AFMing and other scientific sports.

2. Job Advertisement!

• Ian Torao Hoffecker has an open doctoral position in molecular programming and gene technology in his group at KTH. The position is ERC-funded, multidisciplinary and likely to involve a mixture of experimental and computational research, and the project is aimed at developing a microscopic imaging method using DNA as the information medium instead of light/optics. Applicants should have a Master’s degree or equivalent to be eligible. The detailed information is here.

• Damien Woods’ TAPDANCE resaerch group has open PhD, postdoc, senior postdoc and/or technician positions on DNA computing and DNA nanostructures. His group mixes computer science theory and wet-lab experiments, with a sprinkle of coding-based design thrown in for good measure. They are based at Maynooth University in Ireland on the outskirts of Dublin. Go on, you know you want to … join! Take a look at some blog posts to see what they do!

3. Seeking feedback

Hello molpigs subscribers, we are enthusiastic about improving, and making molpigs better! We’d really like to get your feedback on what you like and what we could be doing better. We’ve made a feedback survey, it’s a little long but feel free to only answer the questions you want to/can answer.

4. Interested in helping out, sharing something interesting, or have an idea for something we could do?

If so, please get in touch with us! Shoot us an email at contributions AT <this domain>, there are loads of ways you can get involved, and many we haven’t even thought of, but here’s a few ideas of what you could do:

• Be a guest on our podcast series: you can talk about anything vaguely related to the field, whether it’s comments on life as a student/researcher, some thoughts you’ve had about the field, some interesting work you want to share, or if you want to speak out about something like mental health, this is the perfect place to do it!
• Present a poster-podcast! This is something we’re very excited to try out, and we hope you feel the same: the idea is to try to explain something (it doesn’t have to be your own work) within a 20-30 minute podcast, with the challenge that all reference material needs to fit into a poster format.
• Want to advertise something on our newsletter? Perhaps you’ve just passed your thesis defense, or are looking for a team for a hackathon, or have a job posting to share, or have just written a blog post you think might be of interest; whatever the case we’d love to help you share the good news!
• We’re also open to more conventional seminar-esque things like talks or journal clubs.

We’re looking forward to getting to hear from you, and getting to know you better!