Looking back on last year’s 2020 Year in Review, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come. The Ronin Institute is really hitting its stride. We know more about who we are, what we want to be, and what “re-inventing academia” means to us: creating a place where all scholars who seek Truth with Empathy …
By Ronin Research Scholar Candace Gossen See the first Tabor Tree Project post. “NASA’s citizen science projects are collaborations between scientists and interested members of the public. Through these collaborations, volunteers (known as citizen scientists) have helped make thousands of important scientific discoveries.” — NASA In January 2021, using the GLOBE Observer app, the Mt. …
Read more “Citizen Science Tabor Tree Project: Field Report No. 2”
By Ronin Research Scholar Rami Saydjari I recently joined the Ronin Institute. Although I am a newcomer to the organization, I wager I am among the group’s older members. I am a physician, and in my early years, I focused on cancer research in a traditional academic university environment (grants, politics, publish or perish, etc.) …
Read more “A newcomer’s perspective on joining the Ronin Institute”
By Ronin Research Scholar Matthew Bentley Musicians and programmers are fickle breeds, and more commonly separate – but there is a third category, the musician-programmer, of which I count myself a member. Programming has been in my life since I was 8, and music since I was 4. I am equally well-versed in both, having …
Read more “The NZ Game Developer’s Conference 2021 – a write-up”
By Ronin Research Scholar Amy Teffer The original version of this article first appeared on Dr. Teffer’s website. I am an early career scientist. I am also a mother and a wife. And I have chronic anxiety, tension-type and neuropathic migraine headaches, and recurrent major depressive disorders. My depression and anxiety went undiagnosed for decades …
Read more “Mental health confessions of an early career scientist”
Scholarship Values Summit 2021Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 The context for scholarship has changed. The cultural norms and incentives for scholarship today (e.g. ‘publish or perish’) were established during a now-outdated context for traditional academia (see Lancaster et al 2018). Such framing and assumptions no longer work in today’s mainstream academia, let …
What you need to know and how you can help By Ronin Institute Research Scholar Jeni Hunniecutt Veterans Day in the United States this year arrives under the shadow of the end of our war in Afghanistan. The end of war calls for a time of reflection, and as millions of military Service Members and …
Read more “The veteran community is hurting this Veterans Day”
By Ronin Institute Research Scholar Laure Haak The original version of this post first appeared in An Idea on Medium Let’s drive innovation by re-envisioning postdoctoral research as a fixed term “Tour of Duty”, with embedded offboarding, alumni services, and access to “Veteran’s benefits” for all who participate. Postdoctoral researchers are a critical component of …
Read more “Groundhog Day: the plight of postdoctoral researchers”
By Ronin Institute Research Scholar Candace Gossen Beginning in the Fall of 2020, we began the Citizen Science Project called the “Tabor Tree Project” in Portland, Oregon. An old growth forest nestled upon a dormant volcano in the SE of the city, this group of Citizen Scientists identified a diversity of species and ages of …
Read more “Citizen Science Tabor Tree Project: Upcoming Field Training”
By Ronin Research Scholar John LaRocco Technology is eventually legislated by those unfamiliar with it. This is often used to protect the status quo, at the price of social openness. Relevant examples include cryptography, drones, martial arts gear, and even general-purpose computing. As political pressure builds to support censorship around the world, this will increasingly …
