In a couple of weeks I will be completing the first year of this new normal we are going through worldwide. It has been a tough year for reasons I would have never thought I could have found myself involved in both personally and professionally. On this palindromic day (12-02-2021) I have decided to reflect, leaving the details of my personal problems to psychotherapy sessions, on some adjustments I had to bring in my professional life. I have to say that working remotely, which has been defined as smart working in Italy, was not exactly something exotic for me due to the computational nature of my job. However, before the pandemic, this smart solution never lasted more than a couple of weeks or months during holidays or differently employed periods of my scientific career. So I ended up doing research with a laptop and its installed virtual machine, a book as mousepad and a tablet as an additional screen to read articles and analyze chemical structure of small molecules. As a computational chemist, I missed the big screens of the desktop computer at the office. Anyway, I really tried to maximize my productivity with the available resources working under the influence of music, coffee, tea and other less professional, still vital, passions. The views of the city of Pisa were stunning in both places I spent last year.

smart working in the room/office of the first apartment

I have never been a very social person, so I would not say that I missed face-to-face interactions with colleagues or long coffee breaks. I actually started drinking coffee again during the first lockdown due to one of those rediscovered personal life passions I will not write about in this semiprofessional post. However, the first month and a half of remote work was somehow a disaster, most probably because I was enjoying too much the sound of the music and having too many coffee/tea breaks 🙂 I was also enjoying cooking and reading again, and my job had become a sort of hobby. Then, after being reminded by my previous advisor that I was not meeting his expectations on the results I was getting, I realized that I needed to organize better the structure of my working days and, fortunately, some good results started appearing.

homemade pizza: my cooking skills are back 🙂

I kept getting those good results even when I moved to another place in June 2020. However, last July I already knew that I was going to find myself unemployed or differently employed again at the end of the year. In the midst of all the daily life changes the pandemic brought (from the grocery shopping with a face mask to the confined walks inside an apartment), for the first time in my career, I was asked to contribute as a guest editor of a Special Issue for Life (https://lnkd.in/eBnE2XY), an online scientific journal by MDPI, and to be the peer reviewer of four scientific articles by different journals. As if I did not have enough spare time to fill up my days, I accepted almost all invitations. I was even invited to be the reviewer of a grant application, but I had to decline because my terrestrial day was starting to look like that of a workaholic. Instead of experiencing the feeling of an imminent job loss, I was completely overloaded by work because in the last two months of my employment I had also to write up two articles. I managed to submit one of the manuscripts to the Biophysical Journal (BJ) the day before of the end of my contract. Unfortunately, it was rejected by both reviewers, but now we are following their comments and suggestions to make our resubmission to BJ stronger than before. Fortunately, the second manuscript will be submitted to Life for the Special Issue entitled “Advances in G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs) Medicinal Chemistry” and with a deadline of June 30, 2021 will allow me to look for a job as well. I promoted the Special Issue in my social and professional media accounts (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) to increase its visibility.

remote working in a different room/office with a stunning view

the room with a view in the months of June (top) and October (bottom)

Since the mid of last December I am unemployed or, as I keep writing in this post, differently employed because I have not stopped working from home. To be honest, I have been dedicating more time to the garden and the running of different house related errands so far. Anyway, I am planning to dive more into the scientific work in the next two weeks of this month because I am also attending the 65^th Biophysical Society (BPS) Annual Meeting with a poster presentation (595-Pos Analysis of L-DOPA and Droxidopa binding to Human Beta 2-Adrenergic Receptor #bps2021). Although, due to the pandemic, the meeting will be held virtually, I am still kind of excited about it because I have always found BPS Meetings (both Annual and Thematic ones) an excellent way to interact with other scientists. Since I will be attending a job fair associated with the meeting, it is also going to be a platform to look for a job.

Meanwhile I will keep relaxing doing gardening and, when the weather and the restrictions due to the pandemic will allow it, I will try to enjoy the beauties of Sardinia.

alocasia plant and other lovely plants in the garden

a view of Capitana beach in Quartu Sant’Elena overlooking the Gulf of Cagliari

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In Italy we have just started the second month of the pandemic COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. It has been really hard to go through every day of these first thirty days, but especially and unfortunately, the last two weeks have been full of sorrow for the many people who died because of the severe symptoms of this disease, which is now spread all over the country and the world. In the 21st century, it is almost unbelievable that we get to the point that we are forced to stay at home and to have lockdowns of cities, unless we live in South Korea, in order to try to contain the contagion. In modern times, it is unacceptable that medical doctors and nurses have to work without enough resources to protect themselves and to treat patients.

It has become very risky even going out for walks, which have been now limited to a radius of 200 meters around your home, or doing the grocery shopping. Italians have learned in the hardest and saddest way how to respect queues and rules. Unfortunately, some idiots (including me taking a trip to Florence on February 22, just one day after the first case) continued to live their lives as nothing had actually happened and this has led to the spread of the disease in other regions of Italy and even countries, where it could have been contained in a better way. Although this was the kind of response more or less every country adopted to deal with the pandemic, this does not make easier to process the whole situation. Instead of listening to scientists, such as virologists, or following China’s approach, which actually started producing results after three months of lockdown, our government has taken severe measures only after two weeks that the first infected patient showed up in a hospital in Lombardia.

I have started working from home since March 6 (the second picture is a view of the Church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri taken from the window of my office in Palazzo D’Ancona). I had the pleasure to be in a smart working situation before, but in such hard and sad times it can be very tough. However, the view from the window of the room I’m renting is very nice and I live in one of the nicest areas of Pisa (last three pictures). Anyway, I am trying to be as productive as I can, and more than ever I realize how lucky I am in doing a job that has always allowed me to work in every place with an internet connection. Ten days ago I did the grocery shopping in what it seemed like a surreal and fearful situation, which has now become the new normal for millions of Italians. After that sad and scary experience, due to my physical and mental health conditions, I have chosen to do my grocery shopping online. I have been watching on tv the daily sad report of cases, deaths and recovered, hoping that the mathematical models predicting the arrival of a contagion peak were going to be right. As of today, it seems highly unlikely that we will see that peak at the end of this month. I am trying to keep myself as informed as possible, even on the internet reading the news and keeping an eye on the coronavirus COVID-19 interactive map of the Johns Hopkins University. Moreover, I follow with heartfelt interest what it is also happening in The Netherlands, USA, Finland and UK, which are the countries I used to live and work before my return to Italy, through the news and friends.

Yesterday our prime minister concluded his speech saying that united we will make it. Putting aside any kind of political and social divisions, we will have to stay united as a nation, and a whole world, if we want to defeat this deadly pandemic. About two weeks ago I had my last walk in the beautiful park Le Piagge, which is located nearby where I live in Pisa, on a lovely sunny day. I am looking forward to going out for another long walk in a park. Everything will be alright. Andra’ tutto bene.

After all I can really say that I’ve been very lucky in my journey to find a new position. About ten days ago I’ve signed a new contract to work as a postdoctoral researcher (assegnista di ricerca in italian) again in the prestigious Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and on a very exciting project devoted to the study of prebiotic molecules involved in the development of life in space. It’s gonna be a challenging and learning experience at the same time because of my limited experience in Quantum Mechanical calculations to develop Molecular Mechanics force fields. Anyway, I’m going to be guided by and work with real experts in the group of Prof. Vincenzo Barone at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

Coming back to live and work in Tuscany in such a short period of time seems like a dream. I’m also very grateful to Prof. Giuseppe Brancato, my previous advisor, for making this possible and allowing me to continue the collaboration with his research group. So, I’ll also be able to keep performing Molecular Dynamics simulations of larger systems as well. Since I’ve spent these first few days of the new job mainly reading the literature, I’m really looking forward to working on both new small molecules and new larger proteins.

In my almost 20 year long professional career, I’d have thought that getting fired/worn out 4-5 times could have been enough, but of course I was completely wrong. So at the not so old but not so young either age of 47 I find myself in one of those unemployment segments of my life. Although I’ve been dealing with different health problems this year, it’s been still difficult to accept the current status for many reasons. However, I’ve kept working on the same project, which I was contributing to before going to the unemployment sector of my research activity, and other research projects as well. Somehow, I’d say that I’m on a sort of long partially paid holiday because I’m getting the support for unemployed researchers from the national institute for the retirement. Moreover, the fact that I’m posting this late announcement of my job loss on my semi-professional blog means that I’m still working on something, which is a good thing both for my brain and my spirit.

Apart from some serious financial problems, it hasn’t been such a bad situation either. I’ve filled my free time with long hours in the garden (not sure I could call gardening what I was actually doing), endless watching of youtube videos (those on gardening tips almost equalizing those from American late night tv shows) and Netflix series, and long reads of good books (ending up reading more than I used to do on a real holiday). I didn’t listen to as much music as I’d have liked to, but I still have two more months of unemployed status to catch up with that.

During these first four months I’ve been questioning my career goals, which have been kind of silent and made me think that it was probably the right time for a career change. Despite that, I’ve kept sending those job applications hoping to find an occupation soon. Anyway, I thought about sharing my knowledge of some beautiful places of my hometown Cagliari with tourists using my passion for cycling. At the beginning of this month I’ve become a local friend on guidemeright.com with a posted activity, https://www.guidemeright.com/en/things-to-do-in/cagliari/cagliari-vista-da-una-bicicletta-en, which hasn’t been very successful so far. So, at this stage, it couldn’t be considered a long term solution for buying groceries either. I’ve also joined the bike sharing community of Cagliari as I did in Pisa and I’m looking forward to using this eco-friendly service.

Wherever my job will take me, I’ll definitely keep lovely memories of Pisa, Siena, Florence and the wonderful Tuscany. Here are pictures of some beautiful places that have become familiar for about two years.

Palazzo della Carovana, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

view of the Leaning Tower of Pisa from Palazzo della Carovana

The Basilica of San Domenico in the lovely Siena

Pisa’s Cathedral and the famous Leaning Tower in Piazza dei Miracoli

Battistero di Pisa and on the background the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower

Santa Maria Novella’s church in Firenze

Neptune fountain in the wonderful Giardino di Boboli in Florence

Keith Haring’s mural Tuttomondo in Pisa

A lovely view of Siena’s Duomo from Piazza del Campo

One of those amazing sunset views from Ponte di Mezzo in Pisa

About two weeks ago I attended a very interesting Biophysical Society thematic meeting entitled Liposomes, Exosomes, and Virosomes: From Modeling Complex Membrane Processes to Medical Diagnostics and Drug Delivery held in the beautiful Monte Verita’ in Ascona, Switzerland.

It has been a vey intense and enriching professional experience, and being a guest blogger of the meeting for the Biophysical Society blog has also been challenging and demanding at the same time. Apart from the highly interesting talks from extremely talented and successful speakers, I also had the opportunity to socialize with new and old friends during breakfast, lunch, dinner and poster presentations times. Fortunately, we also had some time off to enjoy the wonderful lake views, to hike, and to visit Ascona, Locarno and other nearby amenities.

All the positive energy I collected during the week long meeting lasted long enough to give a decent talk, which was on the same research topic of the poster presented ten days before, at the 52nd Annual Chemistry Research Colloquium at John Innes Centre in Norwich. Unfortunately, it did not last too long because last Friday we got a rejection for a manuscript, completely based on the research of the talk, submitted to the Biophysical Journal at the beginning of this month.

Anyway, we received very good (still negative) comments by all the reviewers of the paper and we will, hopefully, find a way to improve the manuscript to make it publishable in another journal sooner or later…

 

As all the good things even the course on developing teaching skills had to come to an end.  It ended with an optional module entitled managing fieldwork across disciplines.  We were only two attending this optional module.  So the lecturer had the opportunity to let us talk and discuss a lot, although given my lack of experience in terms of fieldwork I didn’t have too much to say.

Anyway, it was interesting to learn how to handle different situations with my more experienced colleague.  The lecturer covered all the aspects of the risk assessment and all of the details that need to be considered before undertaking a field trip with students.  The role of the teaching assistant in the fieldwork was also clarified very well.  Although the responsibility is mainly on the academic leading the fieldwork and lecturing the students, the role of the teaching assistant(s) is also very important.  In few words some vivid students can do things that can make a field trip kind of entertaining.  So the academic needs the help of the teaching assistants to make sure that the students do not injure themselves more or less severely and to help the students in their learning experience by showing them equipments and by interacting with them in different ways.

It has been a very enlightening and enriching experience to attend the course on developing teaching skills at UEA.  Now I have to focus on the writing up of the 3,000 words essay we should submit next month.

This morning I attended another interesting optional module of the course on developing teaching skills at UEA.  The lecture was about teaching international students.  I knew the lecturer, Chris Bishop, from a previous lecture on academic writing I attended more than seven months ago.  Chris Bishop works as a Learning Enhancement Tutor at UEA, he is really an excellent lecturer and he has also worked in other countries.  More information about his past jobs and his current activities at UEA can be found in the following link: https://portal.uea.ac.uk/dos/learning-enhancement/about/chris-bishop

So he is extremely experienced in teaching international students.  I really enjoyed the way he introduced the topic with questions, a short video and a brief open discussion.  I appreciated a lot his jokes and anecdotes as well.  We initially discussed the definition of international students in the UK.  If I understood it correctly students coming from the EU are not considered international, while a student coming from any other country outside the UK and the EU has the status of international.

Then, we focused on how to deal with the different kind of problems international might face in an education system different from the one of their country origin, from the marking scheme to the language difficulties.  When we were working in groups, it was kind of enlightening to deal with different possible scenarios a lecturer might encounter when teaching international students.  In every group each of us had to pick a card with a probable case of a student generating and/or ending up in some sort of trouble.  Some cases involved lack of effort in assessments, more or less appropriate and expensive presents for lecturers, students complaining loudly about a low mark etc.  “My student”, who had written an unnecessary two pages long introduction before hitting the topic at page 3, reminds me of someone I know quite well 🙂

We also familiarised with some numbers regarding the international community at UEA (about 3,000 people, the majority of them coming from China) and the size of the personal vocabulary of a non native English speaker (from 3,500 to 5,000) and by a native English speaker (from 20,000 to 40,000).

Finally we could choose the topic to let the lecturer close his lively and extremely entertaining lecture; we democratically chose to get a better understanding of the use of the language with international students.  It was very formative because we received many suggestions on how to deal with different more or less complicated situations.  Then, an enlightening slide showed us how stress and anxiety are inversely correlated to the language skills.  The joke about the expression of feelings while finding a parking spot was really funny.

I honestly thought that it would have been easier teaching international students, and it turned out I had also other misconceptions.. so it looks like that teaching international students can be stressful sometimes.

The topic of today’s optional module was designing and leading seminars to promote learning.  Apart from missing the beginning of it because I misread the reminder, it was very enlightening to attend the lecture, to work in groups with other colleagues and to share with them my few dramatic experiences in the field of “delivering” seminars.  Initially we interacted in two large groups.  In each group one was playing the part of the tutor and another was working as the observer.  The tutor of the group I belonged to played a nice name game to get to know each member of the group.

Then, the importance of the seating arrangement of the students and the tutor was also discussed thanks to the help of a couple of videos. From the videos we were able to appreciate the importance of creating groups of students to stimulate not only the learning experience but also to help the development of social skills and other skills as well.

Other equally important aspects of the design of a seminar were also introduced by the lecturers: the adequate use of questions (not supposed to intimidate the students), the understanding of different levels of engagement (the silent engagement of students can be tolerated because they are listening and learning that way) and the importance of mixing groups of different nationalities.  Then, we were also provided with do’s and don’ts, such as avoiding some types of questions, and with some practical advices, such as preparing the seminar beforehand and knowing the number of students.

Anyway, it was very interesting for me to see how effective it can be a seminar in which groups of students, starting from smaller (just 2 students) to larger sizes, interact with each other and the tutor. The tutor is acting like a catalyst and he is supposed to speed up the learning process.  If I get to design a seminar in the future what I have learned today will be very helpful.

Today’s optional module of the course on developing teaching skills was entitled giving an effective lecture.  Victor Morgan, who is a senior lecturer in history at the University of East Anglia (UEA), gave a really entertaining and at the same time a very formative presentation.  He has been giving lectures since 1967, so his presentation skills were right where they were supposed to be, and he made some jokes that were really funny too.  Due to the interactive format of the presentation there was not so much interaction with other colleagues in single groups as in the previous modules; we worked as a whole group.

A brief introduction of ourselves in small groups, during which I learned a couple of new words, was followed by an open discussion led by the lecturer through the menu he prepared for us.  I took many notes and I should probably use them to write this post, but I will try to list the main points and some of the take home messages I can remember.  I have never heard before the term flipped lecture and I found it very appealing.  Moreover, Simon Lancaster, who is a senior lecturer in chemistry at the UEA, in collaboration with David Read, who is a principal teaching fellow in chemistry at the University of Southampton, have been using this concept of flipping teaching for some time.  If you are interested in it here is a link to some reading on this topic:

http://www.rsc.org/Education/EiC/issues/2013september/flipped-classroom-inverting-lectures.asp

now I am going to read more about flipped lectures and not only about that.  We were also introduced to the importance of making jokes (the impersonation of Marlon Brando from the Godfather performed by the lecturer wasn’t so bad..), having breaks (and I am not writing about the coffee/tea break we had, although it was important to have that one as well) and changing the tone of your voice to stress some key learning points (using repetitions and without shouting at the students).

Then, we were introduced to how to deal with some aspects regarding the students’ discipline and the process of writing a lecture using different styles and software packages.  Finally I learned that the UEA hour for a lecture has been fixed to 50 minutes, which makes the preparation of the structure and the rehearsal of the timings of the lecture very important.  However, those 50 minutes can be reduced even to 45, making a flipped teaching approach to work more effectively.

The following link is kind of interesting

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/11/excellent-graphic-feauring-10-powerful.html

This morning I attended an optional module of the course on developing teaching skills, which was dealing with the assessment of students’ learning.  I know, it does not sound so exciting… anyway, it was fascinating and informative not only to follow the pathway of this subject presented by the lecturer, but also to see how professionals with different backgrounds approach the assessment process in more or less similar ways.

My experience in this aspect of teaching is extremely limited.  I have to go back in time to my first job as a tutor of organic chemistry for biology students.  At some point one of my colleagues and me with the supervision of one of the professors of the course had to mark the written tests.  It turned out to be not an easy task.  I remember my colleague and the professor complaining benevolently about the high marks I was giving the students.  So today I have been finally introduced to the importance of developing a marking scheme to assess students’ learning and to other things as well.

When we were working in groups we had to read two essays on an environmental topic individually and, then, we had to discuss our marking.  The discussion was very vivid, not turning into an argument though, but everyone wanted to explain the reasons why the essay of student 1 was much better than the one written by student 2 or vice versa.  At the end we came to the conclusion that our group marking scheme needed some revision, and we did a relatively good job because the marks of our group were close to those assigned by professional teachers.

So today I started getting familiar with the UK academic grading scheme.  It was kind of fun having to do it in a relaxed environment.  In the real world it is most probably going to be much more complicated than just marking a couple of unknown students.