writing to potential employers etc

[Guest ikaj]

what would be the best way to start off an email or letter to someone in a high position who you are contacting to get employment or a volunteer position with? Do you say "Hi Dr. X"? "dear Dr. X"?

I want to sound smart so he/she will consider me!

I always feel intimidated to approach my profs or people in high positions with the fear of sounding dumb...something I need to overcome:(

[Guest Steve U of T]

I usually just write "Dr. X, ...", with no greeting. Yes, it's not very personal, but there are no worries about being informal. I've had a pretty good response rate. I don't think the greeting is terribly important though. The body of the letter is much more important, so make sure it is clear and concise. Also, if you're sending an email, the subject heading is probably the first thing they'll use to screen out applicants. Keep in mind that many people use spam filters, or delete messages based on the subject line without opening them, so make your subject line clear and to the point. Also, if possible, send your email from an institutional email address rather than a personal one. I always use my utoronto.ca when contacting profs/potential employers for the first time. I'm gonna try to snag myself a uhn.ca email address if I can.

[Guest tweep0]

Ha Ha,

 

I remember those old days when I used to ask questions like those (I still ask questions like those, but now they pertain to admissions interviews :b ).

 

I usually start with "Dear Dr. X". But the greeting should make no difference. I wouldn't say Hi unless you know them personally. Steve mentioned some good points. I would also like to add that the cover e-mail / cover letter is VERY important. I went to an interview at Toronto General Hospital with a pretty well known vascular surgeon for a summer research position and he told me that he receives hundreds of e-mails a day, but only selects a few interviews based solely on the cover letter (no CV, marks until after interview). Make sure you outline why you want to work with this person (i.e. you interests) and sell yourself (i am in X program with X course work, previous X experience, etc.) Make sure it flows logically and is not just a list of you stuff. Hope that helps. Good luck

 

Tweep

[Guest Steve U of T]

Tweep, you wouldn't happen to have interviewed with Dr. Lindsay, did you? There are only 4 vascular surgeons at TGH, only 2 of them have active research labs, and Dr. Rubin generally doesn't hire students. So by process of elimination, I think you may have interviewed with my research supervisor. He told me he's probably hiring 2 summer students in addition to myself this year.

[Guest tweep0]

Very good deductive skills... but unfortunately one generality turned out to be wrong. It was Dr. Rubin. He is planning on hiring two summer students this year. I have, however, accepted another position, but still at TGH. Would have been pretty funny if I was one of the two who would be working in the Lindsay lab .

 

Tweep

[Guest Steve U of T]

Wow, if Drs. Lindsay and Rubin are each hiring 2 students, the lab will be real crowded this summer (since they share lab space).

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey there Steve U of T,

 

Here's a host of questions for you... Given your wish to stick with Dr. L., is vascular surgery an area that you fancy taking a good look at while in medical school? As for the lab, what sorts of projects are being tackled at the moment? (I recall when we were originally coming up with my project, he was quite keen on implications of the diabetic foot and abdominal aortic aneurysms.) With respect to your summer project, do you fancy tackling something that is more basic science in nature, or clinical? Where is the lab, by the way--in a nook of the Elizabeth St. building, or another? Perhaps the building at the corner of College and University, which is now being transformed into MaRS? I've only ever been to Dr. L's office, which is up on one of the quieter floors of TGH. Plus, I've heard of plenty of TGH cardiothoracic surgeons mention their labs, but never could place where they were.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest codloghorn]

you ask a lot of question kirsteen :rollin

but, i also have one :lol : how did you know to ask these specific doctors if they have research positions available? and do you have to be in a certain year of university in order to work with them?

[Guest Noseworthy]

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[Guest blinknoodle]

I think Toronto has a listing of summer research jobs (I remember flipping through it as I waited for my MD interview). But most people here at McMaster (where I'm from) skim the websites and pubmed, and simply email all the profs that do research in their area of interest (and usually some more). This may be because we don't have any formal summer research job program. I think it is best to email a select few profs and spend the time on really customizing each email.

 

-blinknoodle

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there codloghorn,

 

I've been fortunate in that I've come to know a decent number of Toronto clinician/researchers through my MSc (Epidemiology) experiences. Regarding Dr. Lindsay, he was my mentor during my graduate course in Advanced Cardiovascular Research (Vascular Topics). For that course, we were required to write a paper in an area of mutual research interest. I asked Dr. L. if he would mind if my paper took the form of a potentially publishable meta analysis and he agreed. So in essence, he exercised his expertise in vascular surgery to give me research topic ideas, but the execution of the project and paper was my job.

 

I think it also helps to have some good advisors or pseudo-mentors in the field who can give you advice on who to contact if you wish to do certain types of research, etc. I have a couple and I've turned to them often for these sorts of pointers.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest Steve U of T]

It's probably best to go through organized summer research programs (like IMS at U of T or Samuel Lunenfeld at Mount Sinai hospital) because the professors involved with those have already expressed interest in hiring a student. These programs also provide funding, so the prof isn't expected to shell out your salary from their own pocket (i.e. their grants), and are therefore more likely to hire a student. Some profs don't like 1st year students or those with no previous research experience, while others preferentially hire such candidates. You won't really know until you apply, so you shouldn't let a lack of experience prevent you from applying for a summer research position.

 

Hi Kirsteen,

Vascular surgery is certainly something I am going to examine thoroughly in med school.

 

My research project involves studying the role of the complement cascade in multiple organ dysfunction syndrome following ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. There is a grad student in the lab studying the role of mast cells in cardiac dysfunction following hemorrhagic shock. We've got a pretty small lab, so that's about it. There's a tech that works here too, but he mainly provides a supporting role for our projects. I know Dr. Lindsay is involved in a lot of clinical research too, although I don't know too many details, being on the basic science side of things.

 

The Max Bell Research Center houses all the research labs at TGH, and is situated between the Eaton building and the construction site for MaRS. If you stand outside the Elizabeth St. entrance and look North, it's right there. Several of the cardiac surgeons actually share an animal OR with us, and their labs are pretty close too.

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hey there Steve U of T,

 

Thanks for your responses.

 

It's a small world re: vascular surgery. Like you, I find it to be an intriguing area. It certainly helps when you have had good experiences with clinicians in the field like Dr. L. I'm not sure if I'd mentioned it to you before, but I discovered an interesting, Kevin Bacon-esque connection in the vascular surgery arena. One of my MBA classmates' dads was a vascular surgeon for years at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal--Dr. Peter Blundell. Turns out that Dr. L. did at least part of his vascular surgery residency under Dr. Blundell and thus, knew him well.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest Ceds]

Hi Steve U of T,

 

Is your work mostly in vitro or in vivo? What type of model are you using? I'm curious because my graduate work involves a septic model of MODS.

 

Cedrin

[Guest Steve U of T]

Hi Ceds,

I work with an in vivo (rat) model. Pretty simple. Induce hemorrhagic shock (simulating rupture), then clamp the abdominal aorta (simulating lower torso ischemia that occurs during open RAAA repair), then remove clamp and reperfuse. It's a 2 hit ischemia-reperfusion event, which causes pretty severe MODS, comparable to the clinical condition.

[Guest Ceds]

That sounds very interesting! My research involves an in vivo murine model of sepsis-induced acute lung injury (my sueprvisor being a respirologist). Your model is intriguing as multiple hit models are becoming of interest to some of the other investigators in our research group. What are some of the endpoints that you use? Do you focus on the complement cascade in general or are you interested in events in a certain organ/system?

[Guest Steve U of T]

Multiple hit models certainly are becoming popular. A friend of mine was working on a hemorrhagic shock + ventilator-induced lung injury model over last summer, and I know of another group that works with a hemorrhagic shock + lps model, and I'm sure there are other types of multiple hit models.

 

We mainly look at vascular permeability (in intestine and lung), resuscitation fluid volume, myeloperoxidase activity (as an indicator of neutrophil sequestration in tissues), inflammatory gene and protein expression, and histology. The focus is generally on the intestine as a 'local' site of injury (because of the mesenteric iscemia) and the lungs as a 'remote' site (which undergo hemorrhagic shock, but not the 2nd ischemic event, yet still become injured). C5a receptor antagonists seem to reduce most signs of injury in all organs, so we think complement activation is a relatively important/early event in the initiation of MODS.

[Guest Ceds]

That sounds very interesting. We also look at MPO activity as a marker of neutrophil sequestration. We're interested in the iNOS/NO mediated effects of injury. My work is focusing on the potential role of iNOS/NO in the production/release of cytokines and chemokines.

 

Thanks a lot for your reply. It's always interesting to hear about the other research being done in a similar field.