First year biology graduate students at MIT have a lounge, “the PIT” to help establish relationships among students that hold for a lifetime. While the pit excels in this regard, it only lasts for one year, and is only available to first year graduate students. We are trying to create a lounge, comparable to the PIT available to everyone in MIT biology. This space will be a place to wind down between experiments or at the end of the day, to escape from stress, or to encounter new faces outside of one’s lab and floor. It will serve as a place for future BioREFS events as well as a meeting place for MIT biologists (graduate students, post-docs, technicians, and faculty alike).
BioREFS projects – Lecture series
While science is presented as an objective and logical process, increasing attention is being drawn to the subjective experiences scientists’ daily lives entail. These issues include relationships (in lab and at home), failed projects, and moral quandaries, to name a few. While every scientist encounters these issues, they often do so privately, and there is no communal forum for their consideration or discussion. However, there are numerous people, many of them prominent biologists, with the qualifications and experience to enlighten the MIT biology community by facilitating such a conversation. We are in the process of creating a lecture series where renowned scientists are invited to speak about the human side of science.
Welcome!
Welcome to the BioREFS website!
The BioREFS (Resource for Easing Friction and Stress) are here to provide MIT’s biology community with an independent resource to support, encourage, diffuse, and mediate during times of stress.
Here you’ll be able to find information about what the BioREFS do, our calendar, how to contact us and much more.