PLMW’s core mission is to foster the development of the next generation of researchers in our community. In past years, PLMW has been organized as a one-day (in-person) workshop with invited talks on research topics and practical advice, with ad-hoc mentoring taking place throughout the day, especially during breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee breaks. Since the workshop will be occurring virtually this year, we have designed the program to focus more on small-group discussion and mentoring than on presentations. PLMW@SPLASH will consist of a mix of small-group mentoring sessions, where students can chat with mentors in small groups (organized by topics) and large-group “ask-me-anything” sessions.

Would you be willing to participate in PLMW as a mentor? This will entail: writing a brief (3-5 sentence) introduction describing yourself, your background, and what topics you would be interested in discussing with students. We will share these introductions with all of the students, and then will provide two opportunities for structured mentoring during SPLASH: on Sunday October 15th between 1500-1820 UTC and/or Monday October 16th between 0500-0820 UTC. During these times, all of the mentors and mentees will access the mentoring workshop on Clowdr and you will meet in small groups. Throughout the conference, we will also encourage mentors to make themselves available to students for conversation.

If you are interested in participating as a mentor, please complete this form. We will review all of the responses and select a diverse, balanced group of mentors to participate in the workshop. We will confirm the final set of mentors by October 30th (students will be applying through October 27th).