As we have come to know many brilliant young Italians in the Washington, DC metropolitan area working at NIH, NASA, NIST or one of the local universities, we have come to realize some of the difficulties they have faced in their careers.

To air these issues, the March ICS social meeting will host a panel discussion featuring some of these young scientists who will tell us about their experiences in order to help us explore these issues. The panel presentation part of the meeting will start at 2:30 PM at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center (BCC-RSC), 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, MD 20814 which is across Wisconsin Ave. from La Madeleine restaurant.

Here are the panelists:

Dr. Francesco Tombesi: his main research interests are in high-energy extragalactic astrophysics, particularly in the X-ray study of the extreme phenomena related to accreting supermassive black holes at the center of active galaxies and the influence of black hole winds/jets on galaxy evolution. Dr. Tombesi is a member of the science teams of the upcoming large X-ray observatories ASTRO-H (launch date February 2016) and Athena (launch date in 2028). Dr. Alberto Ceccon: has skills and expertise in Nanotechnology, Spectroscopy, Organic Chemistry, Protein Structure, Lipids, Proteins, Fatty Acids, NMR Spectroscopy, and Phospholipids. Currently he is a post-doc at the National Institutes of Health · National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) working in Marius G. Clore’s group.

Dr. Erica Bresciani: is a researcher in the Oncogenesis and Development Section in NHGRI, winner of the Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE) and the Stem Cells in Development and Disease and is currently a post-doc at the National Institutes of Health. We want to thank board member Chiara Gastaldi for her work in organizing this panel.

Please join us for an interesting discussion, and for those of you who are young scientists in the area, please come prepared with your own comments and ideas.