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STUDENT DEVELOPMENT GUIDE

The Extra 5% Can Make All the Difference

The Graduate Student Stages

Programs that will boost your personal and academic development, and help you take those skills where you want to go.

Student Development Guide Primer

Getting started with
the SDG.

Stanford Biosciences graduate students bring tremendous intellectual skills and ability. From there, we strive to push you to the next level—to develop the intellectual agility to analyze a problem from multiple perspectives and find solutions. It is a process at the heart of our multidisciplinary learning, problem solving, and collaboration. Indeed, these are skills you must develop as a graduate student to become a producer of knowledge and further the biosciences.

The work you invest in the lab is most important to your success, and you can maximize the impact of that time by taking advantage of courses, workshops, and other resources. These programs will teach you about writing for the public, presenting posters, time management, how to find cutting-edge scientific frontiers, interpersonal skills, and more. All of these skills play important roles as you develop your research and research skills, discover your passion, and pursue your career of choice.

To help you get the most out of your "Extra 5%," we have developed this Student Development Guide to highlight top programs in one place. If you have additional recommendations you would like to see featured here, contact us.

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Stanford Biosciences, 1967: First synthesis of biologically active DNA in test tube
Stanford Biosciences, 1970: Development of the florescence-activated cell sorter
Stanford Biosciences, 1971: Discovery of RNA priming of DNA synthesis
Stanford Biosciences, 1972: First construction of a recombinant DNA molecule containing DNA from two different species
Stanford Biosciences, 1973: First expression of a foreign gene implanted in bacteria by recombinant DNA methods
Stanford Biosciences, 1984: Isolation of a gene coding for part of the T-cell receptor, a key to the immune system's function
Stanford Biosciences, 1987: Purification of first stem cells
Stanford Biosciences, 1988: Discovery of the nuclear factor of activated T cells
Stanford Biosciences, 1990: Discovery of "Off-switch" for genetic reproduction in bacteria
Stanford Biosciences, 1995: Development of the microarray technology that allows researchers to see at once which genes of the thousands present in a cell are switched "on"
Stanford Biosciences, 2000: First use of gene expression profiling to distinguish cancer sub-types
Stanford Biosciences, 1990-2001: Participation in the Human Genome Project; Stanford is 9th worldwide in contributions to the genome
Stanford Biosciences, 2001: The first molecular snapshot published of the protein machinery responsible for transcription in yeast — RNA polymerase II — in action; this helped explain how cells express all the information the human genome
Stanford Biosciences, 2002: First use of RNAi to switch off genes in mice. RNAi offers an extremely selective method to "mute" a single gene amongst the thousands in the genome, helping provide precise information about the role of the gene
Stanford Biosciences, 2009: A researcher sequences his own genome for less than $50,000 and with a team of just two others
Stanford Biosciences, 2007: Array tomography invented
Stanford Biosciences, 2007: For the first time, researchers use a healthy person's complete genome sequence to predict his risk for dozens of diseases