What is BioCrowd?
BioCrowd is a social network designed exclusively for bioscience professionals. It was started by Clifford S. Mintz and Vincent Racaniello, two longtime bioscientists, who recognized a need for junior and senior scientists to network with one another and other bioscience professionals to realize and achieve professional or career goals.
By combining the flexibility of social networks like Facebook and MySpace and the business connectivity of LinkedIn, we hope to create a community that fosters the growth and professional development of individuals working in the bioscience field.
Contact us with comments (info@biocrowd.com).
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BioCrowd’s Founders
Clifford S. Mintz, Ph.D., dreamed of being a microbiologist as a child and realized that dream in 1981 after receiving his Ph.D. in Bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After a two year postdoctoral stint at the University of Health Sciences in Portland, Oregon, Cliff did a second postdoctoral fellowship from 1984-1987 in the Department of Microbiology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons in New York City. During this time, Cliff reconnected with his old undergraduate pal Vincent Racaniello, a BioCrowd founder, who had just become an Assistant Professor in the Department.
Cliff is currently President of BioInsights, Inc, a company that specializes in bioscience training and career development. He also is an adjunct Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Georgetown University Medical School and a Director of the Fundamentals of Biotechnology training program offered by the New York Center for Biotechnology where he teaches graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and industry professionals about the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.
Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D., (Wikipedia entry) has been studying viruses since 1975, when he entered the Ph.D. program in Biomedical Sciences at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York. His thesis research, in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Palese, was focussed on influenza viruses. In 1979 he joined the laboratory of Dr. David Baltimore at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow. There he used recombinant DNA technology to produce the first infectious DNA copy of an animal RNA virus, an accomplishment that revolutionized modern virology. In 1982 he joined the faculty in the Department of Microbiology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons in New York City. There he established a laboratory to study viruses, and to train other scientists to become virologists. Over the years Dr. Racaniello’s group has studied a variety of viruses including poliovirus, echovirus, enterovirus 70, rhinovirus, and hepatitis C virus. He is the author or many scientific articles and reviews, and one of four authors of the well-respected textbook Principles of Animal Virology (ASM Press). His virology weblog and podcast This Week in VIrology bring the teaching of virology to a broad audience.