unfoldscience

Preview of the new resume

I am always looking for new exciting job opportunities. My former resume was a clean scientific resume in its form and layout. I had made it using LaTeX and it helped me find my two latest positions as a researcher. However, as a classic resume, it was as boring as the documents I usually disparage, so I decided to listen to my own advice: make the look support the content.

Its content was pretty stable and up-to-date, so I knew I wouldn’t have to change that much. I decided to focus on its appearance, hence why I chose to make the new resume with Scribus, my favourite desktop publishing software.

A dual-skill profile

I have a peculiar profile. On the one hand, I have had a high-level scientific training in engineering, physics & micro-electronics. I graduated from a top French Grande école and I got a master’s degree in nanotechnologies and nanosciences. I completed my Ph.D in the field of microsystems for life sciences and lab-on-chips. All my positions have been at the crossroads of technology, biology and chemistry (see my article about interdisciplinarity).

On the other hand, I have been working as a communications & marketing volunteer for the Wikimedia Foundation for about two years and a half now. I have answered the press, supported the Foundation’s Head of communications and created institutional documents. I have also co-managed the customer service of the Foundation, recruited new volunteers and recently started a PR material cleanup as the first step before a complete revamp of our PR / marketing material.

A consistent layout and look

I wanted my resume to really show these two sides of my profile. After much thought and many attempts, I came up with a nice two-column design that uses my favourite color scheme (the same as for the new logo of unfoldscience). Each column is dedicated to one side of my experiences and training and leads naturally to the job opportunities I am looking for now.

Interested?

Are you interested in my profile? Contact me to discuss your projects!

Links

• Download the high-quality PDF resume (PDF, 670 KB)

Preview of the poster

In January I attended the Biodevices conference in Funchal, Madeira. Biodevices is short for International conference on biomedical electronics and devices. I presented a poster there entitled Thermoresponsive polymer-based microdevice for nano-liquid chromatography. We could easily have submitted a talk, but my advisors thought otherwise.

Anyway, I reused the design I made with Scribus for MicroTAS 2007 and I came up with a nice poster that I am now sharing with you. Some PDF viewers may have some trouble displaying this file, because it uses transparency and layers. I recommend to use the latest version of Adobe Reader.

As usual, the whole poster (except the top logos & header) is released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license, which means you are free to use it, modify it, redistribute it for any purpose as long as you appropriately attribute it to me, and that you distribute any derivative works under the same license.

Links

• Download the high-resolution PDF file (PDF, 4.7 MB)
• Heavy source files available on simple request.

I recently attended the MicroTAS conference in Paris, France. MicroTAS (also known as “µTAS”) is short for International conference on biomedical electronics and devices. I presented a poster there entitled Electrokinetic mixers based on stimuli-responding surfaces. I was also the official photographer for the conference, I will post a few pictures later.

Tools

Most (if not all) of my colleagues use PowerPoint to make their posters. Besides the fact that it is a proprietary and expensive software, it also remains a presentation program suited for, well, presentations. A poster is not a presentation, and there are more suited tools than presentation programs, such as desktop publishing programs.

I have been using an open source desktop publishing software called Scribus, for some time now and I just love it. Scribus supports layered elements, has an awesome color management system and offers a PDF export feature of outstanding quality; it even supported PDF/X-3 export before any other (proprietary) software.

The Great Wave

Posters sessions are usually boring as hell. The presenters often forget that researchers who attend a conference have very little time to devote to the posters. I decided to find an original design to attract visitors who would then learn about my research & results. My poster was about a new way to generate waves in microchannels using polymer-based mixers. I looked up in the “Waves” category of Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, and I stumbled upon this old Japanese painting called The Great Wave off Kanagawa. I found a high-resolution, high-quality copy that I used as background image for my A0 poster.

Copy of The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Preview of the poster

Outcome: Look matters

Needless to say, my poster got much more attention than its neighbours. Asian people were particularly excited about it, and they represented a large part of the audience. You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, says the English idiom. It is also true for scientific communication: you can catch more attention from researchers with original, attractive documents than with boring, poorly-designed ones.

And now it is yours

The high-resolution PDF version of the poster is available for download below. Some PDF viewers may have some trouble displaying this file, because it uses transparency and layers. I recommend to use the latest version of Adobe Reader.

As usual, the whole poster (except the top logos & header) is released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license, which means you are free to use it, modify it, redistribute it for any purpose as long as you appropriately attribute it to me, and that you distribute any derivative works under the same license.

Links

• Download the high-resolution PDF file (PDF, 4.4 MB)
• Heavy source files available on simple request.