Joseph F. Clark, Ph.D.

I was privileged enough to be asked to Ritsumeikan University  Shiga, Japan as an invited lecturer asked to give a series of lectures during their concentrated summer program. The theme of the lecture program was “brain pathologies and therapies.” Yes that is a broad topic, but they wanted personal expert presentations focusing on those areas [...]

What makes a good teacher versus a good scientist: Can one be both? An overwhelming majority of my work involves doing research. I do some “teaching” or more correctly mentoring of graduate and medical students. Unfortunately however, for the past ten years I have done almost no didactic teaching. Formerly, teaching was a regular part [...]

A grant proposal is a work of fiction, in literary terms, because it talks about stuff that has not happened.

Short Sighted Stroke Studies. Excuse the alliteration in the title but it sums up my sentiments. I recently attended the American Heart Associations’ International Conference on Stroke and am sadly disappointed. The reason is because it seems that everything is geared to very short term immediate returns and little investment in the future. Please note, [...]

I write and submit about eight grant applications per year to get the funding in need to keep the lab running. Ten years ago I could get two grants per year or about 25% of my grant applications would be funded. Now however, I am lucky to get one grant every two years. So my [...]

There are two types (maybe three) of difficult classes: Classes with a lot of material making the class difficulty due to the volume, Classes with difficult concepts and the third is when these two factors are combined. Anatomy is an example of a difficult class because of the sheer volume of material that needs to [...]

There is an old saying that those who can do; those who can’t teach. While I’m not too sure about that, there is an interesting paradigm in higher education. That is the highest level scientists in the USA tend to be successful scientists and researchers by spending time doing research, writing grants and papers. The [...]

Can someone please tell me what type of job is there that can never be outsourced, but is present in every country in the world? What is the profession where the whole world is united in one language and one goal? When can you be paid to travel to some of the most beautiful places [...]