The Synaptic Leap

Thanks to the lovely spam bots, we had to activate our captcha module recently for new posts. Sadly most people (including me) couldn't read the characters, so we switched it off. While we work out what to do next, posts will temporarily be approved the old way. Hopefully the delay to posts being published should be minimal.

In the U.S. we just celebrated Thanksgiving. It's a day we spend with family, eat too much (what's new?), and reflect on all the things we're thankful for. I have a lot to be thankful for. I have a wonderful family, we're generally healthy, and I've been relatively successful in my career in software.

A little more than a year ago, while feeling fortunate and thankful, I was reflecting on what I could do to give back to the world. I thought about it for quite a while, asking myself, with my experience with corporate portals (I was the R&D leader at PeopleSoft for their portal application), how could I best leverage my skills to give something back to the world. Founding The Synaptic Leap was and still is my answer.

It has become a calling for me. I believe passionately that this should be done; I know emphatically that it is technically possible. The question is simply a cultural one. Are biomedical scientists willing to do it? I think so. I believe in the human race. I believe that most of us will give a bit if we think it will make a difference. I hope, that providing The Synaptic Leap, we're giving you a place to connect with other scientists, a place to check your egos at the door and give your ideas freely, and a place to encourage and nurture the ideas of others. I hope we're giving you the perfect place to leverage your talents to give back to the world.

Sample ideas: 

• Volunteer. Help with an existing project.
• Take a project you're writing a grant for and make some of it open source. Granting agencies are increasingly favoring this.