 Today we are very pleased to present ECPN's ninth webinar, Pathways into Conservation Science. ECPN is happy to have three conservation scientists speak with us today. Dr. Tom Lerner, Dr. Gregory Dale Smith, and Dr. Robin Hodgkins. Before we continue, I would like to familiarize you with GoToWebinar, the program we are using to facilitate this webinar. The view window where you see our title slide right now can be resized by clicking and dragging the lower right corner. The control panel is where you as an attendee can take some control of your screen. You may find that with inactivity the control panel automatically minimizes. If you would like to keep it open during the entire presentation, under the tab view there is an auto hide and control panel option that can be turned off by unselected. All of you listening out there are muted. Now I would like to take a moment before we begin to share some information about ECPN. ECPN is a network within AIC that is dedicated to supporting conservation professionals as they move through the first stages of their careers. We do this by organizing a variety of initiatives and programs. Please visit ECPN's page on AIC's website where you will find numerous resources for emerging conservators including links to previous blog posts and webinars as well as a link to our Facebook page where an active community of emerging conservators post questions and advice and offer support. We encourage conservators of all levels to join in on a conversation. You can also follow ECPN's activities on AIC's blog, Conservators Converse. Recent posts offer insight into achieving AIC's professional associate status and getting involved with the FAIC oral history project. ECPN has been busy developing our wiki page within the AIC wiki education and training section. Here you will find numerous resources that have been created over the years. To stay informed about ECPN's activities, consider subscribing to our periodic e-blasts which you can do by logging on to the AIC website, clicking on manager profile, and selecting ECPN. Through our popular webinar series, ECPN strives to provide ongoing programming that responds to the needs of emerging professionals at different stages of their early careers, although we believe that the webinar series can be beneficial to all conservators. Recordings of our webinars may be accessed on AIC's YouTube channel. A recording of today's program will be posted there soon. During today's program, the invited speakers will touch on the history of education and training and conservation science in the current pathways into the field. ECPN hopes that the webinar will provide guidance to individuals considering careers in conservation science, current students and post-doctorate fellows entering the field, as well as informed emerging conservators. The format of this webinar is Q&A style. I will be asking our speakers questions that we have received from our audience. If there are questions that we do not answer, we may be able to address them later in a blog post. To begin the program, each of our speakers will briefly describe their own education and training experience. So, Tom Lerner, would you like to begin? Sure. Thanks, Elif. And I will try and keep this very brief because it can easily end up as a very long story. But I read chemistry as a bachelor's degree back in England. And it was a four-year course. I then ended up going straight into the conservation of easel paintings course in the Courtauld. And there's probably not time right now to explain how that jump happened, but it was quite a complicated one and not an obvious one at all. But I then ended up doing the three-year deployment at the Courtauld Institute on Paintings Conservation. And I was very intent on becoming a practicing conservator. But with my science background, the conservation science aspect was always a very strong part of my training. I then took an internship at the National Gallery of Art in D.C., where in fact all three of the panellists of the day have actually been through or are currently at. But I had this amazing opportunity to do a split internship half in Paintings Conservation and half in Scientific Research. At the end of that, I moved to the Tate in London. Initially, it was a four-year fellowship, amazing actually, a four-year fellowship, set up between the Tate and Birkbeck College, part of the University of London, to do a PhD in analytical chemistry. So I got my PhD that way at the Tate, and then remained at the Tate after then. So, Sharon, would you like to pick up from there, Tom? Please do, Greg. So out of high school, my interest, or at least at the time I thought my interest, was in nuclear engineering. So I went to a small school in Kentucky Center College with the expectation of doing a 2-3 engineering program. But being a small private liberal arts school, I took general education requirements courses. In my freshman year, I ended up in a anthropology, cultural anthropology course. And from that point on, I never looked back. I loved it and ended up doing a double major in chemistry and archeology and pursued those kind of independently. But for graduate school, I chose to go to a program at Duke University because they had a lot of interdisciplinary programs. And I knew that they had two excavations going on in the Galilee region of Israel. So I was lucky enough to find a PhD research group in physical analytical chemistry that would allow me to more or less spend the nine months of the academic year doing my PhD research and a very mainstream topic of chemistry, but then spend my summers working as a field chemist and area supervisor for those excavations. So at that point, I started realizing that I had perhaps married the two interests in science and culture into a career. I wrapped up my PhD and got a Marshall Fellowship to go to University College London where I worked with Robin Clark in ramen microscopy of pigments. And most of that work was done at the British Library and at the Victorian Albert Museum. From there, I ended up at a synchotron facility out on Long Island doing infrared microscopy on the beam line. Then got back into cultural heritage, transitioning from ancient things to the most modern artist materials working as part of the modern paints project that Tom was also a part of when he was at Tate and in collaboration with the Getty as well. From there, I ended up with my first kind of real job as a professor, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Conservation Science at the Graduate Training Program at Buffalo. And after five years, the opportunity at the Indianapolis Museum of Art became available. And so I came here to set up their first science lab and to outfit and operate that. Robin? So I started off with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with an art and art history minor at a small liberal arts college. And while I was there, found out about conservation as a way to marry chemistry and art together and was able to get a taste of conservation science through a summer research program in the chemistry department that ended up letting me work with a private conservator. And from there, I decided though to go straight for organic chemistry for grads. I'm thinking beyond what type of job options I might want in the future. And in the end, decided to go with UCLA. And the same year I started, the UCLA Getty Conservation Program was starting up. And I ended up connecting with the professors in that program, which kind of guided my research. And I found a chemistry professor that will let me do research related to conservation. And because of that, I was able to connect with the Getty Conservation Institute and meet the scientists there. And we can talk more about that later. But I also then was able to do a small internship with Bronwyn Ormsby at Tate. And after graduating from UCLA, I moved over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a one-year fellowship. And then jumped down to DC, working at the Smithsonian, specifically at the National Museum of the American Indian, joint with the Museum Conservation Institute. And then now I'm currently on a three-year fellowship at National Gallery of Art. Great. So how does the role of a conservation scientist differ from that of a conservator? And how is the training different? Well, shall I just jump in on this one, Elise? I suspect most of the audience understands the difference between a conservation scientist and a conservator. Obviously, conservators do the hands-on work. And typically, the scientists figure out research and provide sort of an analytical aspect to the work. But I guess this question is getting out a little bit that there are indeed many conservators who also have a strong interest in technical study. And it's, I think, becoming more and more common to see conservators take on more of that technical role. The obvious ones would be basic microscopy and cross-sections and maybe even some XRF. But really, so I guess that the distinction is becoming far less clear. The training is how the training is different is actually quite an interesting and difficult question to answer because the training for a conservator is fairly established and everybody will know the various roots and probably will be aware of different ways this happens in different countries. Sort of typical types of training would be doing, as I did, three years on a single discipline in paintings conservation at the Courtauld, whereas in the U.S. it's far more common, I think, if not in all the programs to do a much more general training of many, many different types of artwork and disciplines in the first year and the specialty comes a bit later. But the training of a conservation scientist, I guess, is the key of this discussion today and what's interesting about it is that there really isn't an established pathway into the profession we're calling conservation science. And even though that has obvious frustrations and difficulties for people trying to plan a way into the profession, I've always felt in a funny way it actually adds a lot of strength to the profession, the idea that people come into this field from a variety of different roots. So not so good for the individual trying to plan their way in perhaps, but actually in a way just gives a bit more variety. As I'm sure we'll get on to later in the discussion, conservation science can mean many, many things from an individual analytical technique that someone has a huge expertise in to a much more broader understanding of the issues. And I think those different roles are really only fed properly if we have people coming from different roots. So I'll leave it there. I mean, does Greg or Robin have anything to add to that? I think that summarizes it really well. And maybe we'll get into some of the more details about the different roots into conservation science just a bit later. And in fact, the next question I know you're going to ask at least because I've got the crib sheet here. It'll go into some of that. Is it possible for conservators to segue into conservation science? Yes. Is it a case for professionals who are in between conservation practice and conservation science? Yeah, okay. It is absolutely possible for conservators to segue into conservation science. I'm someone that did that and there are many, many people in the field who've done that. I think in most cases the conservator going into conservation science has had a scientific training at a bachelor's degree level before they go into conservation training. Perhaps not always, but I think that would be the most obvious scenario. And I think for conservators going through the training programs with a science background, conservation science is an obvious option for the sort of work to go into. The second part of your question is something I get asked the whole time and it's actually something that this idea, is there a place for professionals who are in between conservation practice and conservation science? It's a place where I am and I've always been and it can sometimes be quite unsettling because you feel you're not quite a proper scientist and not quite a proper conservator. You're kind of a bit of both. But in fact, when you start to really think about what's needed for the proper collaboration between conservators and scientists, the role that someone with my background plays becomes quite important. The idea of being able to kind of translate almost the kind of request from a conservator or the understanding of the issues the conservator might need to have addressed through research and actually making that research meaningful and understandable and accessible to the conservator. I'm sure most people listening to this have had some kind of frustration with that inability to sometimes understand what science is doing or for the scientist to get frustrated that conservators don't seem to be interested in the right kind of question. So I absolutely think there's a role, a place of professionals in the middle, but it can't obviously be the only way people come into this profession. It does need that full spectrum of background and experience. Great. And I'm going to skip around some of these questions a little bit. Are you seeing particular trends now that differ from those available to you when you are pursuing a career in conservation science? Is there a particular training pathway that you recommend? So I think I'm going to jump in on this one. So even a little over 10 years ago, when I was looking for a graduate program, conservation science wasn't so highly publicized or well-known, I think, as it is today. And I was interested in trying to do research related to conservation, and there really wasn't an easy way to find professors. I tried doing some searching, and then the end decided that going for organic chemistry would be a good foundation to understand some of the issues that happen in art materials. And I think as far as ways to get in, I know there are a handful of groups now in the U.S. and in Europe where you can definitely get a Ph.D. with relation to conservation issues and studying art materials. And also there are a lot more post-doc opportunities now, even from six years ago when I started looking. So that's nice to see that there are a couple more options out there. And you also definitely need a Ph.D. for conservation science. All positions after graduate school require now a Ph.D., so you definitely have to get that. Yeah, I would say, I would second that, that certainly the amount of exposure for both conservation and conservation science is much, much greater than it was certainly when I was feeling my way into the career. Certainly with social media explosion, we just all recently, you know, Harvard had their Forbes pigment collection just ceded a little story to the local news, and now it's sort of viral. And everybody's hearing about these remarkable pigments and the way they're preserved and stored at places that you would have never seen that back in 1995 or so. Partly that's because of the development of social media, also the expansion of our field in the past decade. There are a lot more museums that have labs. There are a lot more people practicing conservation science or cultural heritage chemistry. There are far more academic programs, especially in Europe that provide a Ph.D., particularly in conservation science, and there are a lot more academic researchers in the United States who are collaborating with museums and doing work that is related to conservation science. So as you open up an issue of the Journal of Brahman Spectroscopy, you're going to always find two or three articles that are on cultural heritage. If you look in Jax or some of the other American Chemical Society journals, you'll begin seeing, whereas it may have been ever so often a cover story about scientists and museums. Now you start finding their research papers as part of the main body of the journal. Could I just jump in here and say one thing about the Ph.D. aspects that Robin mentioned? This is only coming from the viewpoint of someone that now hires in people, and we have a constant discussion here about whether to write a Ph.D. being required or just expected. I think the reason we sometimes just err on the side of caution and say a Ph.D. is expected or something is not to rule out perhaps slightly more senior figures who haven't felt the need to go to the Ph.D. route. But I think that people coming through the system now is completely expected, even though you may not see required written on every single job description. So I absolutely agree with the idea that it is the best route at some point to go through your Ph.D. And if not required, you can certainly guarantee that all of your competition for that position are going to have Ph.D. Right, exactly. Great. So how should someone choose a graduate program to prepare for a career in conservation science? Can you touch on some of the options available in North America and abroad? So I think I'm going to jump in on this one first since I guess I'm the most recent person looking for a graduate program. So other postdocs that I've met and other conservation scientists have specialties in a variety of fields. And like Tom said in the beginning, there really isn't just one way or one route to become a conservation scientist. And there's not one Ph.D. program that's really the specific way to go. But I know a lot of people have foundations and fundamental theories that are rooted in chemistry or materials. And some even have an optics or physics background, which can be helpful. And also have gained a lot of specialized instrumentation experience along the way. So and now that I'm on the job seeking end of things, I actually recommend looking for a program that is not directly or completely related to conservation science so that you can be marketable for other positions in the future. But I think also having that broader experience and really getting down to some of the fundamentals has really helped understand some conservation issues that I've come across beyond graduate school. But I think even if you are looking for things, looking for research groups that maybe they specialize in a special technique and they look at a variety of materials and maybe some of those materials might be a good way to go. But you also have to think about what you're comfortable with as far as the university size, the city, what type of standards the program has. And the other thing is obviously if you're interested in conservation science, I think finding a graduate program that's in a city that also has museums with scientists in it or already has collaborations with the local museums is a good way too so that you can connect with those museums and kind of learn about the field but don't necessarily have to devote your entire time to conservation in the beginning. Yeah, I'd say definitely one of the things that you want to focus on is choosing a graduate program that you're going to be able to get through and enjoy because it's going to be four or five years of your life and as Robin was saying there's so many aspects to conservation science the field is so broadly defined that you could pretty much land in any sort of physical or life science or applied science and receive training and experiences that are going to be directly applicable to working at a museum whether that's environmental chemistry or forensics or geometry and pomology, the optics, computer science, all of these different areas certainly in my lab we have a spectroscopist, a forensic scientist, a biochemist and a cell biologist so that's a pretty diverse range of experiences that are all brought to bear on the problems that the lab's addressing and that's one of the strengths that I think Tom was speaking about, at least on the American side where there's never been a direct route into conservation science, you get the opportunity to bring together all of these people with a wide range of training. In regards to chemistry, PhD programs, what specialties are well suited for careers in conservation science? I would say probably the same sort of thing, all of us come from different areas, you've got Robin who did organic chemistry I was a physical analytical chemist, Tom's probably more analytical and organic, any of those areas is going to have an application in the field and as I was mentioning even forensic science and environmental chemistry, all of those too are going to have useful experiences to bring to bear on the problems that we address in museums. And what's the best way to find principal investigators who are interested in conservation science research? That's a good question. So first off, listening to seminars like this and I would say speaking if you can connect with people in museums that know of other universities in the area that they work with and trying to find out who they are that way, but also just looking at journal articles, whether it's in the cultural heritage field or even in some of the ACS journals or other science journals and seeing what people are submitting papers or writing papers and studying cultural heritage. But you could also look at speaker lists from different cultural heritage conferences that you could try to get your hands on or also like the analytical conferences whether it's PICON or Eastern Analytical or the ICOMCC Scientific Research Working Group or the AIC Research and Technical Studies Group can give you sometimes a good starting place. In my experience I ended up in a program working for PI who was a senior faculty member so he wasn't under the sort of duress to publish and drive his research program which for me meant flexibility. This was a time when conservation science was not very widely known. He had never actually considered it or thought of it or heard of it but he was kind of a bon vivant and also involved in a lot of different things himself. He was an actor and obviously had also been bitten by the culture bug and so he thought it was great. It did require fundraising on my part so I had to seek out fellowships which would give me the flexibility to pursue the things that I was interested in in particular the archaeological field work. But once those financial constraints were lifted he was willing to go wherever the research took us. At that point at Duke there was no one who was focusing on cultural heritage and after being in that group he continued to work in that field after I graduated and left and now there are several faculty members there and several post-docs coming out of Duke who have sort of grown up in that area of cultural heritage chemistry now. What type of skill should students be gaining in graduate school to better prepare them for post-doctorate in permanent positions? I can start off on this one and I depend a little bit on whether we're talking about science, graduate school or conservation or graduate school. Maybe I'll answer both because I kind of have thoughts on both of those. But essentially if you are just a graduate school reading some kind of scientific degree really it's the bit that you're not doing that you should be doing to prepare better. So in fact some of the things that has been mentioned already by Robin mostly this idea of just seeking out experience and exposure to museum situations or if there are other type of conservation issues going on depending on where you are. Obviously in New York it's very easy if you're in the middle of nowhere it's perhaps a little bit more difficult. But again looking at this a little bit further forward from applying for positions of fellowships and internships even it's now getting pretty competitive in all those areas so especially the internship level at the Getty for example where you have high numbers of interns applying every single year for the graduate intern program and if we're seeing people come through the science graduation courses one of the things I look out for is how much exposure when Greg said you have to be bitten by the bug that has to come through. So even though there is a place for pure scientists to come into the field and do some research then move out again it's far more common for someone to enter the conservation science field with a desire to work in this area and then perhaps the other avenue in of people at conservation training programs interested in a scientific career in conservation science it's just the opposite. It's showing very much interest in different sorts of analytical techniques being prepared to research starting to give papers just getting yourself known. I think again if you're looking to hire people in if you see someone who's been through a conservation program but with a real interest in science or perhaps a bachelor's background in science I'd be asking fairly specific questions about what techniques you're using and why are you doing that and just to show that people have actually put a bit more thought into it other than just saying I'm interested in science. If I think about what I would encourage someone to develop during that four or five year PhD obviously the broad training and the experiences developing that insatiable curiosity that is what's going to sustain you in the field of research and experimental design which is what the PhD ought to be teaching you. I think one thing that we are particularly pressed to master in conservation science is the ability to write and communicate to a very diverse audience so I am often required to talk to hardcore scientists but also to talk to the museum audience so our lab is being put out in front more and more often where we're communicating directly with the public and so being able to you know regardless of what your PhD project is if you can explain that to someone in sort of an elevator pitch you know that's a good skill to develop as well as you know time management and all those sorts of things because most of us have more projects than we have time and staff to tackle so being able to prioritize certainly is important. I'd agree with all that and I don't really have anything to add. Great. What types of research topics and instrumentation experience are good foundations for transitioning into a post-doctorate position or permanent position? So just from a job seeker point of view you know getting some experience with having you know FTIR maybe some a little bit of XRF or Raman and also some optical microscopy would be good to help you and questions in the future. But I think also I was going to say one more thing you know if you can get your hands on learning some of the syncreton techniques I think that's also something that's becoming more and more of an interest in our field. I was just going to sort of build on that bit and say yes I think those basic techniques Robin mentioned are probably the first ones to think about and it is true that there's a lot of excitement and access on syncretons right now but I kind of want to bring in something which is very related to this and it's the idea of luck. You know sometimes positions come up that require a real specialization and it's just really difficult if not impossible to predict these sort of things. So in those situations it might be someone who's had a huge amount of experience on HPLC for example would just win hands down whereas for many positions that kind of experience wouldn't matter so much. So it's just so hard to kind of map these things out so precisely especially when it is true I think what everyone's saying that there are many more PhD opportunities now especially with how to travel within the US and in fact Europe in particular and there are still a number of great postdoc fellowships so there is a kind of a route that takes you through to that point but then when you start to hit the position moment it typically needs someone to retire to open up a position. It's very rare for places to be expanding their conservation science staff and so you just need to hit it right at the right time of a position opening up and often a specialization so it's just part of the deal I'm afraid and sometimes you luck out and other times you'd be the most perfect person for a position but there isn't one there to be offered. I mean I'm going slightly off topic here but I've also noticed in the US in particular there's a lot of musical chairs that goes on so one position opens up and someone else moves to that position and it's quite interesting to watch how one opening can actually trigger all kinds of movements around the country. And I would agree that the serendipity aspect of it that if you happen to have just the right training at the right time and the right place it can all come together. As a general rule we say you want to be familiar with as many analytical techniques as possible and unfortunately PhD programs typically don't follow that sort of guideline. You're in a lab that focuses on spectroscopy and in my case time domain infrared spectroscopy is what we did every day and for a lot of the other things that we needed we had collaborators who were experts and you heard a little bit about it but you weren't the person who was necessarily running the experiments and operating the instrumentation. What I found incredibly useful for me even though I was funded through a lot of my PhD was to throw my head in the ring for teaching jobs in particular the PA positions for all the advanced analytical labs so that even though it wasn't using it in sort of a research focus you get very familiar with all of the different analytical techniques because you have to teach them to undergraduates and you have to make sure that they're working for the lab courses. So in doing that you know that spectroscopy focus that was my PhD developed into familiarity with GC and MassSpec and electrochemistry and thermal analysis and all these other things that I could then kind of bill myself as having at least an introductory knowledge, a working knowledge of this particular analytical technique. Yes I see, can I just respond back because it's really interesting what you said Greg and I just again perhaps we're going slightly off-top of the question but it's just triggering some of the thoughts that I found it somewhat quite hard to predict you know if someone has a specialization in a technique and you want to train them on another technique some people just pick up every technique under the sun without any problems whatsoever and other people really struggle and it's often quite difficult to predict that. So it's you know that's something that again if you are able just in your natural blood to pick up new techniques effortlessly and just start to create great results very quickly that's a wonderful asset to have especially because then if you have gone through the sort of typical PhD route as Greg was describing specializing sorry in a topic or a technique that you are able to demonstrate a great ability to jump across instrumentation but to be honest some people struggle with that and I mean at the places I've worked the tapes and now the GCI I've seen examples of that the whole time it could be interns coming through it could be PhD candidates it could be positions if you're someone that can do that and can get comfortable perhaps with switching a technique very very quickly and have a rapid learning curve then you're a very attractive person to someone wanting to hire in. When applying for post-doctorate fellowships in conservation science is it necessary to already have experience working with cultural property or artist materials? Well I think you know unless you did your PhD in one of these groups that focuses on cultural heritage everyone has to start somewhere so you know for me that was in the archeological field work where I started to get used to being around cultural heritage objects and then more in my postdoc afterwards you know certainly in my particular situation here at the IMA we draw on students from the local universities none of which are actually pursuing cultural heritage in those academic settings and so we get a lot of people whose first experience working you know maybe they were interested in art or painting in their high school years but their first opportunity to work directly with an artwork performing analyses is here in the lab so it's not absolutely necessary but I would encourage everyone to try and seek out those experiences as early as they can even if your PhD topic is more mainstream there are opportunities to volunteer in museums to take courses outside of your PhD area to volunteer to be a part of an excavation or whatever just to start building that resume of experiences you've had working with art and understanding art. Yeah and I'd say in general it really helps if there's been some exposure experience with working in some capacity with cultural property and artist materials it's definitely not a requirement and I think in fact if I remember when the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation postdocs were being set up that was explicitly stated that these are intended or targeted at people who have very little exposure already with cultural property to bring them into the field have them get bitten by the bug and then remain in the field to advance the profession but I think in many cases certainly when we have people applying to our postdoc position at the GCI here we've had a range of backgrounds and some if not well most of them would have had some significant interest or demonstrated experience with working in this area it to me it's quite unusual but not impossible for someone to go through a PhD and all the way through to a postdoc position without some kind of interest or exposure to conservation science. And I just want to add that I have met some fellows that have come straight from grad school with very little experience but maybe some interest but very little experience and a lot of times it was for specific positions and they had the right kind of skills so again it's that look the matching of what you have and what's needed for the fellowship. Thanks. Robin what does the job market and conservation science look like after completing graduate study? What's the typical next move? So the typical next move is definitely a postdoc fellowship and I think preferably in a museum and for I'd say all the positions I've looked at they generally require at least three years of museum experience and most of them are counted after grad school so you definitely want to build up your postdoctoral fellowship experience if you really want to stay in the fields but with that said I'm here going on almost five years so the job openings are kind of slim and you definitely have to think this is something I really want to do do I want to stay in it and think about other options other ways to still work with cultural heritage potentially being a professor starting your own research group and having some of your research be related to cultural heritage and being able to work with museums so that's something that you should think about but I think there's been a lot more openings lately than there have been in the past you know I keep my eye out on the conservation diss list I started looking at that when I was back in grad school just to get an idea of what kind of things were opening and where they're opening so yeah so definitely the first step is fellowships And with the limited number of jobs and the increased interest in the field do you foresee any expansion of jobs in the field? I don't know that we're going to see the same sort of flourishing of new labs like happened maybe a decade ago the Mellon Foundation helped start a number of labs at museums across the country and you know that could happen but sailing that I think probably the area where we're going to see a lot more expansion is in academia and in particular as different research groups start to learn about how the interface of art and science allows opportunities for them to explore their topic of interest I think you're going to start seeing more and more faculty members at the undergraduate level starting to incorporate chemistry of art and conservation science into their courses and of course as a means of teaching chemistry and attracting people who might not have otherwise responded to just a straightforward mainstream chemistry course so I think that one area where we might see additional opportunities is in faculty positions whether they be research or teaching Just to jump on that I think that's exactly right Greg and it does actually offer some excitement and some optimism to this field which otherwise it just feels so this is the crunch point this is the moving from all the training, the postdoc, the fellowships which you know there aren't masses but there are enough out there to move into a position is the difficult part and I think what's very nice about our profession is that there's an amazing network so Robin mentioned the conservation dislist but any position for a conservation scientist in a museum or an institution if you're a scientist in the right places you'll immediately get four notifications or three or four of the same position so the science research working group of ICOMCC for example all these things will get circulated so it isn't as if people won't hear about opportunities I mean again this is not particularly on topic but it's just a thought struck my mind that going back to the very beginning we asked about the differences in roles and trainings of conservation scientists to conservative in the conservation profession of course the vast majority of people now go into private practice it's just that there's still a massive profession out there for conservators to move into if positions don't open up in museums in conservation scientists very very different that there are one or two very very good you know private practices for conservation science but it's still it's very very difficult of course if you get to this point and decide to set up your own laboratory it's ridiculous expensive and I don't think I've ever heard of someone do that at that point it tends to be much more established people who tend to move into private practice usually with some sort of agreements or associations with other institutions because you know who's going to be able to afford XRD or something like that yes no quite quite and actually it should just be really stress the extraordinary thing that the Mellon Foundation did to establish all those positions in in the major you know institutions museums in in the U.S. mainly some some out father mainly the U.S. though you know museums that never had a conservation science department have have endowed positions and indeed some of the sort of mid-scale have a second position and it it was extraordinary to see those positions in endowed and so you know protected but at the moment there isn't a sign that another massive amount of funding will come to establish an expansion in the in the in the field and that was not just at museums but the Mellon Foundation also sponsored second science positions and all the conservation training programs again you know you at three or four new jobs created in that effort as well yeah yeah absolutely what are museums looking for applicants for conservation science positions well I see my name down for this first even though I don't see work for a museum strictly speaking the Getty Conservation Institute is is is related to the Getty Museum of Cause with sister or organizations and we work very closely with the conservators but it's it's just very hard to answer this question for the reasons we've described a bit earlier that it's there's so many different types of positions that we would be looking for ranging from you know a fairly broad experience with different techniques to answer typical questions coming out of a conservation or a curatorial questions from a museum but we also get involved with the very specific projects on particular types of research or particular types of art object just one example we're currently running a project looking at the conservation of animation cells so when we look for someone to work on a project we found just one person who had a significant amount of experience working on animation cells and that's perhaps not surprising but that's also times where we're hiring people where we want that sort of very broad background but I expect Greg you'll have a very different output on this given the size of your department and the fact you do it from museum. Yeah I think you know if I was looking for character traits some of the things that have already been mentioned the sort of insatiable curiosity that's necessary when you know that's going to land on the desk in front of you whether it's going to be a Dutch old master painting or a Sudanese sword that you have to get up to speed on understand you know how it was made and what are the questions to be asked. Dedication for a field that maybe isn't as lucrative as what you might get in industry or pharmaceutical labs. You have to have been bitten by the bug and really be excited about cultural heritage and fascinated with it. Disability to communicate to both scientists and artists and art historians and often times to the public who isn't always sort of at the same level of science literacy as you might hope. I would be looking for people that were creative and full of ideas and very resourceful because again trying to do big time science in a cultural institution you have this clash of the resources needed versus the finances that are available we're finding more and more this sort of new role for the science lab in proposing and curating exhibitions. So bringing the science and technology that normally has behind the scenes out into the galleries as the focus of the museum and so all of those traits that would be necessary to engender those ideas and then to see them in the offing. It really is not a single skill set but a lot of different skill sets, some that we've traditionally associated with the sciences and a lot that we've traditionally associated with the arts. We're really working at the interface of those two. Alright and we're running a little over time but I'd like to squeeze in one more question. Do any of you or have any of you offer training and research opportunities for undergraduate students? We definitely have here in five years that the lab's been operating. We've had 26 positions from sabbatical lead faculty members, postdocs, graduate students, graduate undergraduate, even some high school interns so we have sort of seen one of our areas to focus on is in training of people and sort of proselytizing the whole conservation science field so we definitely try to make those available and usually in the summer there will have at a minimum two undergraduate research fellows at the IMA. Just to add a couple other places that I've seen, I know the MET has done some internships, Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute usually hosts a handful of summer internships and then as a undergraduate university I know William and Mary has a couple of professors in the chemistry department that have students in the summer. Yeah and let me just finish up here. The GCI does not have an official program for this and we certainly don't go looking for undergraduate opportunities but we absolutely have taken people typically from local universities who have just heard about conservation science and they would just get in touch with us and whether or not we take them just depends on so many things. Typically there should be a project that they're working on. It's very rare that we would just bring someone in just to be a cheap if not free instead of hands and it has to be proper supervising but when we've taken people it's actually worked pretty well so there are definitely opportunities. Great thank you so much. Thank you Tom, Greg and Robin for participating in our webinar today. There's also a number of people that helped ECPN put this webinar together and I have their names here on the previous slide. Their advice was extremely helpful. So thank you. Thank you.