In March, we celebrated the fifth anniversary of the launch of Sanford-Burnham’s science blog Beaker. Today, we are thrilled to announce that we have completely redesigned our blog to make it more intuitive, visually appealing, and interactive. We’ll get into the features of the new Beaker further down, but first, let’s travel back in time…
It all started at 11:34 a.m. Eastern Time on March 24, 2010, with a post about T. Denny Sanford’s landmark gift of $50 million to the Institute. As a result of the gift, we changed our name from the Burnham Institute for Medical Research to Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. This story kicked off Beaker, which now consists of almost 800 posts and has been visited by more than 2 million people since 2010.
A lot has happened at Sanford-Burnham since March 2010. Our scientists have made numerous significant discoveries, they’ve published hundreds of scientific papers, and we recently introduced our new Institute CEO and 10-year strategic vision. Beaker is your source for exciting news and scientific advances at Sanford-Burnham.
New Beaker Features
Our goal has been to make the reading experience unique and easy for all fans of scientific research. Here are a few of the new features:
- Dashboard homepage: The new Beaker homepage is much more visually appealing, with a focus on images and themes. The new blog design was also chosen because it works nicely on mobile devices and tablets.
- Categories: You can now find all stories in one of our new categories:
- Research News – stories about our scientific publications
- Improving Human Health – stories about disease research that has a tangible impact on health
- What’s Happening – posts about events, industry trends, partnerships, grants, etc.
- People – profiles and interviews with Sanford-Burnham scientists, leadership, and staff
- Integration with social media: You can now read our live Twitter feed in the right panel of the Beaker homepage. And our Facebook integration makes it easy to leave comments and track discussion threads on our blog posts. Try it now!
We hope you are as excited about the new Beaker as we are. Let us know what you think by commenting on Facebook and Twitter, using the hashtag #TheNewBeaker.