Lessons from the Lab
The NAVBO Education Committee has asked some junior faculty to share their experiences during the transition from trainee to first independent post. We hope that their accounts of challenges confronted, dilemmas dissected, and lessons learned will help smooth your career path.
Lessons Learned
by Cam McCarthy, University of South Carolina
Throughout my career, I have been fortunate to find supportive mentors, collaborative colleagues, and compassionate friends, all of whom have assisted me in reaching my goals and my current position as an Assistant Professor in the Cardiovascular Translational Research Center at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine-Columbia. However, I have also demonstrated a lot of hard work to get to where I am as I only found my love for vascular biology once I started my Ph.D. Originally, I pursued degrees in physical education (B.S.) and exercise science (M.S.), and while attenuation of cardiovascular diseases is a consistent theme among these areas, it took a lot of dedication during my M.S. and Ph.D. to catch up the “basic science” to get to where I am today. I am proud to be an example of someone who found their professional calling after undergrad.
Now as an independent P.I., I have made an entirely different transition. Obviously, managing a laboratory and mentoring young scientists is very different than solely dedicating yourself to an individual project, like we all did as trainees. Therefore, the one major piece of advice I wanted to share with other young PI’s is not to spread yourself too thin to start. In other words, when I started my own lab, I wanted all the people joining to have their own individual project, which they would be responsible and accountable for. This was even the case for volunteer undergrads. I quickly realized that this was not an efficient way to collect data, especially as an ESI, and that I needed to focus our projects and have people work more cohesively. Therefore, I have concentrated our lab, for the time being, on three major projects, driven by two post-docs, and myself and our lab technician (collaboratively). These projects include: (1) identifying the vasculoprotective mechanisms of autophagy, (2) investigating how O-GlcNAc post-translational modifications cause vascular damage, and (3) determining how ANGPTL3- and ANGPTL4-lipase crosstalk contributes to vascular dysfunction. Therefore, anyone else wanting to volunteer or rotate in my lab works on specific experiments related to these projects and this has resulted in more streamlined data collection, manuscripts in preparation, and several grant submissions!
In addition to this one major piece of advice, other suggestions that have served me well over the course of my career include:
· Be open to opportunities: You never know how a collaboration, or a position on a committee, may assist your career-trajectory, and where you may end up!
· Have-work life balance: I love running and couldn’t imagine my life without it; it is my release. I have come to realize that work will always be there, but my health and wellbeing may not be. Therefore, I try to commit to exercising for at least one hour every day. (Sometimes, unintentionally, I start thinking about hypotheses and experiments during my runs and I have done some of my best “sciencing” during these moments).
· Work efficiently, not longer: This one really came into focus when I became a dad (I have a daughter, Emma, who is almost 7, and a son, Noah, who is almost 2). I learned that I really needed to maximize my time in the laboratory each day, and I couldn’t rely on working late into the long hours of the night, to catch up on my work.
· Stay organized: This helps with efficiency, and also gives me a dopamine rush when I cross items off my to-do list.
· Use social media to your advantage: While I have always been participatory in career-development programs, the use of Twitter expanded my scientific network exponentially!
· Be humble, but confident: Awareness that you are not the sole reason for your successes and acknowledging those who have helped you along the way, has always served me well throughout my career, and has never diminished my accomplishments.
In summary, I love being an independent PI where I get to ask questions, satiate my curiosities, and help others through mentorship and collaboration. And while my career path has not been streamlined (at least to start), I am finally in a place where I can still achieve my longstanding goal of combating cardiovascular diseases through my vascular physiology research program. My Twitter handle is @CamGMcCarthy, and my lab website is cammccarthylab.com, if you would like to reach out!
Lessons Learned
by Zhiyu Dai, University of Arizona
My name is Zhiyu Dai. I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Internal Medicine University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix. I graduated from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. I was trained as a lung vascular biologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University for 6 years. My lab started in July 2019, not far from the COVID-19 outbreak. It has been very challenging to start a new lab during the COVID-19 era. I have learned a lot from my mentors, administrative supervisors, collaborators, senior investigators, junior peer investigators including recruitment, personnel management, and grant submission, etc.
Seeking Mentorship
The transition from a postdoc researcher or young scientist to an independent principal investigator (PI) is a very exciting moment and comes with new challenges including recruitment of postdoc, research technician, and students. In addition to my previous mentor, finding mentorship in the new institute have been very valuable experience when I started my lab. I had reached out to a few colleagues in our institute who can quickly answer a lot of questions about how to handle almost every step of starting a new lab such as hire processing, budget, and different protocols. These colleagues could be your neighbors, departmental head, center director, and faculty affair director. They are your resources and are willing to help you navigate the new institute.
Applying for Funding
Securing funding is the key to running a lab. In addition to getting NIH funding, there are different levels of funding mechanisms, for example, the American Heart Association (AHA) Career Development Award (CDA), and Institute internal grants for early career investigators like me to apply. I started to apply for the AHA CDA in my first year and got funded for the first time. I also applied for multiple internal grants provided by our institute. The funding rate is pretty good. These small funds are very good for practicing purposes, and the money is also good to support a new lab and help me generate a decent amount of preliminary data for NIH R01 projects. When I was ready to submit my first R01 application, I learned that I could take advantage of the early career investigator (ESI) and submitted two applications in the same cycle, which were reviewed as ESI. My two R01 applications were both funded after resubmission.
Collaboration
In the big data era, collaboration is critical for doing research, securing funding, and publishing papers. When I started my lab, I was interested in identifying a lung vascular-specific gene. I reached out to the colleagues like Drs Joanna Kalucka and Mingxia Gu in the NAVBO community. We quickly established a collaboration and eventually published a paper together in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB). At the same time, I also established collaboration with faculty in my institute, neighbor institutes, and outside institutes. The collaboration has provided enormous research resources including research materials, and protocols for my lab. For example, I collaborate with Dr. Michael Fallon, who is a physician-scientist and departmental chair of Internal Medicine at University of Arizona Phoenix. Dr. Fallon is interested in a disease called hepatopulmonary syndrome. Combining our expertise in vascular biology and clinical insight, we eventually are awarded a multiple PI NIH R01 grant on this topic.
Involvement in Academic Societies
I have taken multiple approaches to increase my visibility and impact in the research community. First of all, I started to volunteer as the Treasure, President-elect and President at the Chinese-American Lung Association (CALA), a non-profit organization founded by a group of Chinese-American scientists and physicians in the field of lung biology and respiratory medicine. I have organized the bi-weekly virtual seminar series and an inaugural International Respiratory Medicine Conference 2023 in Orlando, Florida. Second, I also hosted a monthly departmental Science in the Desert Seminar series. I have the opportunity to invite many top scientists to visit us to share their research and establish collaborations. Thirdly, I was also involved in the American Thoracic Society (ATS) early career working committee and served as the co-chair this year. These opportunities have given me broader exposure and increased my research impact in the field.
Although I have learned a lot from mentors, colleagues, peers, trainees, I am still learning to be a more impactful PI. I am so grateful for the pieces of advice and enormous support from all these people during the way.
Lessons Learned
by Rio Sugimura, University of Hong Kong
Hello, my name is Rio Sugimura, and I have been an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong since December 2020. I am grateful to NAVBO, a very supportive society, for giving me this opportunity. I run two laboratories in different institutions and study cancer immunotherapy. I will share my survival tips and of course, the struggles of starting a lab in the pandemic era. I was trained in the US and now run my labs in Asia; some tips may be helpful to PIs in the same position.
Generation pandemic
Same as many other New PIs, I started my lab during the pandemic in Hong Kong, in December 2020. I had initially set up my lab at the University of Pavia, northern Italy, which was the epicenter of the pandemic. It was a hard decision, but I took the counteroffer and moved to Hong Kong with my family. I believe the decision was right for the following reasons: A reasonable amount of start-up money, supportive admin, an R1 institution-equivalent environment for research, and most importantly, English as a common language (I do not speak Cantonese or Mandarin). Luckily, Hong Kong never encountered a complete lab shutdown during the pandemic-- unlike labs in other major cities in China or the US, we were able to continue operating our lab. There were two drawbacks though, one was the delayed order of items sometimes having to wait for 6 months or give up the experiments. But we were able to manage this by looking for different vendors, and now we do not see such delays as often. The other, more severe, was difficulty in traveling, although the rest of the world was going back to normal. This affects the international visibility of the lab, which I will talk about more in a later section.
I saw you on Twitter!
Shameless advertisement! Advertise your lab on social media platforms. Here in Hong Kong, having Ph.D. students is not as straightforward as in the US. The admission is heavily biased with their undergrad schools’ GPA and QS rank. I have to admit that I lost many great candidates due to these strict metrics. My lab was still lucky to attract a handful number of Ph.D. students with department support. Having postdocs is very challenging in Hong Kong as many talents go overseas like in the US. Still, I was lucky to have postdocs. I asked students and postdocs why they chose my lab. How did they find me? My publication record? The topic of study? No, “I saw you on Twitter and your lab website looked good”. Prior to the pandemic, I spent considerable time setting up the lab website (https://www.riosugimura.com/) and being active on Twitter (https://twitter.com/rio_sugimura). Setting up the lab's social media platform made my lab jump-start. It was crucial for my lab because I needed to fill two labs with good members.
Running two labs
I was extremely fortunate to set up two lab spaces supported by external funds in different institutions. I got this opportunity right after I came to Hong Kong, so I had to staff both labs. My main lab at the university engages in the fundamental science of human immune cells and vascular development, while the other lab is dedicated to cell therapy products for cancer immunotherapy. The two labs are connected with a 50-min ride by shuttle bus. It is such a joy to run labs of two different disciplines. Staffing with great members and guiding the development of two labs are enjoyable. The challenge is that I would often commute to both sites and encourage communications between both labs as well as deal with different structures of admin systems. The lesson I learned in the process is it is really important to encourage lab members to communicate with each other. You should staff your lab with people of different expertise. If lab culture enhances their sharing of know-how and helps each other, the work will be synergistic. If the lab becomes like a silo, things stop working. During my training in the US, I was fortunate to experience the former environment. I will talk about a potential cultural difference between the US and Asia in the later part, bringing up the importance of encouraging lab members to communicate again.
Turn right
Winding up your postdoc work, you need to have your niche. During my postdoc at Harvard Medical School, I heard often that you need to Turn right. Understandably, you cannot compete with the same pie as your postdoc advisor. Right, it is very challenging to find a spot where you can survive. I was originally trained as a hematologist and dedicated to stem cell biology, shifting myself to cell engineering at the end of my postdoc. The shift paid off. I am operating two labs now with different disciplines. One is the fundamental biology of human immune cells and vasculature, and the other is for cell therapy products. Such a leap to me, though it is joyful. Finding a supportive society is very important. I am fortunate to find that NAVBO generously supports new PIs who came from another field. The other key is networking. I recommend networking internationally. Gaining international visibility is very difficult for someone like me in Asia. That’s why I invested in my lab website, Twitter, and Slack communities. I did several interviews, one on The NODE New PIs in a global pandemic: a view from Hong Kong - the Node (biologists.com) and the others with NewPI, Cell&Dev Bio Slack https://twitter.com/NewPICellDev/status/1409470388615233536?s=20 which should be still available.
International visibility
Yes, Big FOMO! Coming from Boston, now I miss a lot of top-notch deals in real-time. I want to know more colleagues, new collaborators, and editors. What was affordable and accessible in Boston was now super costly and rare. These two years of the pandemic locked me down. I could not attend international meetings for the last two years. I just started my travel after the summer of 2022 and got to see collaborators in real life. Slack communities were my game changers. I do appreciate FuturePI Slack, NewPI Slack, and NewPICell&Dev Bio Slack communities. It was great that I was able to participate in organizing an international symposium with colleagues in NewPICell&Dev Bio Slack in the summer of 2022. It was my first Face to Face conference as a PI. My tip: organizing departmental seminar series is very important. I have been organizing them for over a year. Although it is still Zoom, it does make it easier to invite many new colleagues. Visiting them during conference trips and developing new collaborations and grant writings is a great joy.
Surviving in Asia
Running a lab in Asia is fun. Fortunately, my university HKU is well westernized and I would not see much difference in operating a lab in the US. Of course, the language is English. Students might be a bit shy, though it really depends on each person. It is my learning process to listen to them patiently and encourage them to ask questions and say opinions. Another key point I learned is to encourage each student to communicate with other members inside or outside the lab. Encourage students to ask others for help. You do not lose anything by asking others for help.
Lessons Learned
by Laura Hansen, Emory University
Hello everyone! My name is Laura Hansen and I’m an assistant professor at Emory University in the Department of Medicine, Cardiology Division. I’m also a member of the Biomedical Engineering program faculty at Emory/Georgia and the Molecular and Systems Pharmacology graduate program at Emory and recently became the associate program director for our Basic Science Research Cardiology Fellowship at Emory. My undergraduate degree was in bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh and my PhD was at Georgia Tech in Bioengineering. I then did a postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University in cardiology.
I started my faculty position and lab in April 2019 with the help of an AHA Career Development Award. It has been an interesting time to start a lab with the pandemic closing in-person research just as I finally felt like my lab was getting going. Despite some challenges, I feel that I’ve learned a lot and my lab is currently doing well. My advice for new faculty fits into one overall theme of finding great people to help and support you. This includes mentors, colleagues, and lab members.
Mentors: Having a great mentor has been critical to my success thus far. Areas I’ve found to be important for mentorship are science, career development, and work/life balance. I have been blessed to find a primary mentor that helps me with all three of these aspects. However, if you can’t find one person, a mentoring team is a great alternative. Along those lines, if you made a mentoring team for a career development award, make sure you actually use that team and hold annual (or bi-annual meetings). As great as my mentor was, I appreciated having a wider perspective on my science and my career a few times a year. These meetings help me make important connections and decisions on priorities for grants and hiring. For example, they pushed me get my first submission of my R01 submitted and then also advised me to wait one cycle when resubmitting to get another paper out; and their advice was successful as my first R01 started a month before my career development grant ended making a smooth transition. I’m also lucky enough that my primary mentor meets with me weekly for 15-30 minutes (as our schedules allow). As a trainee, I met that often to go over data and as a faculty member I can still benefit from weekly meetings which guide my decisions not about data but about commitments, grants, and experimental directions in real time.
Colleagues: One group of people that I feel were key to survival the first few years of a faculty position were my colleague friends in similar positions in their career. While more senior mentors give great advice, I really appreciated and benefited from having people at the same stage (or a few years ahead is even better) to run ideas by. Having recently made all these decisions themselves, young faculty were perfect to discuss strategies for how to build your lab, how quickly to grow the lab, how to get involved in committees, and how to say no to other commitments. I also had a child during those first few years and asking a colleague how they managed their lab during family leave was helpful. Because our labs are closely related, she actually helped mentor my student for those few months. I was lucky enough to have a few people in Cardiology in this position, but faculty development courses and workshops are also great places to meet new people, and lunches or coffees breaks are great ways to establish a friendship.
Lab Members: Finally, the biggest piece to being successful is finding the right people to join your lab. I found this to also be the trickiest and where I’ve made the most mistakes and had the most struggles. The strategy I would tell others to follow is to try to find the most experienced person you can afford to hire to help you start your lab (technician, staff scientist, postdoc). Having someone in your lab that you can teach a technique to and they can quickly work independently or give a protocol to and they can figure it out helped me immensely at being able to get data and move projects along, as well as freeing my time to write and work on other tasks. If this person can teach graduate students and undergraduate students as they join the lab, it will help you even more. However, finding this person can be hard and requires lots of patience. One mistake I made and caution others about is being impatient to get someone hired and not waiting for the correct person. One tip I have is to ask those people above (your mentor and colleagues) to help interview your top candidates. Then listen to them and their impression of the applicant; I’ve learned that sometimes gut impressions and personalities are just as important as skills. Once you have that one key person in your lab, you can begin to expand your lab: join graduate programs and participate in their recruitment events or consider undergraduate students that reach out to you. While students are not always very productive when they start, they will be as they learn. I’ve also found that it is a snowball effect, where once you have one student, they tell others, and more people want to join. Once you have a great team, work to keep them: treat them well and respect their ideas, promote and give raises as appropriate, and set a great example of a healthy work life balance.
Lessons Learned
by Yanbo Fan, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
My name is Yanbo Fan. I have been an Assistant Professor of Cancer Cell Biology and Cardiovascular Health and Disease at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine since Oct 2019. Although I have learned a lot from my mentor, effective management of the lab, including recruitment, budgeting, project progress, animal protocol, manuscript writing, and grant preparation, still needs to be learned as a PI. I am grateful for the support from my mentors, colleagues, and administrators.
Recruitment is a critical factor for a new lab. The increased cost of lab expenses but limited funding would be significant issues for many new PIs who have to deal with it. When recruiting lab members, motivation is as important as the previous research experience of the researcher. The passions and dedication of a researcher create more possibilities and lead to success. Supervising the postdoc fellows and graduate students promptly and regularly could help resolve problems and facilitate the project's progress. As a PI, I learned how to assign tasks/projects to the appropriate lab members according to their experience and skills and set reasonable expectations. It is noteworthy that maintaining the lab in a positive and aspiring environment can facilitate interactions among lab members.
Expand research to a new research area. To be an independent researcher, you should logically extend your research to different areas. From my experience, initially, it is good for the PI to conduct bench work to start pilot experiments other than just leaving the new project to the new student or postdoc fellow. Based on the critical preliminary results, we can have a vision of the project and propose a hypothesis. It could save a long time to accomplish the project. After excellent training, graduate students and postdoc fellows will become the project's driving force. Always good decisions lead to excellent outcomes and potentially open a new direction.
Set short- and long-term goals. As a new PI, you may want to carry out many projects which you are very interested in and believe will be successful. However, biological studies, particularly animal experiments, are time-consuming and expensive. It is helpful to consult mentors and colleagues before ordering reagents and generating new animal models. After careful consideration, it is best to prioritize the projects to meet the short- and long-term goals. For example, choose the project most likely successful for external grant applications and publications in the next 2-3 years as a short-term project.
Collaboration is indispensable for a new PI. It is essential to fully take advantage of the resource and expertise in the department and institution and seek potential collaborations. In addition, connections in the research community help spark interest in a new research area and develop potential collaborations. Through actively attending internal, national/international meetings, the lab's work can be exposed to other researchers and get more recognition.
Finally, these are a few lessons and experiences since I opened a new lab. Everyone has different situations (advantages and limitations) and faces different problems while running a lab, so I hope what I mentioned is helpful to you. Challenges and opportunities exist concurrently. It is time to make reasonable goals and move forward.
Lessons Learned
by William Polacheck, UNC Chapel Hill and NC State University
Hello from Chapel Hill! My name is Bill Polacheck, and I am an Assistant Professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC Chapel Hill and NC State University. In 2018, my wife and I moved from Boston, where we had spent the past decade, to North Carolina, so I could start my research lab at UNC. I had completed my PhD in Mechanical Engineering at MIT then crossed the river for a postdoc in a joint appointment between Harvard and BU. The move south marked the biggest transition of my life, as it does for so many junior faculty, and initially I spent too much time focusing on what I had left: New England, where I had grown up and completed my training; a city, where it seems like everyone is a scientist; large well-funded and engineering-focused labs, where I completed my PhD and postdoc; and quite honestly jobs where I understood what was required for success and how to structure my time efficiently. Leaving all of this behind to begin a job in which the complexity and demands on time seemed to grow each day was daunting, and it became immediately apparent, as it does for so many people, that a postdoc is at best inadequate training for setting up an independent laboratory and training graduate students and postdocs. However, with help from colleagues at UNC, an incredibly patient spouse, and the infinite optimism of a golden retriever puppy, I learned what this new job entailed, recruited some fantastic people, and came to realize that the gains exponentially outweighed the costs of this strange and complicated transition. Here are a few specific things I learned with the acknowledgement that in beginning my 5th year, I’m still learning how to run a lab and manage trainees.
Keep looking forward: Many junior faculty, including myself, attempt to set up a lab in the image of the labs they trained in, but your lab is not your postdoc advisor’s lab and not your thesis advisor’s lab. The success of a lab is path-dependent and a function of the institution. Initially, I structured lab meetings and journal clubs based on how I had experienced these meetings as a PhD student and postdoc, and only later realized that what we needed to build a strong foundation for future success in a lab with all new trainees is very different from what is required to maintain a productive, established lab with a number of senior graduate students and postdocs at any given time. When our meetings really started to click was when I structured them based on what the group needs to learn now for success in the future, so journal clubs mixed in older, seminal papers to build a shared knowledge among the lab, and the focus of lab meeting presentations shifted toward how data were collected as opposed to interpretation of the data. I found this focus on what is needed now to also translate to projects at the bench – we needed to establish internal protocols, standards, and processes for what seem like simple activities in a large lab before we could move to more ambitious, innovative projects. This focus on the future also helps break out of the avalanche of negative feedback that greets any junior faculty member, from first grants to papers to teaching reviews – these are all data points to inform better future approaches.
Enjoy the classroom: So often teaching is only discussed among research faculty as a distraction from the research program. It’s true that teaching takes an enormous amount of time and effort, particularly when putting together classes for the first time, and that your grants will be reviewed alongside faculty who don’t have these demands on their time. However, it is a privilege to be able to stand in front of a room of brilliant young students and to have the opportunity to help them achieve their goals and aspirations, even if it’s only a slight nudge, and even if there’s some students in the classroom who just don’t like the class, the content, or you as the professor. Now that it’s been a few years of teaching for me, I’m starting to get updates from students who have moved on to careers in science and engineering, and hearing that even the tiniest bit of content from a class I taught is helping them progress professionally is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job.
Don’t just clear your desk: There’s an expression I read about a prominent figure in US history that said he ‘cleared his desk every day but never got anything accomplished.’ One of the biggest challenges of learning to establish and run a research and teaching program is to figure out what is worth your time. There is simply too much to do in a day, especially if you’re trying to establish a healthy work-life balance. In the first few years, I found that it was too easy to approach the infinite workload by focusing on things that could be easily checked off a list, such as responding to emails, attending miscellaneous meetings, ordering and lab maintenance, etc. However, I started to realize that I wasn’t engaging in my students’ projects with enough depth, I wasn’t reading enough papers, and all of my grants seemed to be prepared at the last minute. It was only after auditing my time for several weeks that I realized I had to be judicious and treat my time as a valuable commodity that was best invested rather than simply spent. Different systems work for different people in different research areas, but I have found that auditing my own time for at least a week annually is critical to ensure I’m not getting bogged down in the little things without sufficient investment of my time in the deeper activities that form the real basis for the functioning of the lab.
We are very lucky and privileged to have careers that are, at the core, focused on continual learning. On that note, I’ll end with one more suggestion… read the other ‘Lessons Learned’ on the NAVBO site. They’re awesome and inspirational, and it’s a great resource for seeing how other individuals from varying backgrounds and training approach the shared problem of starting a research laboratory from scratch.
Lessons Learned
by Tirthadipa Pradhan-Sundd, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Lessons Learned:
Did you ever have a sense of awe and gratefulness while writing about your work experience with a nearly trembling hand? Did you also feel like a complete imposter trying to fit in continuously in a field of star-studded individuals and talents? Science continues to give me very opposite feelings simultaneously. It provides me joy and fear in the same cup. While I am thankful to NAVBO for giving me this opportunity to share my experience as an assistant professor (read junior-most faculty), I am also confident these lessons will keep accumulating every day as my journey continues. Over the last two years I have learned a few lessons or should I say ‘survival hacks for dummies’ which I am happy to share with you all.
Major points:
Imagination, imagination, imagination: If you are like me and can’t keep up with all the fantastic publications that come out virtually every hour of the day, just one thing can still save you. That is your imagination. I recall my grandmother loved to tell tales, and she did it so wonderfully that there always was some audience. I learned that Science is also somewhat like that. If we learn to tell a story early in our career it can be really helpful. You might also get an audience who would love to read your papers. I think imagination can also be developed over time like our scientific knowledge. And the things that help me to develop or reinvent mine was to work with extremely creative people (like my husband) and be inspired by just watching them. I also gather inspiration from a list of my favorite scientists across the globe and a few talented artistic friends I had a chance to share my lab space with during my training period. Finally, I occasionally take mental notes on how to make a story or a figure by just binge-watching movies and going through children’s books made by very creative people.
Temperament, temperament, temperament: Another attribute that I learned early in my faculty career that is almost as important as imagination is temperament. I know I am sounding like a cricket coach here. You can blame my Indian ethnicity and extreme family pressure to watch as many cricket matches as your eyes can stand. By temperament, I mean the ability to wait indefinitely for an experiment to work, grants to be submitted, hiring paperwork to be completed, a talented postdoc to apply to your lab (still waiting for this one), and the stamina to prepare your manuscript for publication in two weeks while managing a kindergartener and a puppy. I took a very long time to realize that this is a ‘years long test match’ and all you have to focus on is 1 or 2 tasks per day and be happy if you are able to complete them. The same will also apply to people working under and for you. A Buddhist philosophy of “everything in moderation“might go a long way.
More major points:
Less is more: One sure recipe for failure or reduced productivity for me was when I tried to manage more than two to three projects and the associated planning and experiments. It made me anxious at the end of the day and week that I made very little progress and it also hampered my creativity. Thus, I learned the hard way that focusing on one or two projects on a weekly or monthly basis is more productive and fun in the long run.
Humor can save you: There will be days in the beginning of your career which will try your patience. In those days it helps me to make fun of myself. My family and friends really enjoy it and, in the end, there is nothing that humor can’t make better.
Meaningless networking won’t save you but some networks will: No! you don’t need to know everyone who ever came across to love science in this continent and follow them on social media. Remember our brain has limited capacity and so does our time. Learning to say ‘No’ to a lot of things might save you. At the same time, I think the people in your direct field need to know your work. I always start panicking when it is time to network and become very aware of my “Indian accent” and all the not so charming qualities of mine. For me focusing on their work and how relevant it is and talking about that really helps. This is something where I need to do a lot of work, and I am aware of it.
It’s a star world: There will always be people with 400 publications (whereas during grad school I already planned that if I can have 100s on my name I will then try for Moksha), 4 R01s, all high impact papers and patents and you will also realize they did it all by themselves. Its really good to recognize that we are extremely fortunate to share space with a lot of stars, but we should not put unnecessary pressure on ourselves or have unrealistic expectations of excellence. It will not only make you restless, sad and anxious, you will not be able to enjoy the little things of science like getting a fantastic image on confocal microscopy or proving a small part of your hypothesis just by thinking over it. Enjoy being with your peers without the peer-pressure.
Have a 24/7 support system: Once I read in a magazine that an ‘international post doc’ is the second-most stressful job to do in the United States whereas the first is an air traffic controller. As a post doc, I was then happy to find solace and would refer that article to my parents if they ever were worried about my stress level. Now, I continuously wonder did they mean post docs who became faculty in the past 2-3 years? I know you will agree with me. To deal with this stress we need a very strong support system. Be it family, friends or colleagues or other mom/dad/single friends, we should recognize them and stick with them.
You can’t do it alone: My scientific interest has changed considerably over the last few years and while having a new project is extremely refreshing and interesting it also means you know almost nothing about many parts of your projects now. I had to learn from experts of this field and also learned that I can’t do it alone. Having a strong group of collaborators both global and local can be a game changer.
At times tremendous willpower will be needed: There will be days when you have to do it all by yourself. Be it at the bench when all your students and post docs were on leave or when kids are home quarantining (which happened numerous times over the last two years). Having control over the day will not be possible on those days and, on those moments, I realized that one needs a very strong willpower (read bulldog tenacity) almost on a daily basis to continue a career in science.
Let’s talk about money and its management: Everybody has a blind spot and money management or the very thinking of it makes me nervous. As a junior faculty, I had to be very careful with my money management. Having a budget limit and going through the budget almost every two weeks was helpful. Another thing which I learned was to wait a day or two to order a reagent you already decided to order to double check if you really need it. Money management is extremely crucial and I wish we had some training as junior PIs how to do it well by other super stars in the field.
You have to be unique: Finally, you have to be shamelessly unique and continue it to your grave. Someone once said to me that “in science everyone has a different kind of personality”. Now I realize it was used to mean uniqueness of scientists. I also realized over time that there is no need to be shy from who you really are. If you are someone who likes to pray to elephant god Ganesha before starting your work, so be it. Continue being yourself shamelessly and enjoy being you.
I will end this with the hope that somewhere some post-doctoral fellows will find it useful and interesting while making their biggest career jump to a junior faculty. Although I made a list of ‘lessons learned’ I am still learning each of them everyday and many more. May this journey of yours be thrilling and full of new adventures.
Lessons Learned
by Erich Kushner, University of Denver
Hi, my name is Erich Kushner, and I have been an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver for 6 years. With no qualifications, I can say that running a lab has been a tremendous learning curve with both peaks and valleys. Now sitting on the opposite side of the desk, not providing the data, but being the one to scrutinize it, make difficult decisions, encourage, sometimes having to discourage, and providing personnel feedback, was something I was not prepared for. Although, I believe I have learned a lot over these ensuing years, I know there is a literal universe of tips that would prove to be helpful, many of which having nothing to do with producing rigorous science. Hopefully, new(er) faculty will find the two anecdotes below helpful to subvert the personal and professional flogging I subjected myself to in the early years of starting a lab.
Killing my inner postdoc
Looking at my empty lab space on my first day as an Assistant Professor was glorious. The research, the training, the avenues we could explore were all tantalizing. This was a moment for which I had been preparing for over a decade, and now it was here, in front of me, in the form of a seemingly ransacked 900sq/ft room--but it was my room, my space, my future. Walking through that room, running my fingers over dried western blot residue left behind by the previous occupant, I was still a postdoc, with postdoc wonder, narrowly strategizing how to start my lab’s first big research project. Up until that point, and some time after, my general mantra was, “if you do the science, the money will come.” My postdoc enthusiasm, drive to produce big science, as well as a heaping dollop of blinding pride, obscured many new realities I would soon encounter.
The first few years, I focused my students on larger projects, ever adding data, never fragmenting the research into smaller publications. Postdoc me was uncompromising in pursuing comprehensive studies--the type we’ve all fawned over in lab meetings or enthusiastically chatted about with our former PIs. However, in my situation, at an R2 school, with a high teaching load, this was an exceedingly poor choice. In my case, when I started the lab, all my students were very green. As a result, there was a multi-year training curve to reach the required technical expertise. At year four, we accumulated a mountain of data, but now had a 2-year publication gap. There seems to be an unspoken 3-year grace period for new PIs at NIH, and once that line is crossed, grant critiques are laser focused on productivity, or lack thereof (in my case). With start-up and R00 funds dwindling, it was obvious I made a massive tactical error in my publication approach. Not only how and when to publish, but my naïve postdoc framework of ‘go big or go home’ was at odds with the realities of timing, training, student abilities, my schedule, and many other factors.
The lesson learned was I needed to surrender my mindset of only trying to produce splashier stories but settle on a more Zen approach of being ok with publishing smaller units when applicable. By not silo-ing my research into only substantial projects, it has allowed me to strike a better balance of triaging and publishing projects earlier than I would have done prior, as well as keeping a grant funding-oriented view on productivity metrics. This is not to say we don’t chase after the bigger stories like a rabid honey badger, but killing my monolithic view on what constitutes a publishable unit has permitted me to go after bigger fish in the funding pond. Many grant submissions and chicken-blood sacrifices later, our lab is thriving.
Leader, not a friend
In retrospect, one of the major contributing factors for me pursuing this career path was lab culture. As an undergraduate, graduate and postdoc I have always adored the feverish lab environment. Down to the smell of bacterial cultures (no joke), I just love the ordered chaos of many ‘cooks’ in the kitchen of a lab, the buzz of overlapping experimentation, and most of all, the forging of lasting friendships. For me, there is a deep comradery that is formed when two people have mutually dedicated themselves to be stewards of science. Multiply this with the shared hardships and breakthroughs, the sheer volume of common worktime, parallel interests, and many beers later, you can cement some special life-long friendships.
Starting my lab, I craved this bond that indelibly marked so many of my previous career stages. Perhaps selfishly, I wanted to help shepherd these bourgeoning scientists down this path. Unconsciously, I took a more friendship-based mentoring approach, akin to my days as a postdoc. A lesson learned was that inevitably, a hard conversation will arise and not taking a more concrete leadership role, but more of that of an older brother has several major drawbacks. First, when on a more peer-to-peer footing with your students I found that joking around can go horribly wrong. I’m sure any boilerplate managerial text will flag this behavior, but in my experience, even kind-hearted banter can be misinterpreted when coming from someone in a supervisory role. Fighting against my naturally sarcastic personality, I learned that practicing clear and concise language, although dry, promotes a generalized sense of security and a more equitable relationship amongst the labyrinth of personalities in my lab. Second, a cordial, but direct, interaction with a leader will always carry more weight than a recommendation from a friend. Lastly, a leader unifies and motivates. A question I like to ask myself is why would anyone want to work hard for me? As a supervisor, it is easy to default to the idea that someone is not intrinsically motivated if productivity metrics are lagging. However, it is tougher to ask, have I provided the best possible environment and cognitive framework to justify working hard? Are the incentives in place? If you are not viewed as a leader that can provide the incentives or effectively structure a path to them, it will be hard to motivate your crew.
Thoughts
I try on an annual basis to impress upon my group both the beauty and responsibility of being a scientist in efforts to foster a common goal. I also attempt to construct a bird’s eye view of our research to help render a less granular picture of where our brand of science is situated within the broader field. Together these concepts provide a professional GPS coordinate for students who sometimes cannot see the forest for the trees. With regard to leadership, my personal definition of a group leader is a fair person who cherishes a trainee’s progression, someone who prioritizes a legacy of scientists, not publications, someone who is not afraid to admit flaws or mistakes, someone who strives to do rigorous science, someone willing to help match a trainee’s work ethic and enthusiasm, someone who fosters a trainee’s career path, academic or otherwise, and someone who always provides brutally honest feedback, sometimes at the discomfort of both parties. In challenging myself to be that person described above, it has led to enormous personal growth and on some level is starting to convince me I could wear those shoes someday. The beauty of our position as group leaders is that I don’t foresee a time in which we cannot learn to be a better person on countless levels; if we willfully embrace that challenge, then we are truly lucky to be in this profession.
May your publications be plentiful, and grants prioritized!
“Live long and prosper”.
-Spock
Lessons Learned
by Jenny Munson, Virginia Tech
Hi Everyone! I’m Jenny Munson and I’m an Associate Professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech and in the Department of Biomedical Engineering & Mechanics at Virginia Tech. I’m originally from Marietta, GA and then went to Tulane University and majored in Chemical Engineering and Neuroscience. I worked at Genentech for a year before going to graduate school for Bioengineering at Georgia Tech followed by a postdoc at EPFL in Switzerland. I started my independent faculty career at the University of Virginia in Biomedical Engineering and then moved to Virginia Tech where I received tenure in 2020. My laboratory is housed at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at the Health Sciences Campus of Virginia Tech.
I’ve been a principal investigator running my own lab in academia for seven years and it’s a great job. I get to work with smart, motivated people, indulge my curiosity, and challenge myself to learn something new everyday. I will say I am by no means an expert on the transition from trainee to independent researcher and much of my advice is passed down from those more experienced than me. Hopefully you will find it helpful.
Follow the students: When I started my faculty position, I didn’t know anything about the place where I now was tasked with setting up a lab and establishing a research program. It was a bit intimidating, and I was still struggling to not feel intimidated by colleagues in the department, having been a “trainee” only one month beforehand. I had many valuable mentors, but I found that established graduate students helped me most to hit the ground running. These were students from other laboratories since I didn’t yet have any students of my own. They stopped by and said hello, they told me about the fun places to go or things to do, they showed me where the ice maker was, who to contact about protocols and resources, and they could give me insight I could use to help recruit my own students. They were absolutely essential to my early success and happiness in the department.
Once a few graduate students joined my group, there’s an initial feeling that everyone needs their own project and you should define these early, creating pillars within the lab. This is something that I think as trainees we are conditioned to feel as we want a sense of ownership over our projects. One piece of advice that was given to me by my PhD mentor was to lean into the strengths of the individuals to work towards common goals (i.e. papers, grants, etc.) and then the individual projects will grow from there. I think this is great advice because you will have individuals join your lab who naturally become interested in and/or show strengths in certain techniques, scientific trajectories, or collaborations and following their lead on these things can really benefit your greater scientific program. It not only offers a diversity of perspectives to your work but it also increases the morale and buy-in of everyone in the lab. My first graduate students had very different strengths and by listening to them and learning what they were best at or took the most joy from really helped to create a strong team dynamic that helped to establish my research program. And in the end, they all had individual projects with separate goals and theses.
Grow where you’re planted: When I first started my faculty position I had very strong ideas about what I was going to do in my lab. I definitely adhered to this as much as possible, but also talked to everyone about what was going on at the university. When you interview you are asked about who you might collaborate with and much of this information has to be gleaned from often outdated websites and papers on work that was happening 5 years ago. An interesting thing that I’ve also learned since becoming a faculty, and sitting on hiring committees is that the individuals that you meet with may see connections that you haven’t made yet. They know their colleagues the best and can often point out interesting connections and new trajectories that you may be unaware of. Therefore, I think it’s great to explore and meet and talk, go to seminars and think about how your central tools or techniques or questions may overlap. These may result in simply interesting conversations or full-fledged funding and publications. Most importantly, this allows you to make the most of where you begin your career so be flexible. With this in mind, though I’ve maintained some core interests in my research program, I’ve found that it has shifted and changed since I was first starting my faculty career in only positive ways.
Get used to rejection: It is so hard to do this, but it will happen. This job is filled with rejections, and during your traineeship you will see this over and over, but once I had my own lab, and was putting my ideas out there, it really stung. Some things I have done to manage it: 1) Talk to colleagues. Every single person around you has been rejected. Share the stories, hear the worst, hear the eventual outcomes, laugh, cry, joke, it’s all ok. 2) Have a plan for the rejection notification. If you are going to check on grant scores, do it with a buddy, or with a pint of ice cream at a defined time, ideally during working hours. Getting rejections on the weekend when you are hiking, or playing with your kids can really dampen the mood (this is generally my opinion for work-life balance). 3) Get in on the other side of rejection. Reviewing grants and papers has made me more aware of how the process works and understanding of the reviewers. Doing it myself has made me much better at understanding the feedback that I get and also thinking of reviewers as people and not all knowing beings. 4) Fight it. I’m still working on this one, but sometimes things are not fair and in those scenarios, asking for clarification, self-promoting and pushing can be helpful. Talking with colleagues about this and learning more about the reviewing process can really aid in understanding the complexities of rejection and determining the fairness of the process specific to your circumstances.
Set boundaries: This is something that I still struggle with and work on everyday. An academic career is one that can totally consume you in a lot of different ways, whether its when you’re prepping a class, working on a presentation, editing a grant, responding to emails, or reading papers, every element of this job can take all of your time. However, you have the ability to define that time, and I recommend embracing it and trying out different strategies to find what might work best for you. The flexibility of the job affords many luxuries in how you can integrate the work with your personal schedule and is a huge advantage, but it also can creep into your personal life. Setting boundaries both within the work that I do and in how my work intersects with my life has been an important part of enjoying what I do while getting better at it. Specifically, things like having assigned times and locations to check email (i.e. on my computer during work hours), setting mutual expectations with mentees and colleagues about availability and communication, and scheduling defined finite times to work on given tasks have helped me to better balance my work. I won’t say that I am an expert at this by any means, but I look back at my efficiency at the start compared to now and it is so much higher, and this is in large part due to my ability to set limits on the things that seemed illimitable in the beginning.
Enjoy it! Since starting my lab in 2014, I have moved my lab two times. When I have done this, I think back so fondly on when I was first starting and hope to recapture a little of that magic again. It is the first time that you get to define everything about the research that you want to do. You get to pursue the question you want to answer with the people you want to work with in the setting and with the lab equipment and techniques that you want to use. It’s so incredibly fun and though it seems and is stressful, it is true scientific freedom, so take advantage of it and revel in the joy as much as possible. Remember that you are discovering something no one has ever discovered before and you are defining how you want to do that.
Published May 5, 2022 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
Lessons Learned
by Monica Lee, University of Illinois at Chicago
My name is Monica Lee and I have been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) since February 2019. I relocated to Chicago after a memorable postdoctoral experience in the lab of Dr. William Sessa at Yale University. My training did not cover how to direct science in the event of a pandemic – I doubt that topic was ever considered for anyone. Rather, our training prepares us to deal with challenges, where COVID-19 is an extreme example of the uncontrollable variables that can arise when starting a lab. They say that with experience comes insight. So, with that said, I offer here a few of my own ‘lessons learned’ to those that are now transitioning toward independence.
Research is a team effort. One of the most difficult decisions as a new PI is putting together your initial team. Starting a new lab comes with the opportunity to set a culture that will be determined by the group composition. I have been extremely lucky and fortunate enough to have selected a talented and motivated set of team players in my lab. Not only have they maintained a high scientific standard, but they have created an energetic and supportive research environment – even at a 6ft distance. 😉
You will never know the answer to everything. I had this false sense as a graduate student that once I obtained a doctorate degree, everything would become clearer. If anything, it was the complete opposite. As I progressed into my postdoctoral training, it made me realize the limitless constraints of science. The transition to independence was even more daunting, as many questions will not have an absolute correct answer. Regardless of the challenge at hand, our training provides the skillsets to find a solution. Keep asking the right questions and the information gathered will help guide your path.
It is okay to be scientifically uncomfortable. One of my former mentors told me that if I was ever too comfortable with my research, then I was likely doing something wrong. Another mentor had a general rule of “doing one thing you know, and one thing you don’t.” I think the overall takeaway is that venturing into what you don’t know is the core of this career path. The goal of any research project is to discover an unknown that will often require venturing into new topics and techniques. In many ways, I identify as a super senior graduate student. There is a constant learning and evolving that comes with science that may initially feel daunting, but I have learned to embrace that anxiety as excitement.
There is more than one way to crack an egg. Growing up in elementary school, I remember playing the “24 Game Challenge,” a tournament-style competition where you are given four numbers (whole numbers between 1 and 9) to make 24 using any of the four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). Most of the game cards have more than one solution. While this seemingly simple arithmetic game assisted in number pattern discovery toward 24, this concept holds strong in scientific discovery. So, when an obstacle arises, just remember that there is usually always more than one way to approach a scientific question. Just like the “24 Game Challenge.”
It is what it is. This phrase has been with me since graduate school and continues to persist. We are often disappointed when an experiment does not work, or a tested hypothesis does not pan out in the expected direction. In these moments of frustration, I constantly remind myself and my team that “it is what it is.” While things may not have ‘worked,’ the ‘negative outcome’ can often direct the course toward success by providing an improvement for the next iteration. It is what it is.
Trust your gut. As much as scientists would like to quantify every event, some things are left to your intuition. The scientific career is more than deciding what disease to study or what antibody to purchase for your current assay. As research scientists, we become dedicated to a path that involves time-intensive training in interdisciplinary topics that usually includes some sacrifices. The transition to independence and starting a lab also involves major subjective decisions (e.g., Where to relocate? First-hire of your lab? etc.…). Hence, everyone will have a unique set of priorities where often the ‘correct’ answer is what is best for you. Just as a shift in degrees can change the course of a ship, your decisions are your own journey --as long as you are the captain of that ship.
And don’t forget to enjoy the process. It can take a while to build a research lab and we may always be looking ahead. But remember to pause and take a moment. Those snapshots are unique to you and will be part of your own venture toward independence.
Published March 10, 2022 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
Lessons Learned
by Miranda Good, Tufts Medical Center
My name is Miranda Good, and I am an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Molecular Cardiology Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. I started out at the University of Arizona where I completed both my undergraduate and PhD in the laboratory of Dr. Janis Burt, PhD. I began my post-doctoral work in Dr. Brant Isakson’s laboratory at the University of Virginia where I received an F32 and then a K99/R00. I transitioned to the R00 and started my own laboratory in January 2020 here at Tufts Medical Center.
Here are a few lessons that I’ve learned along the way:
1. Go with the flow! One of the lessons I’ve learned multiple times along my training and career is that you can think you know exactly what you want, but sometimes life takes you a different direction. As a sophomore at the University of Arizona I started looking for research opportunities to boost my CV to apply for medical school, which had been my dream since I was 9 years old. I joined a research lab and had such a great time learning science, doing experiments and building friendships that I switched to getting a PhD. Then during my PhD, I said to everyone that I didn’t want to run my own laboratory and writing grants day in and day out sounded horrible. Well…that changed too! I wrote my first fellowship grant halfway through my PhD and realized that I liked to see the ideas written out and organized. I still love doing the actual experiments, especially microvascular surgery. I still love writing grants! It’s important to be prepared, but adaptable as you gain new life experiences.
2. Problem solving. My best example of how I learned this lesson is the Covid-19 pandemic. I moved to a new city where I knew one person and was even further away from my family. I started my laboratory in January of 2020, which I soon found out was a bit of a crazy time to start a lab! I hired two team members, the first started on March 2 and second started March 16. On March 16 all non-essential operations (including labs) were shut down for the next four months. We got to perform exactly one experiment in the lab before we started quarantine-- One! To say the least, this was not the plan. But we made it through because we found a way around all our issues that popped up. We borrowed supplies from other labs, we found a way to get our animal facility to start breeding our mice during the quarantine so that we’d have mice when we got back to the lab, and we created training videos and detailed protocols for everything so that we were ready to hit the ground running. Problem solving is probably one of the best life skills that you learn during a scientific career. Sometimes life throws you punches, but we can punch back. Find the alternative solution to the problem and don’t let the hard times keep you from moving forward.
3. Scientific environment is more important than scientific topic. If you are working in a laboratory where you don’t like the people around you, you are going to find it hard to like doing science. It is of the utmost importance to find a mentor that supports you as a person and as a scientist. When choosing my post-doctoral laboratory, what ended up playing the biggest role in my decision making was the communication between myself, my PI, and my lab mates. While I knew I wanted to stay in cardiovascular physiology, it wasn’t the most important thing. Everyone does cool and exciting work, but not everyone is going to be a good fit as your mentor. You want to find mentors that are supportive of your goals, who make their expectations clear, and can openly communicate with you in both good and bad times. In addition to the mentor, the laboratory team and department are also important, where positive support and encouragement are indispensable. Having people to celebrate your and their successes but also vent out the frustrations that come with science (and we all know there are a lot of those!) helps keep you going. You want a group to build everyone up and not put anyone down because science is a team sport and this is important at every step of the way, whether it is as an incoming PhD student or starting your own laboratory group.
4. Science is not 24/7. Last, but not least, the most important lesson I’ve learned along the way is to prioritize mental health. Your mental health is the most important thing and finding the balance of work and life and down time is a challenge, but something all of us need to focus on. Take your vacation time and take your weekends (or normal days off). And when you go on vacation, try and make it a real separation from the lab. This is often easier said than done, but having that time away from lab allows your brain to reset and when you get back your fresh mind and body will be more creative and ready to hit the ground running. While our schedules are often not 9-5, I try to encourage myself and my team to find the balance. Sometimes an experiment will take 12 hours, in which case, leave early on Friday or come in later the following day. Are there experiments that require you to come in both days on the weekend? Then take a day off during the week. I have found it vital that I check in with myself and team members and make sure that we aren’t pushing too hard and that we take some time when we need it because a well-rested and healthy lab member is far more beneficial and effective than one who isn’t.
These are just a few lessons l have learned and I’m sure there will be many more to come. Our journeys are all different, and I hope we can continue embracing all our different paths and encourage each other to keep doing amazing science!
Keep calm and science on!
Published January 13, 2022 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
Lessons Learned
by Morgan Salmon, University of Michigan
For most scientists, there are defining moments throughout our careers that drive our passion, intellectual drive, and keep us motivated and continuing to pursue such a difficult, life-consuming career. For some, it is that paper in a top-tier journal or that major grant that really sets the stage for career advancement and success. For myself, my defining moments have centered around meeting key people that have influenced the course of my career by driving my love for science and the scientific process. I can still remember 20 years later rotating in the lab of my doctoral mentor and just falling in love with science and the scientific process. It was everything from systematically trouble-shooting laboratory issues, her demonstration of a technique I had never performed before, to having coffee in the afternoons with the lab and discussing projects. There is no question to me that she was a pivotal person in my career because she helped me to fall in love with science and the scientific process. I think it’s important to first remember as scientists that we do research because we love science-- the process of science, the working through issues, and the small successes-- they all make up the whole of what makes science truly amazing, difficult, but yet one of the most fulfilling things a person could do. There have been times throughout my career that I struggle with that love, but remembering my mentor and her influence definitely helps me to keep my eyes on the prize so to speak.
A second key lesson from her that I try to remember is that part of my job as I move through academic research is that I want to influence younger scientists to be as passionate about science as I am. Like most high school students who loved science growing up, I had originally imagined being a medical doctor. I had no idea, for various reasons, that a career in science was actually better suited for my thought processes and personality. It’s easy to forget in the whole pandemonium of academic science, the grants, papers, meetings, and conferences, that one of the most important things we do as scientists is to motivate and inspire younger scientists to be better than ourselves. I have been an Assistant Professor first in the Department of Surgery at the University of Virginia and now at the University of Michigan in the Department of Cardiac Surgery, and one of the most important tasks I do daily is mentoring the next generation of researchers. I feel that it is important, especially given the easy access scientists have now to technology, that we continue to teach how to critically think and work through a given scientific problem to find a solution. Now that solution might not be the one we ideally envisioned, but as a young scientist it is important to be able to think through the next steps in the process or troubleshoot to come up with a viable solution given failure. Critical thinking is not a process that can come from technology, and it was something my various mentors helped me to develop over years of research. That is why I believe it is important to promote mentorship at all stages of academic development. I know even as an Assistant Professor, I still need great mentors to help me as I begin to develop my new laboratory at the University of Michigan. In exchange, I feel it is important for me to promote and develop young scientists, so they excel in their chosen scientific pursuits.
I also feel it is important to interact and promote scientific careers at the high school level because you never know whether a student you mentor could choose a career as a scientist. It is exciting to me to think that an amazing project I judged at a high school science fair could one day turn into the next great scientific researcher. However, with that kind of interaction or in any mentoring relationship, it is important to pay attention to how to correctly bring out the best in your mentees. It is important to both guide and edify mentees to build them up as scientists with the hopes that they will want to continue the academic tradition one day. I want to promote and lift up my mentees scientifically, so that they also fall in love with science the way I did during graduate school.
While I continue to pursue academic research, my path toward independence has been unconventional and uncommon but has been great for me as a scientist. After graduate school, I had the opportunity to postdoc with an amazing laboratory at the University of Virginia. During that time, my current long-term collaborator, who is a cardiac surgeon, was looking for a scientist who he could have a partnership with and someone to help run his lab. While it’s not conventional to have these kinds of partnerships or long-term collaborations, it has offered me many great opportunities to publish and work in a field I would have otherwise not chosen. Therefore, in science it is important to be open to possibilities, to be flexible, and to remember that not everyone needs to follow pathways that have been the norm. For myself, I have benefitted from the collaboration by receiving mentorship and gaining access to materials I would have had a difficult time obtaining otherwise. In return, I run both my lab, my projects, and his lab as well. Yes, it is unconventional, but it works well for us, and we both benefit from the relationship. This unconventional path also brought both of us to the University of Michigan in the middle of Covid. It was definitely harder than normal to move in the middle of a global pandemic, but the labs have been offered really amazing opportunities from the move because we have been flexible and were willing to move at an unconventional time. These possibilities include new collaborations from the move that we might not have had if we had stayed at our current institution. I definitely did not imagine after living in the South my whole life that I would be moving to Michigan, but I did move and it’s been amazing for both myself and my collaborator. All of these great possibilities came from being flexible career wise.
My final suggestion is to always be writing-- write papers, write grants, write reviews, just write! It is easier to keep your “grant writing” skills going if you are constantly thinking about that skill and working to master it. I feel like these skills are also constantly changing and that to be the best at writing science, whether it be papers or grants, one needs to be constantly working at it. It’s hard to do, believe me I know from experience, but scientific writing is best when it is constantly maintained and perfected as the requirements change with the needs of a journal or granting agency.
To end on a metaphor, I see a career in science to be like a rose bush, with beautiful, amazing end products that everyone admires but that take time and effort to bring to fruition. Meanwhile, it’s also important to watch out for the thorns that can draw blood along the way. Science is not productive without “blood, sweat, and tears” but I think it’s also truly amazing and a passion-filled way to work for a living. Thank you for allowing me to share some of my wisdom.
Published September 9, 2021 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
Lessons Learned
by Mary Wallingford, Tufts University School of Medicine
Dear Colleagues,
Thank you for this opportunity to share some of the lessons that I’ve learned as a new PI and Assistant Professor at Tufts Medical Center (TMC). My lab pursues questions related to the vascular biology of pregnancy. Much of our work focuses specifically on the placenta, which is a highly vascularized organ that forms de novo with each pregnancy and mediates the transport of nutrients, oxygen, and waste between the maternal and fetal circulations. Normal placental vascular development is essential for fetal growth and development, as well as maternal cardiovascular health during pregnancy.
My lab is located in the Mother Infant Research Institute (MIRI) at TMC. The MIRI is a truly unique department which brings together basic, translational, and clinical scientists who study all aspects of pregnancy health and pregnancy outcomes, ranging from prepregnancy maternal metabolism in Dr. Patrick Catalano’s Lab to neonatal salivary diagnostics in Dr. Jill Maron’s Lab. Within the wider Tufts Health Sciences Campus community, I’m also a member of the Molecular Cardiology Research Institute (MCRI), the Cell, Molecular and Developmental Biology graduate program, the Pharmaceutics and Drug Design graduate program, and Tufts University School of Medicine Ob/Gyn. If you want to learn more about any of these programs, please reach out – I would be happy to hear from you!
In order to reflect on lessons that I’ve learned in my first three years as a PI, I think we first need to acknowledge that this last year of laboratory start-up coincided with the global SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. The World Health Organization officially declared the global COVID-19 pandemic on March 11th of 2020. As we enter the summer of 2021, pandemic-related crises and related safety measures are still underway in many countries around the world. With respect to scientific research, the pandemic necessitated widespread laboratory shutdowns. Many of us quickly adapted to previously unthinkable changes in the workplace, home, and academic environments. In the US over 580,000 lives have been lost. If you have lost a loved one to the pandemic, or are dealing with or caring for someone who is struggling with the long-term sequelae, I sincerely wish you continued strength.
Leading a lab during the pandemic has been an unprecedented and uniquely challenging experience. So, what lessons have I learned in these first three years?
First, I’ve learned that my lab members, colleagues, and collaborators are amazing individuals who are capable of braving unimaginable adversity and persisting. TMC does a high volume of human subjects research and many of our PIs are physician scientists. These investigators not only managed to transition their labs to remote research, but they also served essential roles in the pandemic by providing medical care and helping the hospitals adapt to the ever-changing needs of the pandemic. I think there was (is) also an important personal and social element to workplace relationships during the pandemic. Although providing medical care and advancing research were and continue to be paramount at TMC as we emerge from this crisis, I am equally impressed by the kindness, sympathy, and support that my colleagues and collaborators have demonstrated to each other. The main take away lesson is that when choosing a department to call your home, the people and their character may be one of the most important things to consider.
Second, I’ve learned that mentors who are truly inspired by science and driven to support others are absolutely priceless. My doctoral training was in mammalian embryology in the Mager Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in the Veterinary and Animal Science Department (VASCI). I worked in the lab of Dr. Jesse Mager and was mentored by Jesse as well as Dr. Kimberly Tremblay with whom we had joint lab meetings. During my last year of PhD research, Jesse gave me the freedom and support needed to perform a study later published in Developmental Dynamics (Wallingford et al 2013), which greatly influenced the course of my career. We produced a schematic of in utero peri-implantation mouse development that revealed several intriguing aspects of implantation, and ultimately solidified my interest in studying pregnancy. I then decided to obtain postdoctoral training in vascular development and disease, aiming to eventually apply this perspective to pregnancy and placenta research in my own independent lab.
I joined the lab of Dr. Cecilia Giachelli in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington in 2012, and again was extremely fortunate to find a supportive mentor who encouraged my training and independence. We focused on a fundamental question at first: how does phosphorus, an essential element, get to the developing baby? Several years later Ceci’s generosity and support led to a successful K99 application, and I transitioned my R00 award to TMC in 2018. In addition to Ceci, many people at the University of Washington contributed to a successful and enjoyable postdoc experience. It is an absolutely fantastic place to do a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular research. I was so fortunate to be able to learn from many great minds in addition to Ceci through training grants and local events, such as Dr. David Dichek who co-mentored me through an appointment on his training grant, Dr. Michael Chin, Dr. Mark Majesky, Dr. Chuck Murray, Dr. Ying Zheng, and of course the late Dr. Stephen M. Schwartz. I can’t tell you how many times during this last year I thought back to Steve’s encouraging and inspirational words. Steve supported my research vision and lauded my creativity and commitment; I will forever be grateful for his encouragement, as well as ALL of the seemingly random intriguing scientific questions that he would pose through an impromptu phone call, philosophical questions at a student seminar, or even at local political activism events. The main lesson here is twofold: to trainees I recommend that you ask many questions and try to listen with clarity. Years later you might find unexpected utility in advice given to you long ago. Conversely, PIs should remind ourselves to take time to reflect on the unique and expansive impact that our words can have.
Finally, I’ve learned that each person’s perspective and personal journey is unique. This has been especially evident over the last year as people have dealt with highly varied and asynchronous challenges. Even beyond the pandemic, this has become increasingly obvious to me as I participate in multiple different academic programs/departments and contribute to many collaborative teams. In this career we aim to become increasingly specialized. I’ve found that the most successful grants are those with a strong team in which people with multiple diverse areas of expertise work together. Communicating across disciplines is an essential and important challenge. In addition to differences among the fundamental knowledge, preconceptions, and perspectives harbored by individuals, groups of people also have unique sets of academic norms. One department may be run democratically with equal voice among faculty, others may be run with a more hierarchical structure. A fundamental research premise in one department which is so well accepted that it’s no longer acknowledged, may in turn be a completely foreign concept in another. I think the overarching lesson here is that communicating with colleagues, sharing your knowledge and ideas, and listening with an open mind is likely to support innovative, successful research programs. I can’t say that I’ve figured out HOW to do this yet, but I can say that I’ve begun to recognize the importance and I’m fully committed to moving forward.
Sincerely,
Mary Wallingford
Published July 1, 2021 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
Lessons Learned
by Carmen Halabi, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
My name is Carmen Halabi. I have been an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis since July 2018. I am very grateful to NAVBO for giving me the opportunity to share some of the lessons I’ve learned since starting my independent lab as a physician-scientist. Having said that, I consider myself only beginning to embark on this journey and I have yet a lot to learn.
I would like to start off by saying that despite 18+ years of higher education (undergraduate, MD/PhD, residency, fellowship/postdoc), starting a laboratory has been one of the most challenging things I have done. No amount of training fully prepares you for what running a lab entails (having trainees, hiring/firing, budgeting, writing manuscripts/grants, taking care of a broken freezer or microscope and on and on…). Although a lot of it is learning by fire, I have been very fortunate to have had a lot of support and guidance from mentors, colleagues and administrators. Here are a few lessons I have learned along the way.
A supportive environment is of paramount importance. Whether you stay at the same institution or move institutions for your first faculty position, it’s important that you feel at home. One way this is accomplished, especially if you’re the only one working in a particular field in your division/department, is for your colleagues and chief/chair to recognize the value of and believe in what you’re doing. In addition, it’s important to have a group of allies, people who want to see you succeed because there will certainly be days when you question whether you can do this. This leads me to another point, which is to make sure to ask for help when you need it. People won’t know that you need something unless you ask for it and I have yet to encounter an individual not willing to help. Finally, support comes in many forms, in addition to having supportive mentors and colleagues, one point that pertains especially to physician-scientists is support from a time-protection standpoint. When negotiating a faculty position, make sure to ask not only what percent clinical vs. research time the position involves (25% vs. 75% or 20% vs. 80%, etc.), but also what that looks like. 25% clinical effort varies significantly from one institution to another.
Motivation is more important than skill when hiring people. This is rather simple, you can teach someone how to do a western or dissect a vessel, but it is very difficult to get them motivated if they don’t have an inner drive. Unfortunately, I have found it difficult to gauge motivation from an interview.
Learn to delegate when possible in an effort to use time more efficiently. A common advice I receive is to be at the bench doing experiments for as long as possible. While this is sound advice because you’re probably the most efficient member of the lab when starting out, it’s also important to not want to do everything yourself because as you get established you will have additional responsibilities (reviewing manuscripts, being on committees, etc.), which will distract you from a very important aspect of your career and the topic of my next lesson, writing.
Write. Write. Write. I’m stressing this point especially for myself With growing daily tasks, it’s easier or you feel more productive checking several little things off your to-do list (such as responding to an email, taking care of an animal protocol, etc.) than one big thing that will not get done in one sitting such as writing a manuscript or a grant. However, it’s crucial to carve out specific time to write because that’s what’s going to get you ahead in the end.
Don’t compare yourself to others (too much); this is a marathon, not a sprint. Finally, we all need a frame of reference to gauge how we’re doing. In fact, when reviewing candidates for any position, we look at their CV’s and consider what they’ve accomplished or where “they should be” at this stage of their career, however, it’s important to remember that every person’s “life” situation is different. Being stressed about falling “behind” may only decrease your enthusiasm and negatively affect your productivity rather than help you move forward. Keep your eye on the prize and set specific goals.
These are only a few of the lessons I have learned. There is a lot of advice out there. Just remember that what works for others may not work for you. Take the time to know yourself and move forward. There’s no question that having a lab is hard work and follows a bumpy road with many rejections and disappointments but remember why you’re doing this in the first place; the rewards are many!!
An additional resource to consult as a postdoc/junior faculty is: Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty, Second Edition https://www.hhmi.org/science-education/programs/making-right-moves
Published May 6, 2021 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
Lessons Learned
by Yi Fan, University of Pennsylvania
I appreciate the opportunity offered by NAVBO for me to share a reflection of my lessons learned. I am currently an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Through my experience in the last 7 years as a faculty member, I have learned how to manage myself to be an independent scientist, a laboratory head, and a teacher. My advice to new faculty can be summarized in four themes: 1) make a practical plan toward your ultimate goal, 2) overcome frustrations, 3) build a nutritious environment for mentoring, and 4) keep learning.
Think something big, and do something small. Don’t be fooled by Tom Brokaw with his quote “It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.” Considering the current funding situation, it is hard for anyone to make a buck, particularly for new faculty members. While you can keep pursuing something big to make a difference, you may need to do something small to make sure you can complete some projects, publish decent papers, and secure several grants in a timely manner. This will help you establish a track record you much need at this stage, which can serve as a foundation for your future success. I would suggest you to prioritize all of your research projects, to analyze the strengths of everyone in your group, and to leverage your available resources to draft a practical plan, by which you focus efforts to publish your first papers and get your initial grants from federal or private funding agencies that have small start-up funds for young investigators.
Always too early to give up. The most common word that could characterize the academic lives of most faculty members at their early stage, unfortunately, is “rejection”. The earlier you realize this truth, the easier you could handle the frustration it causes. Rejection could frequently happen to papers and grant proposals you first submit, largely due to potentially underdeveloped nature of these submissions and the unestablished reputation of your own laboratory. If you are not well prepared, the repeated rejections will be a source of a large amount of frustration and eventually damage your confidence despite your earlier success as a trainee. I have witnessed several talented junior faculty members who suffered from unsuccessful funding issues in their first three years and finally they gave up the projects and quit their academic career. I think it is always too early to give up a project or a career. There are no secrets in academic success, but just keep improving and trying. From a retrospective point of view, I recognize that I benefited a lot from the rejection rather than acceptance in my early career, which helped me identify the flaws of my initial research concepts, experimental designs, and scientific directions. In fact, the criticizing comments from peer review contributed significantly to the improvement of my initial projects, avoiding a potential bigger failure at the later stage. When you get a rejection, just take a deep breath, give up your give-up ideas, get the constructive criticisms, and move on.
Act as a mentorly boss. A faculty member has dual CEO roles in a laboratory, as a chief executive officer and a chief education officer, and the latter really matters. The fundamental task for a new faculty member is to build a research team with a nutritious environment for mentoring trainees. An encouraging, mildly stimulative environment is essential for all trainees to obtain expertise, complete work, and develop their career, which mutually promotes the success of the laboratory. Ever since I was a junior faculty, I have set goals to train promising postdoctoral fellows toward their independency. I am particularly proud that several of my former trainees, whose work had laid solid foundation for our future research, have now become tenure-track assistant professors. This patrimony may root from my previous laboratory led by my PhD advisor Dr. Paul Fox, a visionary scientist who always encourages and promotes his trainees. The essential lesson I would like to share in this part is that the success of your laboratory heavily depends on the success of your trainees’ science and career through a mentoring niche.
Stay hungry for knowledge and wisdom. Postdoc-to-faculty transition does not necessarily mean the end of training, and, from my view, rather suggests a start of a new era of self-driven education. As a new faculty member, you will need to acquire a knowledge base covering all research directions you want to explore, and more importantly, to learn wisdoms for laboratory management, science development, and trainee education. To achieve this, one of most feasible approaches is through close interaction with some senior, well-established scientists who are willing to share their research philosophy with you. For example, when I started my independent laboratory, I had joint laboratory meetings with Dr. Celeste Simon and Dr. Robert Vonderheide who are pioneers in cancer biology and immunology research and provided incredible suggestions to my academic development. The key thing is to treat yourself always as a student rather than a teacher, and staying humble and hungry will keep you accumulating knowledge and wisdom.
The most fascinating part of scientific research is the amazing journey of exploration and discovery, which is full of uncertainties that can cause the unexpected and anxiety in a scientist’s career. I hope that new faculty members can quickly develop practical skills to facilitate career progression and would then fully enjoy the journey!
Published March 11, 2021 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY SONG HU, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
First, I want to thank the NAVBO Education Committee for inviting me to contribute to the Lessons Learned series, which gives me an opportunity to reflect on my professional development in the past few years during this unusual holiday season.
I started my own research program at the University of Virginia in 2013 and was recently recruited back to my alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. I am an imaging scientist and biomedical engineer by training, and I am thankful to my mentors, collaborators, and colleagues at Washington University and the University of Virginia, who introduced me to cerebrovascular and cardiovascular research and have helped me leverage the impact of our imaging technologies in these exciting fields.
Making the transition from a trainee in a well-established lab to a junior PI who was expected to build a new research program from scratch is probably one of the biggest challenges I have ever faced in my career. Looking back, I have made some right moves but also many mistakes. I would like to take this opportunity to share some of them with those who are expecting or in the process of this transition.
Establish your own niche as early as possible. One question that you might have been repeatedly asked during faculty interviews is how you will distinguish yourself from your mentors (and peers). Indeed, identifying and establishing your own niche early in your career is key to a successful transition to an independent PI. One important piece of advice I have received is that you want to work on something that only you can do or you can do best.
Be focused but open-minded when starting your research program. As a new PI, you are likely to have access to very limited resources. Thus, be selective in your initial projects and focus on those that can best help establish your own niche. That said, be open-minded and listen to others. A core technology of our lab, which led to our first publication and helped me identify myself in the field, was inspired by my long-term collaborator, Shayn Peirce-Cottler. Through our discussions, it became clear to me that in vascular research, different technologies have been applied to assess different aspects of the microcirculation. The discrepancy in spatiotemporal resolution and contrast mechanism makes it a real challenge to integrate them to form a comprehensive view. Focusing our efforts to address this unmet challenge led to the development of multi-parametric photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) and broad applications in brain and cardiovascular diseases.
Do not let money sway your hiring decision. As repeatedly mentioned in this series, hiring is often a big challenge for new PIs. So, if you see talents, go for them without hesitation. Limited funding might be a constraint for many of us, but do not let it sway your decision. You can always find a way to support them, and your investment will be paid off!
Find the right balance between hands-on and hands-off mentoring. Different PIs have different mentoring styles, and there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. One thing that I feel important is to find a proper balance between hands-on and hands-off mentoring. Getting more involved in the initial stage can help trainees quickly adapt to a new research environment/direction and pick up necessary research skills. Gradually backing off will give them more room to experiment their own ideas, learn how to be independent, and take initiative.
Be strategic when expanding your research program. Once you pass the “surviving stage”, the next step is to thrive and transform. Be strategic when making the next moves. Always remind yourself of the big picture—where you see your lab in 5 to 10 years—and invest your efforts accordingly and wisely.
Let application drive technology development. Working at the interface of imaging and biomedicine, I would also like to share some of my own thoughts with those who aim to advance biomedicine through technology development. To date, some of the best technologies developed in our lab have been driven by important biomedical questions—the multi-parametric PAM for comprehensive characterization of the microvasculature, the head-restrained PAM for functional-metabolic imaging of the awake behaving brain, and the integrated fluorescence and photoacoustic microscopy for mechanistic understanding of the neurovascular unit. Make time out of your busy schedule to read literature, attend conferences and seminars, and exchange ideas with your collaborators, colleagues, and trainees. Identify questions that you are excited about and uniquely positioned to tackle, and make a difference using your technologies!
I hope that you find some of the lessons I learned over the years helpful, as I did when reading this series. Getting through the pandemic, we have faced unprecedented challenges, both professionally and personally. I hope you have found a way to maintain the work-life balance. Wish you a healthy and prosperous Year 2021!
Published January 14, 2021 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY TERESA SANCHEZ, WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE
My name is Teresa Sanchez and I am an Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, with a secondary appointment at the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine. I obtained my first independent position and established my laboratory initially at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School. Subsequently, for family reasons, I had to relocate to New York City, and I moved my laboratory to Weill Cornell Medicine. I am very privileged to have had the opportunity to establish my research program in two outstanding institutions and I am happy to share my experience transitioning from trainee to faculty, setting up my lab and moving my research program from Harvard Medical School to Weill Cornell Medicine.
1. Transitioning from trainee to independent investigator. Establishing and leading a laboratory requires a complex set of skills, which go beyond the ability to conduct rigorous science. As junior faculty, we continue heavily involved in data generation and analysis as well as manuscript preparation. In addition, we take on further responsibilities, such as securing extramural funding, managing and leading the laboratory, as well as teaching, and mentoring. During my PhD and Postdoctoral training, I had the opportunity to acquire a solid background in science and strong technical expertise, even lab management experience. While these skills are very important, I soon realized that they were not sufficient to successfully establish my research program and direct the laboratory. Other personal skills, such as having good strategies for efficient time management, effective communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, as well as learning to build resilience and to face and overcome obstacles, are equally important. In particular, I found that learning to efficiently manage and protect my time was pivotal in order to dedicate enough time to write and obtain grants to be able to develop my independent lines of investigation and effectively lead the team.
My advice to new principal investigators would be to, early on, dedicate time to reflect on the importance of these aspects of your personality and how they affect your work. Becoming aware of your own strengths and weaknesses is the first step to work towards improvement. I found that being able to reach out to colleagues and senior mentors to seek advice as well as participating in leadership courses in my institutions was very helpful to identify and strengthen some of my personal areas for improvement.
2. Building a team. When building the research team, I found it is very important to recruit scientists with distinct and complementary expertise and from different countries and ethnic backgrounds. As team leader, a top priority should be to foster a culture of rigor, integrity, transparency, collaboration, equity, diversity, inclusivity and a sense of community in the laboratory. In my opinion, that is the ideal environment for professional and personal growth of the individuals and the team as a whole. Useful strategies to establish these values in the laboratory are to lead by example and to emphasize early on (e.g. at the moment of the interview of the candidates) what is the mission of our laboratory, how this mission is aligned with the goals of the individual members and how critical this culture is to achieve our mission.
Having laboratory group meetings and individual meetings regularly is very important for the progression and timely completion of the projects and to assure good communication. In the laboratory meetings, it is important to encourage critical thinking, transparency and constructive criticism, always in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Overall, I find very important to focus on the positive aspects of our work to motivate the team and help promote resilience and perseverance.
When conflicts arise, the principal investigator, as an objective and neutral observer, plays a critical role in resolving the issues and building consensus. I found helpful to talk first, individually with the persons involved and then, discuss the issue openly altogether and agree on future actions.
In summary, my advice is to spare no effort to foster creativity, innovation, scientific rigor, interdisciplinary research, perseverance, resilience, a sense of community and a culture of diversity and inclusion in the lab. I have learned that these are good strategies to build a strong, motivated and productive team.
3. Balancing personal life and work. I found this aspect particularly challenging as my family was growing and I continued taking on new responsibilities at work. For instance, on a personal note, relocating my family to New York City and moving the laboratory to Weill Cornell Medicine shortly after the birth of our second child and in the midst of my first R01 renewal was especially demanding. More recently, due to the COVID19 pandemic, we have all faced and are currently facing unprecedented challenges in our professional and personal lives. While the pandemic has affected all of us in many different ways, the negative impact on the career growth of junior scientists with young children is becoming very evident. The current limited options for childcare and education are hindering junior faculty and it is disproportionally affecting female trainees and faculty, accentuating gender disparities in academic growth.
My advice to young faculty with young children scrambling to maintain their productivity during this pandemic (or other unexpected circumstances in the future) would be to encourage them to keep their perspective and not to be intimidated by the faster career progress of other scientists who may not have children. In addition, it is important for faculty to petition academic institutions to find ways to help the career growth of junior faculty with young children during this pandemic. We can make very unique and important contributions to science by mentoring and helping the next generation of young female professionals in biomedical research, which is critical to maintain a diverse and vibrant scientific community. If no action is taken, we are at high risk of losing the progress made in the last few decades to increase equity and diversity in academia.
Overall, at times during my career, it has been challenging to reconcile my professional and family responsibilities. However, I firmly believe that being a mother has given me greater perspective and has helped me to be a better scientist, mentor and team leader. My message to other female faculty establishing their labs is to keep the perspective and focus on the positive impact that raising children have on our ability to make unique and significant contributions to science.
4. Moving the laboratory. Sooner or later in our careers you will likely consider moving the lab due to professional or personal reasons. When considering other offers, look for opportunities to expand your research program and your network of collaborators. Also, make sure that there is institutional commitment and that resources to grow your career are at your disposal. When negotiating with your current and future institutions, it is important to be flexible but also to remember that you are your best advocate. Having gone through this process once, I have learned that it is critical to plan to give yourself enough time to move in order to finish pending projects and submit pending grants. If possible, negotiate with both institutions having a co-appointment to facilitate the transition.
5. Concluding remarks. I hope that sharing some of the lessons that I learned establishing my laboratory is helpful to other scientists. I always found it very enriching to learn from other people’s experience and I appreciated the honest advice that I received from my colleagues and senior mentors. However, I personally find that it is also very important to be creative and genuine when crafting our careers and not to feel intimidated if our career path has not been conventional according to pre-set standards. As the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado wrote in 1912: “Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada más”; “Traveler, there is no path, the path is made by walking. Traveler, your footprints create the path, your footprints and nothing else.”
Published November 5, 2020 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY BHAMA RAMKHELAWON, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LANGONE MEDICAL CENTER
I am thankful to NAVBO for giving me the opportunity to share my experience with you in this column. I invite early career fellows to read theses sections from all the past contributors. They are REAL lesson learned. I feel it is worth mentioning that I write these words in August 2020 during the unfortunate COVID-19 pandemic that struck us with a pounding weight and burdened us with many uncertainties for the future. There have been may lessons learned from this pandemic. Decisions were made based on observation and data collected during the initial wave of infections. As we gathered more evidence, we became more familiar with the mode of infection and contamination of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We were then able to refine treatment of patients and make more informed decision to the general public.
This scenario will most likely portray the journey of a junior to a senior scientist. There will be many first times seasoned with complex choices, round-about, painful moments, rejections, but as hard as all these seem to be in the beginning, with careful observation, patience and resilience, you will eventually have “Veni, Vidi, Vici” as your motto. My colleagues have all provided valuable insights into measures to adopt to trace a successful trajectory as an independent investigator. I would like to take this space to share new perspectives in this spectrum of initiatives that provide guidance and encourage opportunities. I emphasize on these specific points below:
“Professional personality” etiquette. As my colleagues have rightly depicted, networking is one of the important pieces of the puzzle in becoming a successful principal investigator. However, successful meet and greet seem to be facilitated for individuals with outgoing/extrovert personality traits. Personality becomes an important factor. We all evolve in a spectrum of characters-from the most introverts and shy to the exuberant extroverts. We have to recognize our personality and develop a “professional personality” if we fall more in the introvert zones. You will spend a lot of time asking, requesting and criticizing. To editors, collaborators, students, fellows, mentors. Develop this professional personality trait. Practice at asking and questioning. Practice at demonstrating excitement about your research. Practice in your daily routine exercises for example when you order coffee, try to ask for something additional or question how, where coffee is made. Watch and learn. Like what we did with COVID-19. When you leave the lab, you can drop the professional coat. As human beings we tend to reciprocate previous situations and experiences. For those who unfortunately were unlucky and experienced bad mentorship during their training, we sometimes tend to reciprocate these in our lab. Take the opportunity to take a new direction and Recreate instead of reciprocating. We take the best from our past but we should also drop the worse. Make this become your professional trait.
Be organized. Organization is the holy grail of optimal time management. This might seem obvious for individuals with management training but just within couple of years in your scientific leadership role, you will be faced with piles of information to collect- scientific results, dossiers on personnel, finance records, the tenth version of the manuscript or grant proposal… keeping track is important. We will forget and spend hours screening your emails for important information. Take good habit of recording and tracking everything properly and your team will follow.
Trust your results. In our work, we build on what others have discovered. But if we go back in time, these were first time discoveries for these scientists. Some of which you might consider groundbreaking and sometimes appear surprising to you. Details matter. Trust your results and don’t be afraid if your findings seem a bit provocative. With the era of powerful new tools available for in-depth analysis, you might indeed expose new findings that will change the way scientists thought in your field. These are the most exciting moments. Keep exploring.
Be thankful. Express gratitude. Mentors will take time to advise, guide, provide feedback etc. It is important to be thankful not just out of curtesy but it also reflects on the importance of what they did for you. And you will take this time to give to others, your students and fellows. Be thankful to yourself, this journey is tough with many ups and downs. Celebrate the ups, fight the downs. Watch, learn and succeed.
Published September 3, 2020 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY JULIE PHILLIPPI, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
I’m grateful to the NAVBO Education Committee for the invitation to write and share a reflection of my lessons learned. I have been a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine for almost 13 years. In that time, I have learned how to embrace several challenges. In time, perceived disadvantages became strengths that I learned to own and celebrate openly with a sense of pride. After taking inventory of my lessons learned, my message to new faculty can be summarized in four themes: 1) Tune in to what gives you energy, 2) Proactively seek situations that favor serendipity, 3) Don’t shy away from non-linear career paths, and 4) Prioritize relationships.
Take notice of what brings you energy and invest yourself there. Experiencing joy can go hand in hand with energy, and both can emerge when one or a group works in “flow.” The emerging concept of flow can be described as a balance between high challenge and high skill. While in flow, focus and productivity are high, and enjoyment is derived from the work. A unique energy is palpable. The mind is open and poised for active growth. Though flow can be achieved with intentional practice, commitment to a shared purpose can conjure flow organically. There can be joy in little moments that renew energy. Perhaps it’s making the acquaintance of potential new collaborator. A smile from a colleague who is usually serious. Moments of silence when working side by side. Where one draws energy has a lot to do with personality. Make a mental note of these joyful experiences and recall them as needed to draw energy.
Create opportunities that favor serendipity. Most of us have a story about an experience of serendipity. An event or occurrence that transpired seemingly by chance, with no other logical explanation. Recalling a serendipitous event invokes a positive feeling. Perhaps it was that first chance encounter with a now close collaborator, a “right place at the right time” kind of interaction. Maybe an unexpected experimental outcome led to a key observation that opened up an entirely new line of inquiry. Serendipity can bring forth joy into your work. How can one move about a career in such a way that increases opportunities to experience serendipity?
One idea is simply be actively open to new experiences and be willing to step out of a comfort zone. One example from my own experience is when I chose to meet with a guest seminar speaker somewhat as a favor and service to my Institute. My perspective is that saying “yes” can foster collegiality. (Side note: gracefully saying “no” is also important for professional development and shaping healthy working relationships.) On this particular occasion, the guest speaker held a role as Editor-in-Chief for a high impact journal. I approached the meeting with a simple intention to chat about the publishing field. By the end of the meeting, I had a recommendation to become an Associate Editor at a new sister journal. That simple 30-minute meeting led to an entire new opportunity for professional growth. My advice is to be open, meet with guest speakers, and attend seminars outside of your home Department. It need not always be a calculated pre-conceived strategy. You never really know who might reveal or open the next door for you.
Be open to non-linear academic career paths. This next opinion may be controversial, but I think academia places too much importance on pure independence in the overall value of a scientist and as a basis for advancement. When I first joined the faculty, it was as Research Assistant Professor in the non-tenure stream. I functioned initially in a lab manager role tasked with helping to establish a new research program with an early career surgeon-scientist. In this role, I was also afforded substantial latitude to develop independent research projects. These early efforts in the background led to a transition to the tenure stream and writing proposals as a PI. At the same time, I was collaboratively designing experiments and co-writing proposals together with the surgeon as PI. This symbiotic arrangement evolved into a highly efficient and productive multi-PI group with my surgeon partner and I each landing multiple NIH awards. Though some may have viewed this arrangement as too “dependent,” the partnership was fulfilling, prolific, and compatible with career advancement. Importantly, it was best for the science we were working together to understand. Individual ideas and creativity are undeniably important in establishing oneself academically. One should also develop and practice self-reliance because an opportunity that challenges you to function more independently may arise. However, I think clinically impactful research is a team contact sport. To me this means that when one’s ideas are extended and shared with trusted colleagues, they touch and blend with others’ ideas and perspectives. Breakthroughs are made, partnerships are nurtured, and multiple lives are positively impacted. I believe there is room in one’s career to grow individually and be a part of a something bigger than yourself. It requires a specific chemistry of personalities, selflessness at times, and importantly, trust.
Partnerships depend on building and maintaining trust. Finally, I have lesson learned about partnerships. Academia requires strategy but one need not play games. It is a fact that honesty and transparency are key ingredients of trust. What I have learned is how essential upholding these values truly are for maintaining partnerships. I encourage you to practice gratitude when others display trust in you. When broken, trust is difficult if not impossible to repair. Trust can waver without breaking and, with a renewal of honesty and transparency, can emerge stronger and deepen, thus enabling a partnership to evolve. When you find trust with a person, protect it, continually nurture it, and let them know you treasure it, because you have something precious and irreplaceable.
Published May 14, 2020 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY AMBER STRATMAN, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
My name is Amber Stratman, and I have been an Assistant Professor at Washington University School of Medicine since December 2018. Time has flown by, and while I’m still learning to navigate many aspects of being a new PI, I’m happy to share some of my ‘Lessons Learned’ about accepting a job, the importance of community, and myself. So, with that in mind…
Congrats! You’re on the job market! My number one piece of advice when choosing your new position is to understand the expectations of the job you are taking and the community of people you are joining. This might seem like obvious advice, and one might think that the definition of ‘success’ is fairly ubiquitous in science, but it’s not. There are so many different types of institutions, positions, job descriptions, departmental cultures, and expectations it’s almost overwhelming. Ask questions, even if you think they are silly. Start the position you chose with your eyes open to as many aspects of your future home as you can. As part of this process, reach out to future colleagues, other recent faculty hires (even if you don’t know them well), and senior mentors to get answers to questions you have. Do the research on your potential new home, and remember to ask for what you need to succeed.
That said, no one can fully prepare you for what it is going to be like to run a lab. It’s hard. Very few people are trained as managers before you’re thrust into a position where you have trainees… and budgets… and teaching… and grants to write… and the list goes on, and on, and on! … Accept now that you are going to make mistakes. You’re going to hire the wrong person and have to fire them; you’re going to follow an unproductive idea, have a bad day, have to say no; you’re going to be sick, have to prioritize your time in tough situations, and let people down; you’re going to have a lot of days with rejections, days you aren’t sure what you’re doing, and possibly even days you want to quit.
BUT you’ll also have successes, and find you have allies, both expected and unexpected; you’ll have ideas that take off, trainees that succeed, and hard-fought battles you’ve won; you’ll have days that make the difficult one’s worth it and remind you why you chose science in the first place. The important thing through all of this, is not being afraid to ask for help. Go to a management or a mentoring workshop, take a grant writing course, seek advice from your support network. Spend time building the culture and community of people around you, both near and far. These are the people who will not only help you navigate the hard decisions and days, but who will give you genuine advice and celebrate your success. And do the same for them.
Because—one of the hardest things about this job is the feeling that you are behind (even if you aren’t!). That success will never happen, that you’re not going to finish that paper or get funding; that your research is moving too slowly or that you just can’t pull your ideas together to submit that grant. The emails never stop. The deadlines never stop. The requests for your time never stop.
BUT sometimes you have to. It’s ok to take time off. It’s ok to spend time with family or friends away from work—there are always more deadlines, and emails can wait. We all know this job takes hard work and commitment, but it is also okay to have a life outside of running your lab—when needed rest, reset, and come back recharged.
During the first few years of your lab, you are going to get a lot of advice—some good, some bad, some well-meaning but possibly out of touch, and a lot that is completely unsolicited. But I will let you in on a secret—no one has it all figured out. Everyone only knows what works for themselves. There are as many different paths to success as there are different types of people. Follow your own internal compass. You know your work, your strengths, your novelty, and your limits. Trust yourself.
This brings me to my final point—and for me this is the most important—don’t let imposter syndrome rule you and your decisions. Follow your ideas, do your controls, think boldly, and don’t second guess your seat at the table.
Some additional resources outside of NAVBO:
https://futurepislack.wordpress.com
https://newpislack.wordpress.com
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/about_grants.htm
https://www.nsf.gov/funding/azindex.jsp
http://lab-management.embo.org/dates
Published March 5, 2020 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY SARA NUNES VASCONCELOS, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
My name is Sara Nunes Vasconcelos and I have been an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto since 2014 and a Scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute since 2012. It has been an amazing journey and I have learned a lot.
In reading the Lessons learned from other PIs I found that a number of ‘lessons’ really resonated with me, like the value of choosing the right place, seeking out mentoring, making time to write, and finding out which resources are available at your institution, etc. I’d like to add a few things that I learned that may be of value to others as well.
Seek advice but only follow what makes sense to you. When I first started and shared my grant with more seasoned PIs who also sat on committee meeting panels (known as study section in the US) I was taken aback by the somewhat contradictory feedback I received. It was very confusing! When I expressed this to my colleague (and fellow NAVBO member) Myron Cybulsky I heard: “Sara, there are many ways to skin a cat, you have to find out what works for you.” And I have been following that advice ever since - thanks, Myron! This is true not just for grants, but for hiring, presenting, teaching, etc. Just because someone has been doing something successfully for a long time does not mean that the same approach will necessarily work for you. In other words, there are no formulas!
Celebrate every achievement. This job can be challenging and is replete with rejections (grants, manuscripts, awards). Do not let these obscure your view of the big picture! I find it helps to celebrate every accomplishment, especially those of your trainees.
Expand your research. I realized I was often limited in my day-to-day interactions in terms of the people that I sought feedback from and that this gave me a limited (and perhaps field-specific) perspective on things. So, recently I decided to join Twitter. I was initially skeptical but decided to give it a try anyway. I have met so many researchers from different countries and also from Toronto because of Twitter. I have also engaged in advocacy related to the state of research in Canada and I feel that I am a more integrated part of the community now. Yes, you can interact with a lot of people at scientific meetings and other venues but I found social media (Twitter, Slack) let you have those interactions every day without having to go anywhere. Because of my social media presence, I have also been able to contribute to the communications committees of different Societies – including that of NAVBO.
Find out what the metrics for success are for your institution but do not allow yourself to be limited by them. Yes, we all aim to get grants, mentor, publish high impact papers, serve on grant review panels, become recognized by our peers, and receive awards… But is there anything else that matters to you? I found that I am also passionate about supporting underrepresented groups in science. So, I have dedicated more of my time to accomplishing this - by joining Women Leadership committees and mentoring at-risk girls that show interest in science - instead of saying yes to another type of committee that does not appeal as much to me. I have also tried to come up with other small ways that I could contribute, such as agreeing to have high school placements in my lab on the condition that the student is part of a minority group. We have a limited amount of time, we might as well prioritize what we are passionate about.
Ask. I loved Cynthia St. Hilaire’s advice about saying YES to things. I would add that you should not only say YES but also volunteer your time. Ask to be involved in anything that is important to you and that you feel you could add value to, such as organizing a conference, creating a workshop on a topic that is important to you or chairing a session at a meeting you are going to anyway, etc. Most often than not there are too many things to be done and very few people willing to help and those are great opportunities to meet new people, bring a fresh perspective and change the way that things are done.
Published January 9, 2020 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY PATRICK A. MURPHY, UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT HEALTH CENTER
There is no doubt that there is a yawning gap between the postdoctoral position and the faculty position, and finding that faculty position takes foresight, determination, and also a bit of luck.
The foresight should be in finding a research trajectory that is ready to expand through some new techniques or approaches, and a PI that is able to support you in that. For those who are looking at postdoctoral positions, make sure that you talk with all of the members of the lab before you join, not just the ones the PI trots out. I chose my post-doctoral lab because the people in the lab were all happy. That is not chance. That comes from setting up a lab environment where each post-doc or student project is well separated, and being sensitive to conflicts that arise and dealing with them quickly. The ideal lab will host a variety of backgrounds and skill sets that complement each other and a PI that supports that through clear project demarcations. Your ideal PI will be able to provide you with top notch collaborators that respect your work and enhance it. So, seek someone willing to fight for you.
Once you have settled on your lab environment, you will need to be determined. My graduate PI told me once that many people have the intelligence to be a PI, but few have the grit – and I think she was absolutely right. Put in the work and start writing grants. In addition to providing focus for your science, winning grants will give you autonomy in lab that is hard to achieve in any other way. Simply put, each lab must pay the bills, and if you are paying your part, you will have a much larger say in how your part of the lab is run. I heard during my interviews and conversations afterwards, that a history of funding is a compelling case for future funding and a productive researcher, making these awards an important part of your faculty transition.
Finally, landing that faculty position will take luck. As scientists, we don’t believe much in luck, but luck is another way of saying chance. The more chances you give yourself, the more likelihood you will have the outcome you seek. When I applied to faculty positions, I had an excel sheet of my contacts with institutes I thought could be a good fit. That included both open positions and cold calls. I pulled all of the strings I had, every contact I thought might be helpful, and let them know I was on the market. Even with all of that, it took two full seasons to get it right. But I did get offers, and they were from the places I felt would be the best fit for me. Luck, or chance, means you find the group of researchers you complement well, but you can put yourself in that position by working hard to find that fit. You want to hear about the position before it opens and to have put in the groundwork to know how to sell yourself as the best candidate for it.
Ok, you’ve made it. Suddenly there are so many open doors and research directions to follow, how do you choose? For me, it began with taking stock of my new environment, meeting as many people as possible and thinking hard about my long-term goals. Through this searching, I discovered two things that have shaped my first few years here.
First, through the foresight of my chair Linda Shapiro, I was connected to a developing project program grant (PPG) group led by Dr. Annabelle Rodriquez-Oquendo. This group brought immunologists together with human geneticists and lipid researchers. I was able to contribute as a researcher focused on endothelial cell functions and with expertise in the low flow models that drive plaque. This group has helped to bring new perspectives and lots of brain power to my own grant and paper preparations, and has resulted in the establishment of some exciting new models to assess T cell functions in the plaque microenvironment with Dr. Tony Vella, which we recently published with a review in the American Journal of Physiology. This is one of the early publications which can be so helpful for later grant applications, and would have been hard to get going so quickly without his help. The moral in this for me is that it is worth the time to find the groups in which you can have mutually beneficial relationships, and put time into those relationships. The experience of the senior researchers you meet through these interactions will be invaluable.
Second, I found we have amazing resources in flow-cytometry, single cell analysis, and sequencing. The ability to quickly get onto a sorter within minutes of deciding to run an experiment, and with the help of very talented technical assistance, allowed me to run a large set of CRISPR screens I would have otherwise hesitated to take on. This investment ultimately led to a successful AHA Innovative Project award, and is providing a basis for two NIH R01 grant submissions, and several manuscripts underway. These resources and the amount of time I have had in these cores gathering these data would have been hard to come by in many other institutes where these resources are less accessible. Find what works well near you, what gives you an edge, and take full advantage of that.
For everyone that sees this entire process as incredibly daunting and painful, it is. I hope you are as fortunate as I am to have a spouse who understands, and at least is willing to tolerate this lifestyle. It is often hard to explain that our job is also our hobby. My wife Catherine deserves more credit than I can give her here. However, for those that would be put off by the long hours and low pay through the early stages of this career, I can tell you the joy and excitement of discovering a new way to look at things, and to develop the next generation scientists, is an amazing feeling. I feel very lucky to have met the people I have in science, and to see many of them a few times a year at meetings. I’ve had many long conversations on the philosophy of science with my graduate mentor, Rong Wang, often at odd hours and on late night drives home. She has been incredibly helpful throughout my major career decisions, well beyond my time in her lab. I have also seen the beautiful camaraderie among the former trainees of Richard Hynes, and the respect and science ethos he has instilled in the “Hynsonians”. Both are inspirations for me in establishing the type of lab that continues far beyond the walls of the institute.
Published September 5, 2019 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY NGAN HUANG, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
My name is Ngan F. Huang, PhD, and I have been an Assistant Professor in the department Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University since 2013. Many people consider the milestones of a successful Assistant Professor to include: publishing high impact papers, receiving grants, getting top teaching evaluations, serving on grant review panels, becoming nationally recognized by peers, obtaining leadership positions in service organizations, becoming journal editors, and receiving achievement awards. However, these milestones can be challenging and even overwhelming. I remember feeling lost as a brand new faculty member, not knowing how I would eventually be able to reach these milestones towards securing tenure. Now, six years later, I would like to share some of the progressive steps I took towards reaching these milestones.
Years 1 & 2: Setting up the laboratory and developing thick skin for rejection. I consider the first two years as being simultaneously the easiest as well as most challenging years of being an Assistant Professor. The reason for being the easiest is because new faculty would already know that the initial tasks are to establish your laboratory, purchase any necessary equipment that cannot be borrowed, hire your first trainees, and start teaching. Although the process of doing these tasks can be daunting, at least every new faculty already knows these initial responsibilities. On the other hand, the most challenging aspect of the first two years is in getting that first grant without leaning on the shoulders of your former mentor.
Writing a fundable grant requires first and foremost good ideas, and getting that first grant is to affirm your ability to develop novel ideas and to build self-confidence. Therefore, the first two years are like a testing ground to get feedback from reviewers about your ideas. Some ideas might be met with enthusiasm, and other ideas will be harshly criticized. This seemingly endless cycle of writing grants and then learning of the funding outcome is like a filtration process—separating the non-fundable ideas from those that stand a chance. Although these rejections can provide some constructive feedback on potential improvements to your ideas, it may feel very disappointing at times. In times of receiving rejection, my advice for new faculty is to persevere and not give up. When facing rejection, take a break to seek support from colleagues who have gone through the same experience. At a later point, revisit the reviewer comments to identify ways to improve the quality of the proposal, or possibly to approach the same question from a different angle. As an example, I once took the well-received elements of a non-funded R01 grant and submitted it as a R21 grant, which was later funded. Also consider alternative funding agencies that might be more receptive to your ideas. Being able to grow from writing non-funded grants is a necessary aspect of academia. Keep writing and refining your ideas. Do not be afraid of rejection, as your skin will adapt with time by thickening.
Years 3 & 4: Becoming visible in your field and getting that elusive major grant. Most new faculty members already have training in writing manuscripts and grants, but many people have never learned about becoming visible in the research community. I used to think that publishing high impact papers was the only way to get invited as a speaker at conferences or to become an editor of a journal. I realized a few years into my faculty position that taking an active role to becoming visible in the field is more effective and more fun. Whereas in the first two years I was predominantly focused on attending research conferences, by the third year I began to actively organize conference sessions, volunteer for service committees, and distribute my CV to program officers for consideration as a grant reviewer. Becoming actively involved in societies or service organizations is helpful towards becoming recognized for both research and service in the research community. In the process of organizing conference sessions, you will meet other colleagues, some of which whom may one day be a reviewer on your manuscripts or grants. Social media is also emerging as a highly effective way to meet colleagues and publicize your latest research findings.
By now you have already have gained ample experience in writing grants and perhaps have successfully received some small grants. However, getting that first major grant, such as an R01 grant, is another stepping stone for junior faculty. Some senior faculty suggest waiting a few years until you have a strong proposal with plenty of preliminary data, while others suggest submitting early on to test the waters of how well the idea will be received. I know of colleagues who waited until their third or fourth year to submit their first R01 grant application, only to find out that reviewers were not enthusiastic about their idea, leading them to start over in another research direction in their fourth year. Personally, I found the latter advice more helpful. I submitted three R01 in the first three years, and then focused my efforts in resubmitting the R01 grant with the best chance of funding. Besides having a good idea and supportive preliminary data, a fundable R01 requires clear grantsmanship and a strong team of collaborators. For this reason, carefully planning and timing are needed to craft a well-written and well-designed proposal. Enlisting the support of colleagues to critique your proposal is an excellent way to gauge the response of reviewers.
Years 5 & 6: Reaching for high-impact papers and expert status. Research productivity in the form of publications is an essential component of the tenure promotion process. However, it can be challenging to publish a high-impact publication, especially without knowing from the beginning whether the hypothesis will be proven true or not. In some fields of research, publishing in top tier journals may not even be relevant. However, most faculty members would like to have at least one high-impact factor publication as part of the tenure promotion process. My senior colleagues advise me that high-impact factor publications do not emerge accidentally, but are instead carefully crafted starting from a transformational idea. Since these projects may require extra financial resources, long periods of time, and unwavering dedication by the primary researcher, it may not be feasible for starting faculty to reach for this kind of publication initially. However, by the fifth or sixth year, faculty members who have the financial resources and time may be able to wager on a highly transformational idea for a chance in getting a high-impact factor publication.
By this time you probably have published a number of papers as the senior corresponding author and are becoming known by research peers and leaders in the field. Now is the time to congratulate yourself for becoming an expert in your field. Do not be shy to regard yourself as an expert—you earned it after all these years of hard work. If you have not yet, you can start nominating yourself for leadership positions in societies or as an invited seminar speaker at other institutions. If tenure is around the corner for you, continue to develop friendships with colleagues, including senior faculty who might one day review your tenure application.
Published July 11 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY CINDY ST. HILAIRE, THE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
My name is Cindy St. Hilaire, and I’m an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh, and a member of the Pittsburgh Heart, Lung, and Blood Vascular Medicine Institute. My lab was established in July 2015 after my postdoctoral fellowship at the NHLBI, and these last 3.5 years have been both the most rewarding as well as the most challenging of my professional life; starting your lab is an exciting yet surreal experience. You’ll be called upon to develop and master skills that have little relation to your previous training, and in the first few years resolving that main conundrum will reveal many of your hidden character strengths and weaknesses. I hope sharing my experiences thus far can help a fellow new PI.
Figuring out what works for you–I am still trying to perfect this. Figuring out how to optimize your time is exceedingly important. For a while I would be in my office at 7AM so I could go to yoga at 5:30, but then the strictness of having to be out the door by a certain time was stressing me out, so I switched to working out in the morning so I could have afternoon flexibility. I also learned that I write better before lunch, so I’ve blocked off my schedule and don’t have any meetings before 12. I also utilize different apps and tools; I use the Pomodoro method when I have any writing tasks, this helps me to not spend too much time on small things, but also keeps me focused on longer projects. My lab uses the project management tool Trello to organize our projects. We use it to outline and assign experiments in a visual manner. We can literally watch as the experiment progresses from idea, to active experiment, to final figure for the paper. Trello helps keep me on top of everything and my team says that it helps them to see the bigger picture. Lastly, I’m a big fan of the Bullet Journal method. I never have that pit-in-the stomach feeling that I am forgetting something because all tasks big and small are listed. And I love the feeling of checking things off.
Published May 2, 2019 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
THE VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DESK
BY STEFANIA NICOLI, YALE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
My name is Stefania Nicoli, and I have been an Assistant Professor at the Yale Cardiovascular Research Center since 2012. This four-year journey in the academic world, more than any previous experience, has made me understand the importance of mentoring models for junior faculty.
Reaching the other side of the desk is what everybody dreams of during their training positions. However, during this time you are not only learning to become a boss but also a mentor. You are now in charge of efficiently communicating, motivating your employees, solving team conflicts, understanding and working with their career and life priorities, their weaknesses and reactions to stress and rejection, and ultimately, their success. Indeed, it appears that this part of the work is energy consuming and sometimes no matter what you might say or do you are wrong and for many of us this feeling, together with the continuous stress of reaching scientific excellence, is overwhelming.
Becoming a boss might be a natural process for a new faculty member, as we ourselves reached this academic status thanks to determination, self-assurance and hard work, traits typical of a leader. However, becoming a mentor is not necessarily included in our natural predispositions. Seeking direction, I asked several senior colleagues about their experiences regarding how they became mentors. Interestingly, there are various theories, all very personal, that I would like to classify into two distinct points of view: the Darwinian or Lamarckian theory of the junior faculty evolution. Essentially some faculty members believe in "natural selection" of the strongest phenotype. Others believe in the progressive learning process of more complex skills that allow successful "adaptation and survival" in any environment.
Of course, this sounds like a scientific joke, but there is some truth in both theories. Indeed, in our competitive and difficult economic climate, scientists have limited time to learn naturally from their mistakes. Therefore, learning quickly is the key to successfully "survive" and "drive." I found it crucial having someone to teach us mentoring strategies as rapidly as possible, to avoid energy dispersion while also gaining efficiency. For example, attending periodic psychology workshops or leadership courses is essential in acquiring these tools. High profile corporations invest time and considerable resources understanding strategies to make employees more efficient. Obviously, academia might not have the same capacity, but an investment toward junior faculty mentoring programs is, in the long run, important for the success of the entire institution.
Published April 14 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
IDENTIFYING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
BY SATHISH SRINIVASAN, OKLAHOMA MEDICAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION
My name is Sathish Srinivasan, and I am an Assistant Member at Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF), located in the vibrant downtown area of Oklahoma City. I came to OMRF in February of 2013 after an enjoyable period of postdoctoral training in the lab of Dr. Guillermo Oliver at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis. The last three years have been the most challenging of my entire life. Identifying the important questions, addressing those questions with innovative approaches, and being a motivating leader and spokesman for your team are very difficult tasks. Knowing that there is no guarantee for success makes each task all the more challenging. Here I will list a few things that I think are important for a startup lab. I hope that my experience will be helpful to others who are taking their first steps as independent investigators.
Getting the team together: As a new PI, it can be difficult to attract talented, motivated, and experienced researchers to join your team. However, setting the bar high is important both for the team and for the individual. I am very fortunate to have Xin Geng (staff scientist), Boksik Cha (post doc), and Lijuan Chen (research assistant) in my lab. They are my super heroes. Stephanie Yeager (research assistant) and Bing Liao (post doc) also made important contributions during their stay in the lab.
Plan to continue working in the lab: You will likely be the one with the most experience in your field when starting the lab. Be ready to continue working in the lab and training others. The time invested will pay off. Riaj Mahamud (graduate student), who joined my lab with little experience but with a strong motivation, is now a well-trained, important member of my lab.
Don’t hesitate to invest in your startup: Proper reagents and tools are a must to run your lab, so don’t be stingy in making that mouse model or buying that microscope. But do get a quote and make sure you will get good service.
Be generous: You got hired because other PIs in the institution thought that they could collaborate with you; be willing to share your expertise and resources to help others both within and outside of the institution. The favor will be returned to you many times over.
Choose your collaborators carefully: I am lucky to have many thoughtful collaborators. However, collaborator-on-collaborator conflict is not uncommon and could be career-ending. Make sure you are truly independent in collaborative projects. Also, verify the sincerity of a collaboration request. You don’t want your precious time and energy to be wasted on projects that the collaborators are not serious about.
Focus: When I started the lab, I wanted to simultaneously work on 10 different projects and write five R01 applications. It was an exercise in futility. Focus on the most important questions that you can address with your expertise and resources and for which you are recognized. Try to obtain small grant funding that will keep your lab moving forward. Bigger grants, such as an NIH R01 grant, need plenty of time and work before applying. The time you spend on writing those big grants can be better spent in generating the preliminary data and publications that are absolutely important in getting those larger grants funded.
Be cautious…: In this highly competitive research environment, it is important to find a balance between camaraderie and caution. Avoid presenting unpublished data until you get some traction.
…but don’t get cynical: Many papers and grants do get favorably reviewed due to the political connections of the PIs. Yours may seem to be unfairly reviewed. You will be angry and discouraged, but acknowledge the reality and your emotions and move on. Grow a thick skin, keep improving, and believe that good science will be appreciated and acknowledged sooner or later. I am fortunate to have known plenty of researchers who are genuinely curious about nature, passionate about research and kind-hearted to support others.
Improve your writing skills: It is important to have good science. It is even more important to communicate your work well. My first two R01 applications were beaten down, and rightfully so. Now my grantsmanship is a work in progress. Do everything possible to make your grants and papers easy to read and understand. Your peers deserve that respect.
Try to relax: If we are lucky, we are expected to be creative and productive for 30-40 years. It is a daunting task. When I confided my fear to Mike Davis (University of Missouri, Columbia), he gave me the best career advice that I ever got. If you are worried about everything, you are not going to do anything. Andrew McMahon likens the scientific career to running a marathon. You have to plan for the next 3-5 miles (years) and not focus on the finish line. So find your circle of supporters, spend quality time with your family, develop a hobby, read good literature and give a good fight. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.
Published June 9, 2016 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
REMEMBER WHY YOU ARE DOING SCIENCE
BY DANIELA SIMONA ARDELEAN, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO
Do you remember the day when you thought that science is really cool and that this is what you want to do, no matter what? For some, it was a defined moment; for others, a longer, slow process. Some people could explain it, others just knew it. But for all, the knowledge or feeling (yes, it can be either one) that doing science is the right thing, was the same. You just knew. Remember that when you come across challenges that may seem insurmountable.
I am a pediatric rheumatologist who is doing translational research. Since I have started one year ago as a junior faculty at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada, I have been working towards establishing my lab and building the team. This is still work in progress.
The transition from trainee to faculty is often lengthy and difficult. On this journey, I have learned a few things that I would like to share with you:
Think early about your research program. Beyond research projects, you also need to discuss about your research program with your future collaborators, mentors and funding agencies.
What is your long-term goal? What is your vision? What do you need to get you there? It is important to define it early.
Connect with peers and scientists outside your discipline. To broaden your knowledge and to find collaborators and potential mentors, it is important to attend meetings, seminars, workshops, etc., in other disciplines.
Find out what funding opportunities are available at your institution(s). The University, affiliated Research Institutes, the Department(s) where you are appointed or cross-appointed, hospital Foundations, etc., may have their own funding and internal competitions. Find out early about these opportunities and apply to them.
We need time for reflection. We are all busy people. However, without time put aside regularly for reflection, for thinking things through and for a break, it is difficult to come up with that great idea that is worth pursuing, be creative, have balance in life, and evolve as a human being.
Writing is about telling stories that matter to you and others. There was something that motivated you in the first place to look for answers when there were very few or none. Findings how things work, deciphering the mechanisms of a process or disease, discovering new treatments for your patients. Conveying that "something" in writing increases the chance that your grant application or paper will connect with those that read it.
Despite the long path, challenges, ups and downs, we are privileged to do research. Remember why you chose science and make the most of your journey.
Published September 29, 2016 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY METE CIVELEK, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
I started my laboratory at the Center for Public Health Genomics at the University of Virginia about two years ago. I made several good decisions as well as several mistakes during this time. While everyone’s experiences will be different, I would like to share some of the lessons I learned with the hope that you will make wiser choices when you start your research group.
I immediately found a group of likeminded junior PIs who also started their labs around the same time as me at UVA. This group has been a great support both mentally and scientifically. In fact, four of us hold joint lab meetings together as we have overlapping interests. If you are just starting your lab, I highly recommend to you to be part of the New PI Slack, which is a community of about 400 junior faculty members primarily across the United States (https://newpislack.wordpress.com/). This is a group of generous and thoughtful new PIs who share many things from examples of grant applications to advice for wet lab and computational tools, funding opportunities, how to deal with diversity-related issues, and even tips for work-life balance.
One of the mistakes I made was not to have a laser-like focus on a single project that will result in a publication as soon as possible. Since publications measure our productivity, it is important for a junior PI to prove that he/she can produce results as a result of all the investment an institution makes. My advice is to focus on a publication rather than grant applications in the first one or two years. If you are going to send in grant applications, it is better to apply to organizations that provide feedback so that you can improve your application by addressing the reviewers’ comments and resubmit.
Hiring and managing people will prove to be challenging. You will not find a postdoctoral fellow or a graduate student who will be just like you. Many times, you will think “I could have done this in an hour instead of a day.” I learned to be patient as I trained the lab members and allowed them to make mistakes. It is the only way the trainees are going to master the techniques. I also learned to look out for warning signs as it is important to correct the mistakes quickly so that they don’t accumulate and become bigger problems in the future. I quickly learned that weekly one-on-one meetings where we go over even small details increased the productivity of the lab.
I am required to teach as part of my appointment. I started a new class in large-scale data analysis, and it took a considerable amount of my time in the first year. Becoming a good teacher is an iterative process, and it takes time to be a good teacher. If you have teaching duties, set aside only one day of the week to prepare for the class. We all tend to have perfectionist qualities, but you do not want teaching to consume your precious time.
Finally, science is a collective effort. Your lab will be more productive if you can create a welcoming and fun environment in the lab where diverse ideas are openly discussed.
Published September 14, 2017 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED: ILL COMMUNICATION
BY MICHAEL DELLINGER, UT SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER
Music has always been an important part of my life. I enjoy listening to songs and trying to find the message in lyrics. When I started my lab in 2014, I was the only person in the lab for approximately two months. This was a chance for me to play my favorite albums in the lab, and I listened to “Ill Communication” by the Beastie Boys at least once every other day. As people joined my group, I discovered that I had ill communication. Sometimes I had a hard time getting my ideas across to the people in my lab. Below are a few suggestions that have helped me become a better communicator and a more efficient and effective leader.
Tailor your interactions with the members of your lab to suit their specific needs. Your lab is going to be filled with people with different backgrounds and levels of experience. Take the time to have individual meetings with the members of your lab. Over time you will discover who in your group finds verbal instructions useful and who in your group finds a combination of verbal and written instructions beneficial. Taking this time will ensure that you and the members of your lab are on the same page and that projects move in the right direction.
Listen to the people in your lab. Yogi Berra said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” You can also hear a lot by just listening. Sometimes you will hear bad news. If a person in your lab tells you that there is a specific problem, take action. Other times, you will hear excitement over a new result. Listening to what the people in your lab say will help you customize your interactions with them. It is also a lot of fun learning about the people who are spending their days (and nights) working hard in your lab.
Regularly review lab notebooks. One way the people in your lab communicate with you is through their lab notebooks. This form of communication is critical, especially when the people are no longer in your lab. It is essential that you can easily find descriptions and details of experiments. Take a little time each week to really read lab notebooks and make sure that you understand what is written.
Take a course on grant writing. I took a course on grant writing during my first year at UT Southwestern. It was one of the best courses I have ever taken and I regularly refer to the materials I received as part of the course. If you have a chance, take a course on grant writing. This will help you communicate your ideas in a coherent manner in grants and papers. I’ve also been able to join a group at UT Southwestern that meets regularly to discuss grants. This has helped me become a better writer and reviewer.
Contact and interact with foundations and societies. In addition to being a member of the faculty of UT Southwestern, I am also the director of research of the Lymphatic Malformation Institute (www.lmiresearch.org) and I regularly interact with the Lymphangiomatosis & Gorham’s Disease Alliance (www.lgdalliance.org). I have found that foundations and societies are always looking for help to carry out their respective missions. Reach out to foundations and societies that are relevant to your area of research. Let these people know who you are and offer your assistance. This could lead to opportunities to speak to the patient community and other rewarding experiences.
It can take time to become an effective communicator. But by putting the time in to hone your communication skills, you will find it easier to realize your ideas, lead your group, and inspire the next generation of scientists in your lab.
Published November 2, 2017 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY HENAR CUERVO, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO
I started my lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) about a year and a half ago. I am still finding my way through and know that there are many challenges ahead, but I am happy to share some of my lessons learned. Some of you may find it helpful; some of you may enjoy the trip down memory lane.
Get plenty of advice, and then trust that you are making the best decision you can. As scientists, we do a thorough background research before we start an experiment, we search what has been published, what techniques have been used, and then once we have all the information, we design and execute our experiment. So, I felt that I needed to do the same when making important decisions about managing/setting up my new lab. I read several books (I strongly recommend “At the Helm: Leading your laboratory” by Kathy Barker, and “Making the Right Moves” published by the HHMI), and took advantage of the great faculty mentorship at UIC. However, more frequently than not, I would hear opposing advice from similarly successful senior professors; for example: Professor A would suggest using your Start-up funds aggressively to get the best preliminary data you could to secure grant funding, while Professor B would recommend to be cautious with spending and save some of the Start-up funds for a rainy day. As it usually happens in life, nothing is black and white, and everyone has had a different story and has different circumstances, ultimately the decision has to work for you and how you like to manage your lab.
Learn to say no. This is one of the big clichés, I know, but after a year and a half I am still struggling with it. It is much easier said that done. As you start your lab you will be invited to give talks, to review papers, to review grants, to serve in multiple committees, to teach…etc. I actually find most of these activities to be exciting; they make me feel proud to be contributing to my Department/University, and to the overall scientific community—plus it is a good way to learn the lay of the land. I found that being part of the “Graduate Education Committee” in my Department allowed me, for example, to get familiar with the graduate student selection, and the thesis (and qualifying exam) rules and requirements. This experience turned out to be particularly useful when I was part of a qualifying exam committee, or when recruiting graduate students to my lab. Similarly, being a grant reviewer for the Department of Defense and seeing how that process worked was a fantastic learning experience towards crafting my own grants. However, while all this service work can be edifying and rewarding, it takes a substantial amount of time and focus, and it is easy to neglect your own research group. It is therefore critical to keep a good balance between your own research and the service to the academic/scientific community. As I mentioned, I still have not found the perfect formula (I am not even sure it exists), but I try to select talks, reviews, and other tasks that I feel I can either learn from, or that can help in the development of my career.
Be patient. The first year while setting up the lab is usually not as productive as you would like it to be. You have to spend time negotiating prices with sales representatives, preparing IRB and IACUC protocols, training students…etc. The experiments that you thought were so easy and just took you a couple of hours to get done when you were working at the end of your postdoc might take much more for your newly trained student(s). I remember feeling frustrated with how slow things were moving in the first months: I knew it would take some time to get the lab up and running, but I also wanted to be productive and get good results as soon as possible. I had to be patient, and focus on building my lab and training my students thoroughly. It took more time than I wanted, sure, but now when I see my students’ data and presentations I know it was worth it.
Published January 11, 2018 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY STRYDER MEADOWS, TULANE UNIVERSITY
Greetings from New Orleans! My name is Stryder Meadows and I am an Assistant Professor at Tulane University. In 2014, I dove head first into the most challenging undertaking of my life. I uprooted my family and started my own research lab in a new state. Reflecting on the past 3 years, I would like to think I've had some professional successes while minimizing the hiccups along the way. I'm happy to have the opportunity to share my thoughts and opinions about my journey, and hope that my experiences prove useful to future independent investigators. We are all somewhat thrown into this position with no road map for establishing a thriving research program, so be proactive in seeking advice and stay ahead of the game.
Focus on the science: You already know this but it's important to keep in mind - science drives everything. So get in the lab and stay focused! If you're like myself, you will have a tendency to get interested and distracted by too many potential projects. Don't do this - work hard and place your energy on the most promising projects that will drive your lab. Make sure these projects differentiate yourself from your postdoc advisor. And don't be afraid to use your start up funds because you need the resources and man/woman power to build a solid body of work for that first big grant.
Getting funded: The obvious goal is to get big money grants, but don’t forget about all those smaller grants out there, including those from your own institute. Take advantage of grants that are designed for new investigators. Acquiring these grants will look good on your resume, help with the research finances, and give you additional writing practice for your first big grant. In terms of the obtaining your first big grant, my advice is to hold off until you have a good, solid body of work. It takes time to build a story, and very few new investigators are going to get that big grant unless they’ve built a story, started publishing, etc. Be sure to have your mentors and colleagues look at your grants. A common mistake of a new investigator is to try and put too much into that first R01. Established investigators have been through this process many times and will know how to keep your grant focused.
Setting up the lab: Don’t plan on getting to your job and being able to set up your lab uninterrupted. There are ALWAYS unexpected bumps along the way that can stall your progress. Your tenure clock usually starts on your hire date, so every day, month and experiment is valuable. Use that window of time before the job starts to be proactive in getting the lab set up. Immediately work on the IACUC protocols and transferring your mice (if you work with them). This process can take months and really delay your experiments. You can also order equipment, supplies and reagents before you get to your job. Be sure to take advantage of deals for new investigators that most companies offer. Hire someone to help; you can put out job ads and interview people before you arrive. You’ll be in much better shape the sooner you can get that first experiment started.
Make your presence felt: You are the most productive person in your lab, so get in the lab and start the experiments that are going to get you funding. Establish the culture and work ethic of your lab, and be diligent in your training of lab personnel. At some point you won’t be able to spend as much time in the lab and those people you trained will be setting an example and training future members of the lab. With that in mind….
Be picky when assembling your research team: Check every reference and try to meet lab technician and postdoc candidates in person. With rotating graduate students, be sure to be in the lab so that you can really assess their critical thinking, bench skills and interactions with lab personnel. Even if you’re desperate for a grad student, don’t bring them on board unless you’re confident they will be a good fit. I’ve turned down students even though I could have used the extra hands, and I know I’ve dodged a few bullets. If red flags pop up or something doesn’t feel right, trust your gut and move on. This is advice I’ve gotten from almost every established investigator, including several that have made this mistake.
Learn to wear multiple hats: You’re now the boss, which means you’re job description includes being a leader, mentor, manager and advisor. Sliding between these different roles can be quite difficult. Each of us is different so figure out what works for you. Stay on top of things and pay attention. Know where your money is going and learn how to budget, even if you have an administrative person that covers the finances. Be mindful of what’s going on in the lab and be sure to have open communication with your staff. Remember, not every person reacts the same way and has the same drive and passion as you. So choose your motivational tactics wisely.
Balancing research and teaching: This part is for junior faculty members like myself that are expected to teach throughout the year and simultaneously run a successful research program. This has been one of the most challenging aspects of the job. Remember, you’re competing with lots of other researchers that have minimal teaching requirements. I’ve heard different views on whether this is an advantage or disadvantage. My opinion: it’s an advantage salary wise (usually more hard money in your salary), but a disadvantage to your research program. So figure out how to balance the time and energy put into teaching versus research. Many times the biggest components for tenure are teaching/school service, publications and funding. I would suggest finding out how much each component is weighted for tenure, and use that as a way to help guide and balance your effort going forward.
Publishing is the name of the game: You already know that publishing your work is paramount to your future success, but it’s really important to come to terms with the reality that not every paper can be a Cell, Science or Nature publication. Get those least publishable units (LPUs) out the door. It will show your R01 reviewers that you have a functional lab and are progressing towards those bigger papers. Plus, every publication counts towards your tenure package and the clock is running. In my experience, most manuscript preparations take longer than you think and time is not on your side.
Develop a thick hide: Science is hard, getting funding is hard, publishing is hard, teaching is hard and running a lab is hard. Get use to the fact that your grants and papers are going to get rejected, reviewers are going to hit you hard, and sometimes you’re going to get scooped. Take a breath, sleep on it and revisit with a fresh mind. Often times you will find that everything isn’t as bad as you first thought (of course some things take more time to get over). Don’t get discouraged - fight on! Besides, what’s the alternative?
Go to meetings: Don’t forget to attend and present at meetings (hopefully you’ve already started this as a postdoc). It’s critical that you interact and network with the vascular community. After all, they’re the ones reviewing your papers and grants. In this highly competitive environment, it’s beneficial to have a reviewer that can place your name and face to the work they are critiquing. This is also a good way to form collaborations. Plus, you may need recommendations and reviews from established investigators outside of your institute for your tenure package.
Get to know your administrators: I think people often overlook the importance of a good working relationship with their administrative staff. Get acquainted with your grants people and department administrators. Your grants are important and managing your research money is important – therefore I would suggest treating those people that help you manage the grant submissions and lab finances as important. I know it’s their job to assist you, but most people like to be treated as colleagues not as personal assistants. I’ve found that if you treat your administrative staff with respect, they will go out of their way to help you. Plus they will know some of the nuances of your institute and other tricks that will be unknown to you.
Balancing work and family: This particular balancing act can be very stressful and everyone’s situation is different. In my case, I try to make my time at work efficient so that I can squeeze in as much quality time at home without feeling guilty. Newsflash: you will still fell guilty. I think this is natural but I also think it means you recognize that your family is still important, which is a good thing. Try celebrating professional accomplishments, such as getting a grant, publishing your paper or grading your last exam, with your family. This is a good way to include them into your work life, and gives your children the opportunity to see that hard work is rewarded with fun.
Published March 8, 2018 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY KAZUYO KEGAN, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
My name is Kazuyo Kegan. I have been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, since 2012. I recently received my first NIH R01 grant, which just started in December 2017. Our institution traditionally provides no direct salary support for non-clinical faculty. Thus, the transition from junior faculty to partial dependence on mentor-initiated funding, to a combination of mentor and independent support, to finally being fully independently funded has been extremely challenging. Before reaching this point, I had to obtain multiple small internal and external funding awards. I am still in the process of building a new lab, but I hope I can share a few ideas that might be helpful and important for writing grants and becoming an independent scientist.
It took a little while for me to understand the fundamental differences between writing a manuscript and writing a grant. When writing a manuscript, we try to describe things clearly, logically, and professionally. There is actually no room to express enthusiasm in it. On the contrary, I have learned that the key to writing a successful grant is to imbed your enthusiasm clearly into your writing. Besides making the science clear, you need to convince the reviewers that your grant is better and more novel, innovative, and feasible than any of the other applications. Here are several steps I have taken to obtain successful grants.
1. Start and plan early: In the first year after my promotion, I was advised that I should apply for an R01 grant at almost every cycle. I did try to do this during the first 2 years without success. Every 4 months, I would be at the bench for 2 months to move my research forward (I had no people to work on my project), generate preliminary data for the grant during the third month, and spend the fourth month writing and submitting a grant. With this schedule, I was not so productive in publication or in obtaining grants. Your productivity is one of the important factors the reviewers want to see for successful grants. I also learned that taking time to obtain strong preliminary data to support the overall hypothesis is the key to creating successful grants.
2. Assemble a support network: I like to finish things before the due date. I usually plan to finish my grant at least 2 weeks early. This tactic allows me to ask senior faculty members to read and evaluate the grant and our scientific editor to edit it. The comments from senior and experienced faculty members are helpful and provide the opportunity for brainstorming before submission. Nevertheless, it is important that you follow your heart and intuition when making final decisions regarding the direction of the grant if you receive multiple contrasting opinions. Also, create good relationships with the finance team and office of research administration, if your university has one. By working together to resolve issues and review the grant and budget, you will be pleasantly surprised by all that you learn about the policy behind grant management.
3. Writing is a skill not a genetic gift: It greatly helps me to allot time for writing, to schedule it into my day, and to set goals for each day and week. Keep track of your progress and reward yourself for meeting your goals. Make writing routine and mundane. I was given the suggestion to join a support writing network in which members encourage each other. As I did not have enough time to do so in person (I am a mother of 9-year-old twins), I created a support network on Social Networking Service (SNS) with scientists in academia from inside and outside of the US. When I feel alone writing grants during weekends and holidays, I can always find someone who is also working on a grant or paper, and we encourage each other. This resource has been a tremendous boost to my productivity and motivation.
4. Focus on creating Specific Aims and abstracts: I was told to dedicate a lot of time to writing, revising, and rewriting the Specific Aims page to make it perfect. A giant in our field also taught me to begin by drawing a picture. If you can draw a picture of what you want to do, then you are on the right path. In addition, the Specific Aims are critical for the peer review process because the majority of reviewers on the panel will likely read only the abstract and Specific Aims during the very short period given to judge and score the applications.
5. Resubmission: One of my biggest mistakes in the first years of working on grants was not communicating with program officer. I was too shy to pick up the phone and discuss how to revise the application. I was wrong. Many times they will help you to interpret the summary statement and offer strategic tips on how to be highly responsive to the reviewers' concerns. If you receive a “not fundable” review statement, please do not take it personally. It is easy for me to say this but very difficult to accomplish. It usually takes me at least a week to read the reviews without tears and all kinds of negative feelings. We should not stop there. Take a breath, calm down, and start reading the review with a cup of coffee (or a glass of wine works best for me!). I found that the critical review is one of the greatest aids to improving your science and application. If you think that the reviewers did not understand what you meant, you need to make more effort to convey your points clearly. If they misinterpreted your writing, then it is possible that many other people would misinterpret it same way.
What I wish I had known when I accepted my first position was that we must have so many new and different skills to transition from a junior faculty member to a successful independent investigator. I learned that we need to make decisions quickly and with conviction. Furthermore, dealing with negotiation—–we do it every day—requires disciplined communication skills, reliable persuasive strategies, the willingness to engage in conflict, and the ability to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.
Probably the most important message I have is to Be Resilient. Becoming an independent scientist in academia is hard. Science is a difficult field, no doubt. It takes years in the trenches to succeed. You may need to learn how to rise from the ashes several times in this path. Scientists who study stress and resilience say that it’s important to think of resilience as an emotional muscle that can be strengthened at any time. I always try to go back to the basics and reevaluate why I am doing this and what motivates me. I try to focus on what is fascinating and meaningful about what I do. What is important to me is the progress I am making in science and medicine, not what anybody is saying back. Then, the productivity naturally returns during difficult times. Do not hesitate to ask for help when necessary. We are more resilient when we have strong support networks to help us cope with a crisis. But we can get an even bigger resilience boost by giving support to others. By doing so, we create a positive feedback loop of helping others and being helped ourselves, This is an important way to enhance our own strength to create a life that we consider meaningful and purposeful.
Published April 5, 2018 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY ELISA BOSCOLO, CINCINNATI CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL
It’s time to fill the empty spaces ... in the laboratory and in your personal life!
… and all of a sudden … POOF! You jumped to the other side!
You have dreamed about it all of your life (or most of it), and you just cannot believe it has really happened. While you are pinching yourself to be sure it’s not a dream, your eyes open wide and what do you see? An empty office and an empty laboratory (Well, I wouldn’t even call it a laboratory as it’s just four walls and a stack of empty shelves!). Now you really miss your old lab mates and your previous mentor.
My name is Elisa Boscolo. I did my postdoctoral training at Boston Children’s Hospital and have been an Assistant Professor at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital since 2014. Back then it surely was frustrating to start from scratch in a new institution and in a different city.
My first suggestion is to not rush in hiring personnel to staff your lab. Choose carefully and make sure they can stay in your lab for a few years, guaranteeing continuity after the initial period. For a faster take-off, start looking for personnel before your actual move; you can contact HR at your new institution and ask them to help opening positions for your lab. Set up Skype interviews and talk to the candidate multiple times to get to know them as much as you can. Make sure to call their previous mentors and ask a lot of questions – do not rely solely on formal letters of recommendations.
Managing people is challenging – little did I know about how hard this is, as I had a wonderful relationship with my former mentor. My advice is to make your expectations clear, write them down and use that list to make sure they are respected. Also, my mistake was to think that every post-doc has the same ambitions and passion for research that I do. Make sure to communicate with your team as much as you can to understand how facilitating their success can fulfill their own life goals and ambitions.
In this empty laboratory, you may suddenly feel lonely, as you will spend most of your time enclosed in your office writing grants, IACUC and IRB protocols, etc. My second advice is to make sure you connect with the other junior faculty at your institutions and try to set up regular meetings with them. Discuss grant opportunities, new data and mentoring issues. Help each other with grant writing and collaborations. And don’t forget that from time to time, you’ll want to have a friend to get a coffee together.
To ensure funding it is crucial to show productivity early on after you set up your lab. What I regret not doing is using the early slow times (slow production of data!) to think of a short-term project that could generate a manuscript in a two-year time frame, aimed at a decent impact factor journal, but not necessarily very high to avoid being trapped in endless cycles of resubmissions.
My last suggestion, as a woman scientist, is to not neglect your personal life because of the academic pressure. I somewhat put my personal life on hold until I became a junior faculty member and waited until then to start a family. Some days it’s just you and your beloved iMac, so when you finally close the office door, it’s a joy to know you will reunite with your family at home. I often wondered if it’s possible to have a career and children. Now that I have a young daughter, I feel more productive during my time at work. When I feel frustrated after a grant or manuscript rejection, instead of healing my suffering with Italian wine, my daughter smiles, makes me forget these disappointments, and re-charges my mind for the next challenge.
Always do your best work and learn to be patient; there will be times when productivity is slower than you wish. Make the best out of this time! In few years you will see that your lab has no empty spaces left and has already produced phenomenal data – hopefully you have already published some of them!
Published May 3, 2018 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY JOHN CHAPPELL, VIRGINIA TECH CARILION RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Maintain a work-life balance— Many careers can consume you, and a career in academic science can certainly tip the work-life balance towards working almost continuously. What started out as a passion and a curiosity to discover new things about the vascular system can quickly turn into seemingly endless grant writing, manuscript preparation, e-mail replies, and so on. I would urge new independent investigators to work hard on their science, but to also find the aspects of life that provide rest and reinvigoration outside of their science and the workplace. Striving for and maintaining that work-life balance seems to be a critical skill to help avoid burnout and sustain you through the highs and lows of grant/paper reviews and all of the other challenges you will face.
Find your place of Zen— In reading the Lessons Learned contributions from my colleagues, one theme emerges very clearly—this career path is full of many difficult challenges. Publishing, funding, managing a lab, etc. In the midst of the ups and downs, I have found that staying connected to the science and keeping my hands on the experiments has been incredibly helpful. My place of Zen is at my confocal, taking high-resolution images of biological phenomena – it has been my shelter during the storms of never-ending demands. Find the part of science that fueled your love of what you do, and fight to keep that as part of your schedule. I try to use my confocal at least once every week or two. It helps clear my mind and reinvigorates me, while also inspiring new ideas and avenues for research. I encourage you to find that quiet place of enlightenment, free from worrying about what you cannot change.
Don’t be afraid to be provocative— This item is fairly specific to grant writing, and I thought this insight into grant review was particularly helpful. A colleague of mine is currently serving on study section. I asked him to read one of my R01 grant proposals as he would as a study section reviewer. He graciously accepted and, when giving me his feedback, he said, “It’s a good grant, and will potentially (imagine air quotations) “fill a gap in knowledge”, but so will most of the other grants in my pile. As a reviewer with 10-12 grants in my pile, you need to wake me up. Provoke me. The worst-case scenario is that your grant lands in the bottom of my rankings, but honestly it’s no worse than being too conservative and landing in the middle. Neither the middle nor the bottom grants are funded, so why not aim for the top? Don’t give me clichés. Give me specifics and a thought-provoking question. Get my attention.” Certainly one person’s opinion, but I thought it was a helpful glimpse into the grant review process.
Published October 22, 2018 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY YUN FANG, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
I started my independent research program in the Department of Medicine, Biological Sciences Division, at The University of Chicago in November, 2012. Looking back, it is one of the most challenging, intriguing, and rewarding tasks I have ever undertaken and I would like to use this exciting opportunity to share a few lessons I learned in the past few years.
Be creative but not competitive. “Be creative but not competitive” is our motto of the lab. It is quite exciting (I feel) to live in the golden age of biomedical research since there are unprecedented advancements of new approaches and techniques which allow us to pursue questions previously unanswerable and to develop new therapies applying these new concepts. One thing I often share with my lab members is that most of the techniques routinely used in my lab nowadays such as ATAC-seq, Hi-C, CRISPR/Cas9-based gene editing, and single-cell sequencing, were not even invented when I was a postdoctoral fellow. Finding creative ways to identify new questions and novel solutions is always recommended and encouraged in my lab. Nevertheless, it is important to maintain a fine balance between being creative and focused for a junior faculty member who not only needs to move the chosen field forward but also show continuous research productivity.
Building a collegial and feedback-seeking environment for your trainees who share your scientific vision. One thing I am striving for is to create an intellectually-challenging but supportive environment for a trainee to pursue his/her (and my) scientific interests. It is tempting for a junior faculty to quickly hire personnel, but I cannot stress enough the importance to find lab members who share your scientific vision. Knowing it is difficult to recruit bright postdocs as a junior faculty member, I started actively searching for candidates via any given channels (meetings, personal connections, etc.) six months before my lab was open. I was fortunate to recruit two outstanding postdocs who were the core members of my program for the first two years. The priority for my first six months at the University of Chicago was to work closely with them in the lab, which turned out to be a very effective and productive way to establish a brand-new research program. These two postdocs then became the cornerstone of my lab to train members who joined later. Nevertheless, I learned that everyone is different and having management styles tailored to lab individuals is key for me to keep effective communication with them. When I am in the office and not on a call, my door is always open to encourage conversations. The first goal I set since the beginning is to build and cultivate a collegial and feedback-seeking/giving work place for the lab members to brainstorm research ideas and receive constructive feedback. I am very proud that my lab members now teach me as much, if not more, as I teach them through our daily conversations and weekly meetings.
Finding collaborators who have mutual interests with you and are mutually benefited from the collaboration. One thing that keeps me extremely excited about the academic work is the opportunities to work with people with different expertise to tackle problem-oriented instead of discipline-oriented questions. We are privileged to have a cohort of wonderful collaborators who unselfishly share their expertise, allowing us to explore uncharted territory related to our research questions. We found that fruitful collaborations are typically built on mutual trust, mutual interests, and mutual benefits of the collaborators. Our scientific scope has been significantly deepened and broadened by actively seeking collaborations across disciplines.
Communicating your scientific passion effectively with your family members, students, lab members, colleagues, and reviewers. I firmly believe one requisite for a productive research career is to effectively communicate with others your scientific projects of choice. My wife is not a scientist, but by speaking often to her about my research projects, she understands my passion for the work and is supportive of my career. Sharing my scientific passion to the trainees in the lab and students in the classroom may breed and foster their own enthusiasm in science. Passionate discussions on research projects, either mine or my peers’, always motivate me to revisit our scientific hypotheses and experimental approaches. Moreover, manuscript submissions and grant applications are also excellent ways to receive honest and constructive feedback from your peers, although rejections are common. I truly believe that the current review system, although not perfect, is still an effective way to exchange and stimulate candid and often time, constructive scientific discussions.
Published January 10, 2019 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
LESSONS LEARNED
BY CORINNE NIELSEN, OHIO UNIVERSITY
My name is Corinne Nielsen, and I have been Assistant Professor, in the Department of Biological Sciences, at Ohio University since 2016. I am pleased to introduce you to our lab and our research and to share some Lessons Learned, as a new independent investigator.
Embrace your new pace— One of the biggest adjustments I made was to adjust my expectations for the pace of research in a newly established lab. During my PhD and postdoctoral training, my academic life focused on lab work and very little else. Suddenly, with many more commitments – from teaching obligations to lab management to proposal writing – I spend less time in lab and acquire fewer data than I am used to. As the lab has found its footing, and as new lab members receive training and develop independence, the pace has quickened; however, this transition taught me another lesson, which is to….
Learn to give up control— Micromanaging the details of every lab protocol and daily troubleshooting is not tenable or healthy, for the long-term benefit of the lab. Give lab members the training and tools to complete an experiment, meet regularly to discuss outcomes/results, and celebrate the achievements.
Be a good colleague— Build your professional network at your institution and beyond. At each step along my academic trajectory – education, training, work experience – my network of colleagues, collaborators, and supporters has been paramount. My network has challenged me, critiqued me, offered opportunities to me, commiserated with me, celebrated with me, and I am committed to doing the same for others. That said, I look forward to seeing you at an upcoming NAVBO meeting!
Published March 7, 2019 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
Leaders' Lessons
The NAVBO Education Committee is posing questions to senior researchers asking them to share them wisdom on several topics. If you would like to get responses to particular questions or would like to share your experience, please email Sharon (sharon@navbo.org).
I go out of my way to make sure I have fun and relaxing things to do. When my daughter was young, it was just really hard. I mean, in those days fun was bringing up your kids like going to PTA meetings, attending soccer games, and doing bake sales. That was my “outside life” at that time. Now I just do other things. I took up beekeeping in the summertime. It can be time-consuming, sporadically, but it is fun and right now it is easy. I like to have hobbies and I like to try new things. I don't know where that urge came from because I am not what I would consider “adventurous”. Summertime is a much better time for me to get projects done or do outdoor activities. I like kayaking and I like walking a lot, though I do not like walking in the cold. I do gardening now and I do a lot of reading--I am a big reader. I try to keep in touch with my family. I knit sometimes and I tried painting and sculpting, just anything new really. The summer is much better for me because I like to be outdoors and I just make time for it. I do work on the weekends, but I try to do it in a very constrained fashion by putting projects on my calendar. That way the whole day does not get taken up by reviewing a grant or something along those lines. I have a limited amount of time and I want to use it well.
Patricia D’Amore, Senior Scientist, Schepens Eye Research Institute; Director, Howe Laboratory; Associate Chief for Opthalmology Basic and Translational Research, Massachusetts Eye and Ear; Charles L. Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School
This may not sound like a good answer to this question, but currently, with all the administrative things that I am doing, the fun is really talking to the scientists in my lab! When I walk through the lab and bump into and talk to the students, I can’t tell you how happy I am. I view that as one of the most fun parts of my day. I like to read a lot, so it is easy to squeeze in time to read and listen to books on tape. I am a super avid reader and get a lot of joy from reading. I like to be outdoors a lot and travel; it’s a little harder now with the pandemic. Traditionally, part of that fun came from walking the dog, jogging, or finding a hike on the weekend. Part of it came from going to meetings and seeing new places. So that’s what I do for fun.
Jan Kitajewski, Professor and Head of Department of Physiology and Biophysics, College of Medicine at Chicago; Director, University of Illinois Cancer Center
I like to read, to be deep in a book for hours, but this is generally only on rare weekends. I also like nature hiking so I will take a weekend day off and go hiking. You just have to find time for this!
Dr. Shulamit Levenberg, Ph.D., Professor and Former Dean, Biomedical Engineering Department
Director, Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory; Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
That is an interesting question! I like to cook and I collect wine. I enjoy classical music and opera. I believe that you just have to make time for fun. I am at a point in my career now where it is easier for me to take the weekend off and listen to the Metropolitan opera. But there was a time when I just could not stop working. I am not so sure that was all that healthy, to be honest with you, looking back on it. You have to get your calendar out and block out that time and say “this is time for myself”. Now I just block out some weekends. I used to spend a lot of time on weekends with papers, grants, and other research-related activities. Now if I do not have to do something for a deadline, I will protect those weekends. I realize that not everybody is in that position in their careers, so they have to work all the time. I do not know the answer to that “fun” question for everyone, but I would love to hear what the other people are saying and how they are managing.
Robert Mecham, Alumni Endowed Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Bioengineering, Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis
For fun I like outdoor activities, cycling, skiing and hiking. It is hard to find time, but I think you just have to make the commitment and treat these activities as just as important as everything else in your life. You will always feel better after you do it. My hobbies include reading and knitting. I am always reading, and if I’m not reading for work, I have my head buried in a novel. I have made countless hats, scarves, dish cloths, and pairs of socks during the pandemic.
Michelle Bendeck, Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto and Translational Biology and Engineering Program, Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research
I love outdoor things. I love biking, hiking and swimming. Swimming is my real passion. Before the pandemic, I was doing Masters swimming. I like to explore different places with beautiful scenery and getting fresh air. I enjoy walking with friends, biking and hanging out outdoors. I guess a perfect day would be doing something outdoors all day long and then having a great meal afterwards.
Joyce Bischoff, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School; Research Associate, Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital; Principal Investigator, Surgery and Vascular Biology Program, Boston Children's Hospital
You know, one of the things I struggle with a lot is work-life balance. Science is all consuming, so it's hard for me to stop and do something else. I take some trips that are not linked to work and allow me to spend time with family or with friends, get away for a period of time and get out of the work environment. Since travel is limited due to the pandemic, I’ve set up a routine where after dinner, I don't work anymore. Everyone doesn’t have this luxury, but it helps me to set limits on work while at home, and to recharge and take better care of myself. I also try to focus on what I’ve accomplished in a day rather than what didn’t get done, and to think about the intangible aspects as well – spending time on a zoom call with a trainee to make sure they know they are supported doesn’t show up on the to do list but is an important accomplishment.
Victoria Bautch, Ph.D., Beverly Long Chapin Distinguished Professor, Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Co- Director of McAllister Heart Institute
People are going to do what they are going to do, so it is not as if you can schedule when people come and go. You can get a technician and ask them to stay two years because you want that kind of continuity, but if they get into medical school the first year you are not going to tell them they cannot go! I tend not to have a lot of technicians. I want to have a lab manager to do logistic things. I might get a technician who is doing an interim position between undergraduate and Graduate School, but I am not somebody who is good for life technicians or people who need a lot of direction. I am pretty lasseiz-faire and I do not want to have to be instructing somebody on a daily basis. Right now, I have a technician and he is applying to Graduate School. I call him a technician, but he has got his own projects that he is doing on his own. I like to have a lab manager because I want the cohesion of having someone to make sure the jobs get done, such as purchasing or compliance paperwork. I want somebody to help pull the whole group together. Other than that, I would not have a trainee in my lab, like an undergraduate or a graduate student, just because of where I am in my career, without having a postdoc who could mentor them. I do not have enough presence around the lab or even enough technical experience in the lab anymore to be training people. I think there has to be a good balance of technical personnel and trainees. I only take trainees if I have a postdoc who is willing and interested in mentoring them, because assigning a trainee to a postdoc who does not want to be a mentor is a kiss of death for both of them. If I could be in the lab, then I would take on more trainees because I like doing that kind of thing. You need to have somebody who can really do the daily mentoring for the trainees or you are not doing them a service.
Patricia D’Amore, Senior Scientist, Schepens Eye Research Institute; Director, Howe Laboratory; Associate Chief for Opthalmology Basic and Translational Research, Massachusetts Eye and Ear; Charles L. Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School
I have two phases to that approach. One, I have never really emphasized a large technical workforce within my lab. I have had technicians, technical support, or senior scientists who have been very happy and cultivated a long working relationship within my lab as the means for keeping that continuity. So there have been senior technicians who have helped in the lab and they have been with me for long periods of time. Within that context, within that structure, I have emphasized much more heavily bringing in trainees: grad students, postdocs, and on occasion, senior scientists. But mainly grad students and postdocs; I think that is a very good approach for a lab. They bring a lot of creativity and different opinions and talents and drives to the table; but they also bring a lot of intellect that is really important. So, I like that formula with a low intensity tech support, but solid, and high intensity trainees in the lab, high numbers. Now when I moved to UIC and took on multiple leadership roles, I actually created a different formula. I recruited a lab Director and we negotiated that she would actually serve as what we referred to as the Scientific Director of the lab whereas I am the PI. So that is a little bit different formula: a lab Director may just assist me in directing the lab while a Scientific Director implies that she is my partner in writing grants and papers, in thoughts and ideas. I had not originally thought of that approach, but she proposed that and it has worked very, very well. So now the continuity in the lab is dependent on my Scientific Director who works for me but is also my research partner.
Jan Kitajewski, Professor and Head of Department of Physiology and Biophysics, College of Medicine at Chicago; Director, University of Illinois Cancer Center
I think it is very important to have some continuity, so I have a lab engineer and a lab manager. I also have a technician, but most of the people in the lab are PhD students and postdocs. However, this is how the research system is, in general, and I think it is one of the nice aspects that people come and go. It makes the lab a very lively place with a lot of change because every student or postdoc comes with a different background and brings in different ideas. The projects are different, but I think it is still very important to have at least even a small core of people that help me keep everything going and more stable.
Dr. Shulamit Levenberg, Ph.D., Professor and Former Dean, Biomedical Engineering Department
Director, Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory; Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
I would recommend having at least one or two permanent people in the lab as technicians. I have a senior technician that has been with me for a very long time. This person is really important for providing the institutional memory, but also is critical for running the laboratory and training people. He is the only one who knows what's in the freezer! Having people like that, I think, is critical for a lab. By and large, it is the students and the postdocs that really are doing most of the research. At least in my lab, that is the biggest personnel “pool”, although we also have access to students, postdocs, and clinical fellows to be part of the research team.
Robert Mecham, Alumni Endowed Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Bioengineering, Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis
I think that you need at least one long term employee for continuity and basic training, it could be a technician or research associate. That person has to be up-to-date to be able to train and provide oversight for new and transient trainees. Training for the standard operating procedures for the lab are provided by this person, who can also monitor bio safety training and compliance, animal use training and protocol submissions. It’s really important to have at least one person who has been around for a number of years. That person is the institutional or the lab memory: they're going to remember where that specialized pipette that we haven't used for the last five years ended up, or who borrowed this book or that piece of equipment. I think that you're obligated to provide that level of support for your trainees. It's not fair to ask them to come in and take on all of those roles and responsibilities. In terms of trainees, I think it’s important to have a balance and a structure that promotes mentoring by trainees. For example, PDFs can mentor grad students and grad students can mentor undergrads. Each person has an independent project, but often an undergrad student takes on a small part of the grad student’s project which allows for training in experiments, presentation and writing skills. It also helps me with time management, and allows me to form small research interest groups within the lab that meet for focused discussions.
Michelle Bendeck, Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto and Translational Biology and Engineering Program, Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research
I think it's very helpful to have one or two people in the lab who've been with you a long time because they really do provide a valuable lab memory. I have been extremely fond of the lab technicians who joined my lab right out of college, as they brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm, but they generally stayed for only a year or two. However, someone that has been in the lab for many years can help to interact with other labs in your department or even in your institution because they know people in various labs and cores. Their salaries are going to be higher, but it’s worth it to have this continuous lab memory.
Joyce Bischoff, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School; Research Associate, Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital; Principal Investigator, Surgery and Vascular Biology Program, Boston Children's Hospital
I believe it depends on the individual and what works for their style of leadership/mentorship. There isn’t a rule saying a group needs certain percentages of various types of personnel. Some labs that are completely full of trainees and everything works really well, while other labs have two or three anchor people and fewer transient people and that also works well. For my lab, I carry most of the lab memory because I haven't had a permanent person. Instead, I have trainees that come through and overlap. Many of my PhD students take five or six years to finish up, and even my lab managers rotate every two or three years. Overall, it works for me to have more people who are trainees and transient. I’m very comfortable mentoring students and postdocs, and although lab memory is a little more fluid under these circumstances, it also allows room for new ideas and approaches. There's definitely holes when people leave with techniques or projects and there is no one to take them over, but there is usually overlap and so not a complete break during the transitions. We’ve also set up lots of files on our server with protocols and descriptions of lab manager duties that help provide continuity.
Victoria Bautch, Ph.D., Beverly Long Chapin Distinguished Professor, Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Co- Director of McAllister Heart Institute
I think so. I think there would be second chances because (1) NIH has a couple of granting mechanisms to do that and (2) if works if you find a mentor to help you with a career or research change like that. I think it's good to identify an academic mentor as well as a research mentor who you can work with—someone who can start to launch you in that particular research area. If I was, for instance, wanting to start doing yeast genetics, I would do a sabbatical or at the very least find a collaboration with an expert in that area. It is possible to then share a postdoc, or something along those lines, so that you can get relaunched into a new research area. I definitely think it is possible and that it all depends on the level of enthusiasm of the individual. I think the person has to be OK with starting over; psychologically it requires a lot of introspection before somebody undertakes that type of transition. However, I definitely think it is possible.
Dr. Patricia D’Amore, Senior Scientist, Schepens Eye Research Institute
Director, Howe Laboratory
Associate Chief for Opthalmology Basic and Translational Research, Massachusetts Eye and Ear
Charles L. Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School
I think it is almost essential to think of second chances, because I have moved into a lot of different research areas and different leadership roles in my career. In my experience, not just for me but also in interacting with other folks, thinking about alternate careers or focus at the mid or even senior level is an important component of growth and may be standard operating procedure. Rather than saying “is there a second chance?”, I might say that it is important to always consider that you need to be open to different techniques, different career options, and different directions. Otherwise, staying stagnant is a risky proposition. My answer is “yes”, but once again, you have to have a lot of care and thought in making decisions about doing something different. I think it is important for everybody to be able to consider that they may segue, for instance, from a research to an administrative position or from research to a law or a policy position. Or their research is winding down, for some reason, but there may be an opportunity to collaborate with somebody on a different project in a very different way. That may not feel comfortable at the beginning, but might give someone an opportunity to reboot a research program that they never had anticipated before. I think that being able to look at different options for science and mentoring and career is a pretty important component of how you do business, from my perspective.
Dr. Jan Kitajewski, Professor and Head of Department of Physiology and Biophysics
College of Medicine at Chicago; Director, University of Illinois Cancer Center
Definitely. It is important to have internal grants that you can apply to that are different than the regular grants where you need lots of preliminary results. These type of transition grants can give people the opportunity to go into new research directions and collaborations. I think that encouraging people to explore different research topics is important and makes research more dynamic. Depending on what Institute you are at, it can make a difference in how supportive the Institute is in helping scientists transition. The internal awards at our institution, for example, allow you to take a risk.
Dr. Shulamit Levenberg, Ph.D.
Professor and Former Dean, Biomedical Engineering Department
Director, Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
I think you can definitely have second chances, certainly in terms of a reboot in new directions or new projects. As you develop a certain expertise and reputation in your area of study, especially at a large medical complex in my case, some people may come to you for collaborations or want your input. These collaborations may lead you to embark on a new project, which is a way to reboot and find an exciting new area to study. In terms of a whole shift, such as going to industry or policy, I haven’t had any experience with that type of situation.
Dr. Joyce Bischoff, Ph.D.
Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Research Associate, Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital
Principal Investigator, Surgery and Vascular Biology Program, Boston Children's Hospital
Yes, and the reason is because I went through one. As I finished my postdoc at Cold Spring Harbor Labs, most of what I had done and published was looking at effects of over-expressing viral oncogenes, making and analyzing tumors in mice. When I started my lab, I had some limited background in mouse development. I was working on some cancer and some developmental projects, and I went along doing this for about 6 years (until I got tenure). We were funded and publishing papers, but they weren’t having a huge impact. I couldn't think of anything really interesting to do with the cancer projects, and the field was crowded. The cancer angle wasn't piquing my interest anymore. However, I loved developmental biology. I submitted a paper to a developmental journal, but to my surprise they rejected it. I realized that I didn't have a brand that people recognized. So, I started rebranding myself as a developmental vascular biologist. I began by doing a sabbatical at Mill Hill in London with the legendary Rosa Beddington. I got more visibility in the developmental biology field by going to Rosa’s lab, and when I came back, I retooled my lab to focus on vascular developmental biology. Early in my career, I didn’t realize how important it was for the outside world to be able to identify you with a subfield. My advice: follow your passion, but be strategic and think about when and how to reboot!
Dr. Victoria Bautch, Ph.D.
Beverly Long Chapin Distinguished Professor, Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Co- Director of McAllister Heart Institute
compiled by Craig Simmons, University of Toronto, Stryder Meadows, Tulane University, and Diane Darland, University of North Dakota
Patricia D’Amore, Senior Scientist, Schepens Eye Research Institute; Director, Howe Laboratory; Associate Chief for Opthalmology Basic and Translational Research, Massachusetts Eye and Ear; Charles L. Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School
Great question. We took advantage of an “accident”, a new research direction that came out of an unexpected dataset that included changes in endomucin. Then that turned into a whole new avenue of research for the lab. So how do you keep your skills and abilities fresh? I think skills are tougher because I am not in the lab, but I try to go to seminars because I find even seminars not in your own field are enlightening in terms of methods that people use. So, if I go to one in neurobiology, for me, I am a vascular person; but I still can hear some approach that they are using that would be helpful to me. That is not the only reason I go to seminars, obviously, but it does turn out to be a nice side benefit. We actually have had a technology seminar series in the past at Schepens and plan to start those again soon. With these seminars, we bring in local experts or people from companies to talk about new platforms that are out there that we might not know about, so that is a helpful thing. These interactions tell you what is possible and help generate discussion. In general, I think going to seminars is really a good thing…you can read a manuscript, but you just do not get the dynamic nature of the technology. I really appreciate going to seminars where people are doing different things in terms of keeping the research alive. Some of my best ideas I think I get by going to seminars that are not in my field and seeing the crossover in the similarity of the ideas. I think it’s also important to read the literature, but more than anything it is important to talk to people. I love going to give seminars at other places and then talking to faculty about what they are doing. They are able to explain the assays and approaches they are using in way more detail than you can get out of a seminar or a paper. That is what I find helps give me some new ideas regarding technology and cutting-edge approaches. I definitely do not read enough manuscripts…. well, as much as I should. When I have to have to read manuscripts to write a grant or review a grant, I am always so sad because I see something and think, “I should have read that before—it is a 2017 paper! “There is only so much time in the day, so I do the best I can.
Jan Kitajewski, Professor and Head of Department of Physiology and Biophysics, College of Medicine at Chicago; Director, University of Illinois Cancer Center
I use two approaches. One is networking, obviously. That is going to meetings, having robust discussions, and getting on the phone with colleagues. I may not have used that when I started the lab; I think it was following the literature a lot. Really, going to a NAVBO meeting (to give a plug for NAVBO meetings), is probably the best way that I have learned about new approaches and new skillsets. But second, because we have moved into a lot of areas, it means that we really need to reach out to other experts and to collaborate. The moment we would start to think about moving from retinal analysis to brain vasculature in Alzheimer’s it means we have to go talk to folks who are leaders in the Alzheimer’s field or in the blood-brain-barrier field. I think that I learn a lot about new technologies and scientific perspectives from those collaborations. That’s probably the most productive way because it is taking your skillsets, adapting them to a collaboration, and then having a robust discussion with your collaborator about what skillsets are needed. It’s when you bring those two areas of expertise together, you find how it fits. If you are reading it in a journal, and thinking, “oh, I might be able to use this as a future approach”, you then might try using it. There is a lot of trial-and-error you may go through and realize this may not have been the right approach, and it’s not working super well. That I find more challenging than going out and seeking experts to collaborate with and then having a robust crosstalk about how best to onload new scientific things. For me, it seems to be mainly about networking.
Shulamit Levenberg, Ph.D., Professor and Former Dean, Biomedical Engineering Department Director, Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory; Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
I think one important thing is conferences--real in-person conferences when you go for days and listen to lectures and learn new things in a focused way. I think it is very important and, actually, I encourage my students to go to seminars where they can be exposed to new assays, new methods, new technologies, and new directions. I think going to seminars and conferences is an important way to stay current. Also, of course, reading the primary literature is critical. I think the research team can help as well. I may hear about some new technique and I will ask one of my students to explore deeper and then present the information at a group meeting. That way we can all share in the discussion, but not everyone needs to go deep into the paper; I like that approach.
Robert Mecham, Alumni Endowed Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Bioengineering, Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis
I believe it is important that you are constantly refreshing your skills and your approaches to research. How do you do that? Well, I think that the most common means are the ones I think we would all identify—seminars, the literature, and scientific meetings. I think it is really important to pay attention to the research trends that are going on around us using our “peripheral vision” rather than just staying focused on our own research. Trying to understand how science is changing and how that might help our own research move forward in the laboratory is critical. Collaborations are really important; you cannot do everything in science alone anymore. Research techniques are moving ahead too quickly, and there will come a day when you cannot do it all. So, having good collaborations within the institution and outside the institution is critical. With postdocs and graduate students, I think it is important to give them the opportunity to learn new things that they can bring back to the lab. For example, we have jumped into single cell sequencing which everybody is doing these days it seems. But having a postdoc who could go over to the sequencing center and spend a few weeks over there learning the technique, trying to understand how it works, figuring out what the limitations are and then bringing that information back into the lab has been critical to our research. This is something that I do not have time to do, but the post doc did this. I think that if you really want to have the research be reinvigorated, (depending on where you are in your career) take a sabbatical, even if it is three months or six months or a year. If you can get a sabbatical, I think it is well worth it. But you do not want to do that, really, before you have tenure, and you are probably not eligible to do it anyway. I did a sabbatical, and it was one of the best things I ever did for my research. I went to the NIH for a year and worked on a project there that was peripherally related to what I do in my lab, but the research there also gave me a chance to learn some new techniques and meet new people. The other important part about a sabbatical is that it usually enhances your network quite a bit.
Michelle Bendeck, Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto and Translational Biology and Engineering Program, Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research
I try to stay current by doing really practical things like attending relevant conferences because I find that really helps to keep me up to date much more easily and efficiently than sitting down trying to read the literature. I like to work with collaborators to introduce new methods. If you don't have the expertise to do something, find someone who does and work with them, and you will learn. Apply for small grants when you want to do something different, as they can be a good source to get the seed money to start. And the other thing that I've learned really, only very recently, is that is okay to let your students and postdocs lead those proposals. If they decide that they want to pursue a project they are passionate about and write a small grant, it's incredible experience for them. That has worked for me a couple of times, and what I'm finding is if I let my students pursue their ideas in this way, they actually teach me new approaches; they teach me things that allow me to feel more comfortable in a new field. That's really something very powerful that I wish I would have clued into earlier.
Joyce Bischoff, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School; Research Associate, Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital; Principal Investigator, Surgery and Vascular Biology Program, Boston Children's Hospital
That's a great question, and it's hard to address because we get so locked into what we're doing and the techniques we've developed. I think it sounds simple, but it can start by going to seminars outside your area of expertise, listening to webinars about new techniques and talking to colleagues who are using these new techniques. When I go to a meeting, a seminar or read a paper, I’m selfishly always thinking about how I can use this to help our research projects. Sometimes a new topic, or a topic you already love, can be presented so beautifully it makes you feel inspired. Go out and use all the different online forums that have grown since the pandemic.
Victoria Bautch, Ph.D., Beverly Long Chapin Distinguished Professor, Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Co- Director of McAllister Heart Institute
Staying current in terms of scientific approach and skills at this point primarily relies on bringing people in who bring those skills or finding them via collaboration. I go to meetings and find out what people are doing, how they are approaching things, and what are the new toys they are using. I don't think it's that hard - I think the hard thing is to not jump on every new thing and just do what everyone else is doing. In terms of reinvigorating my research, I have gone on sabbaticals. The first time, I went to Rosa Beddington’s lab and did developmental biology. The second time, I stayed at UNC and went to my colleague’s lab to learn zebrafish. Then, we started doing zebrafish in my lab, and it was a whole new model and this whole new thing. I think it helped my science a lot, and it also helped me in terms of recharging the batteries. I think every once in a while, taking a break and doing either a mini sabbatical or a real sabbatical is a really good idea.
Published June 3, 2021 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
compiled by Craig Simmons, University of Toronto
Patricia D’Amore, Senior Scientist, Schepens Eye Research Institute; Director, Howe Laboratory; Associate Chief for Opthalmology Basic and Translational Research, Massachusetts Eye and Ear; Charles L. Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School
In my opinion, it comes sort of organically. You know some projects you never finish, per se, but you might get to the end of what you're willing to do. I think part of the process is that you have to be doing things somewhere on the side that are a little bit discovery, but that you don't necessarily always have a hypothesis for. So that if you get an interesting observation, you have a choice of things you can pursue at some point. Now we're pursuing this molecule, endomucin, which just came up in a screen we did literally 12 years ago. We didn't do anything with it for awhile, and then as people came to the lab we had choices; now it's turned into a whole project, and my RO1 right now is funded on that. So, I think it's a combination of organic, but always with doing enough discovery research, sort of “look-and-see” experiments on the side; so that you have some new ideas waiting in the wings.
Jan Kitajewski, Professor and Head of Department of Physiology and Biophysics, College of Medicine at Chicago; Director, University of Illinois Cancer Center
My experience has been a bit of a “fearless” approach, but possibly a “foolish” approach, because I have changed directions quite dramatically starting with pure cancer research, moving to vascular biology, and then moving to different pathological settings for studying vascular biology. So, I say it’s foolish, because you need to be able to “talk the talk” and “walk the walk” and need to be an expert in all those different areas; that is such an important element of succeeding. But also, I think being a bit fearless and taking advantage of opportunities is another key element to finding a good scientific area. When I see something that clearly is within my skillsets, but is an exciting new direction with high impact, then I am more inclined to jump into it and then worry later about putting all the pieces together to make it work well. I would say that I look hard for new opportunities and then dive into them.
Shulamit Levenberg, Ph.D., Professor and Former Dean, Biomedical Engineering Department Director, Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory; Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
First, I choose what interests me and what I think is interesting to learn about. I also prefer to identify a direction that will be important clinically and that has the potential to be applied. This is especially important if we are talking about tissue engineering. Another method for choosing what I work on is if I am approached by someone with a problem or an idea to address. For example, I have been approached by members from the foundation for spinal cord injury or from the diabetes area who are interested in our research. They have asked my lab and me to explore and ask questions in this direction. Sometimes we identify new directions based on students’ ideas. Students will identify something that they want to explore, and they come to me and ask to pursue research in this area. I think all of these options happen, and I love this student incorporation.
Robert Mecham, Alumni Endowed Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Bioengineering, Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis
Scientifically, I think the first influence is really the environment and familiarity. What I mean by that is when I think back to when I was starting, the first project that I got involved with was as a lab technician. I was trying to sequence a protein, and I didn't know anything about it. It was a job; however, I was interested in science, and it was an introduction to the scientific method, basically. That’s probably true for most of the students as well--that first project is probably assigned when they come into a lab. They might have an idea of what's going on in the laboratory, but I don't think that many students are aware enough of the details of the research to really understand the depth that they will need to understand a project. What I like to do when students come into my lab is talk about a project that will get them going on something that they are peripherally interested in. But I also encourage them to interact with the other students and postdocs; and that's important because it gives them an idea of what the major questions are that are being pursued in the lab. After a while, they will find their own niche.
Michelle Bendeck, Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto and Translational Biology and Engineering Program, Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research
My answer is what has worked for me. I don't know if it would work for everyone, but I've found that it's always a good idea to build on what you know. At every stage in your career, start with the basis of what you've done before, but then always incorporate new techniques and approaches. You can stick with the same questions as long as you're still pursuing the questions that you're passionate about, that you're very interested in. As you establish your lab and advance, you can ask new questions and move into different areas of research, but I think it's always safer to have that concept of building on what you know and working forward from your established expertise. There is something really useful that I learned by example from my PhD supervisor, because I saw him do it: keep the questions that really intrigue you in the back of your mind. You may not be able to answer those questions today, but five years from now there may be a new technique, there may be a new approach, people in the field may have moved forward, and your question may become a hot research topic. So don't forget about those things that that you feel are really important.
Some researchers build their career very differently. Some people build a successful career by moving from one hot topic to the next. But I find that most people do better with a logical progression of thought building from where they started.
Joyce Bischoff, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School; Research Associate, Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital; Principal Investigator, Surgery and Vascular Biology Program, Boston Children's Hospital
I think it's good to pick a question or a disease that you want to tackle and keep that your main focus. Sometimes people early on in their training become really attached to a protein, transcription factor for example, or certain cellular process. That's really good for your training, but you don't know if your favorite transcription factor is going to turn out to be less important for the question(s) you want to tackle. When you start your own lab, I think you need to pick the question and or disease and then just do whatever it takes to answer that question.
Victoria Bautch, Ph.D., Beverly Long Chapin Distinguished Professor, Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Co- Director of McAllister Heart Institute
I think the single most important thing is to find something that you really want to know the answer to and that you think is cool, interesting and piques your imagination. No matter what else happens, if the passion for the answer isn't there, then it's just hard to enjoy doing science. Once I have something that's really interesting, exciting and stimulating, it is important to think about what you know and how it can be packaged in a way that's fundable-- ideas without money don't get you very far, especially in this day and age. Think about where the NIH wants to be, and where you and your questions could fit into that context. Also consider other funding sources. The way I pursue things scientifically isn't the same way that everybody does. We follow the science and the biology, which sometimes leads us into different areas, but also keeps things fresh and has allowed me to stay excited for a long time in the field of vascular biology. Also, people come to the lab with good ideas that fit into the bigger picture of the research goals, and those ideas often drive different, but interesting areas of research.
Published April 8, 2021 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
compiled by Craig Simmons, University of Toronto
Patricia D’Amore, Senior Scientist, Schepens Eye Research Institute; Director, Howe Laboratory; Associate Chief for Opthalmology Basic and Translational Research, Massachusetts Eye and Ear; Charles L. Schepens Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School
That's a good question! I can't sit and write for three hours, but if I know I need more time than a 45-minute window, I might put in three hours in my calendar. Then, I break that up by working for 40 minutes and then doing something else for 20 minutes. If I know I'm doing a writing project that's going to require me looking at the literature a lot and going back and forth to writing, I definitely make sure I have blocks of time set aside in my calendar. Otherwise, you start to get your momentum going and then you have to stop for another task. It's very frustrating and then, for me, it's very hard to get back to it. I try to give myself enough time. I look further ahead to plan and I'll put several hours in my calendar, knowing full well that I'm going to take breaks in the middle of it. For example, I know that I can edit something in 45 minutes, but I will block out more time so that it is not available for other people to schedule over. The key is that you have to respect what you put in your calendar and finish the task. That helps you figure out how to say “no” if you have a deadline coming up and you have a lot of writing to do. If you know it's going to take you 10 hours and you have those blocked out in your calendar; giving those times up for other tasks is a bad idea. Because when else are you going to get it done? I am an obsessive list maker and what really helps me is breaking bigger projects into smaller projects. If I am working on the preliminary data section of a grant and that's going to take 9 hours, I will put “write about figure one” on my list. That’s doable in one hour because I broke it down to small enough projects. I have also tried to keep Fridays open as much as possible and not schedule things on Fridays unless I have no choice. That gives me big blocks of time to do things that are time-consuming. I try to force all the other commitments into the rest of the week and make good use of my calendar to protect my time. Then once you put something in the calendar, mean it….if the calendar item is “work on the introduction”, then write the introduction so that you are accountable to yourself.
Jan Kitajewski, Professor and Head of Department of Physiology and Biophysics, College of Medicine at Chicago; Director, University of Illinois Cancer Center
I don’t know how to answer that; it’s a tough one and I don’t have any specific tricks. I think that one thing to pay attention to if there are a lot of demands on your time and you need to be efficient, is to recognize that when you are focusing on something to give that your full attention. Focus very intensely. Don’t do it half-heartedly or while you are doing other things. Because if you are trying to balance a lot of time management and your mind is focusing on a lot of different things, then you will not have productive time. I would say that my trick may be that once I carve out even a small amount of time to tackle an issue, research-related, I try my best to stay exquisitely focused in trying to achieve some action items during that time and then move on.
Shulamit Levenberg, Ph.D., Professor and Former Dean, Biomedical Engineering Department Director, Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Laboratory; Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
I do my best! You have to focus and concentrate; but it is much easier when you have a block of time devoted to a task because it is easier to arrange your mind around the topic. I know people that can switch more easily during the day; however, for me it is easier to separate tasks. As Dean I had two offices: the lab office and the Dean office. There were days where I would focus on tasks associated with that location (Dean or research) and it helped. I really tried to make it work, but of course it did not always go as planned!
Robert Mecham, Alumni Endowed Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Bioengineering, Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis
I don't know; I don't think I am that efficient! I think you have to plan around priorities and just remember that you are in charge of your time. It is generally best to identify your priorities for the week or the day and work down the line. I really do think planning around priorities really can help in getting things done. I find that if I don't have a lot of planning going into a project, I am very inefficient--I spend too much time on things that I shouldn't and that are not productive.
Michelle Bendeck, Professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto and Translational Biology and Engineering Program, Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research
This is hard, and I read some of the early career research blogs and listen to podcasts on that because I think that the next generation coming up has a much better handle on that than I have. Right now, I’m trying to allocate blocks of time to certain tasks. For example, I spend Monday morning catching up on e-mail that I did not deal with the week before, and delegating tasks to urgent and not urgent to-do lists. During the pandemic, it has been helpful to book meetings on only two or three days of the week. If I have half an hour between Zoom meetings, I will pick a small task, like dealing with a financial problem or paying a bill. This leaves the remaining days for bigger projects that require more focus, for example revising a manuscript, or writing reference letters. If I am working on writing grants or manuscripts, I try to reserve several days at a time mainly for that. This is the hardest to do, because I cannot always think on schedule. So I start that process by completing some of the busywork, filling in the forms, updating my CV etc. But when I am writing a grant I never really escape it, I think about it day and night.
Joyce Bischoff, Ph.D., Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School; Research Associate, Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital; Principal Investigator, Surgery and Vascular Biology Program, Boston Children's Hospital
This may sound very basic, but I actually print out, in big bold font, the four or five things or deadlines I really want to get done in the next month or so, maybe it's a grant or manuscript. I think we all have a tendency to do the easy things on the ‘to-do’ list, check them off and feel good about getting maybe 10 checked off in a day, but they each only take two to five minutes to accomplish. That’s a good way to spend splintered time, but you want to make progress on the big items too. I tape my list of big things to my monitor so that it’s always there in sight; and I update it every month or so. When I’ve got an hour or two here and there, I can decide to use that time to write the cover letter for the manuscript or figure out if I'm going to suggest reviewers, etc. I’m always trying to use these small blocks of time to target what’s on my list. The small blocks are obviously not big enough to write a whole grant but keeping goals at the forefront, and working on smaller aspects, adds up in the long run.
Victoria Bautch, Ph.D., Beverly Long Chapin Distinguished Professor, Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Co- Director of McAllister Heart Institute
First, I block out unsplintered chunks of time in my calendar. For me it's better if it's the same time every week. Even more with the pandemic, I try not to over schedule things or schedule anything if I can help it for two days a week. The other days do get loaded up and a bit hectic. Then, I try to use those days to really work on my reading, on my papers or things that require more than 15 minutes of effort to get done. It's not perfect, but it helps because there’s so many things that have deadlines and don't take very much time, but when you aggregate them all together, you can use up every waking minute of your time just doing all the busy work. Also, having these blocks of time to talk to somebody and completely focus your brain (i.e. not multi-task), then have time to think about what I learned from that conversation really helps. Again, it's not perfect, but that's what I do: block off time. I would also say to think about the things that don't really take much time or brain effort and then try, to the extent that you can, fit them into those broken up bits of time.
Published February 11, 2021 - NAVBO NewsBEAT
compiled by Craig Simmons, University of Toronto
Masanori Aikawa, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
I have always tried to implement new technologies in my manuscripts or grant applications. I have also focused on proposing new concepts rather than follow others' footsteps. I have tried my best to maintain mutual trust between leadership members of my department or division. If you support them, they may want to support your career development too. I suggest to my trainees to have courage to innovate, which energizes the entire team so that you as a PI can fly high with them.
Ondine Cleaver, UT Southwestern Medical Center
How to maintain your career trajectory in science throughout your career? My answer is do what you love. Stick to the science that excites you, and put one foot in front of the other to get the answers you seek. It's not easy, be clear on that right upfront. But with a sense of humor, resilience, persistence, and creating peer groups for cross-critiques, venting and support, it can be done. Demand critical feedback, and thicken your skin so you can make use if it. Value and foster a love of discovery in your labs, simultaneously challenging them and appreciating their efforts. Write those papers and grants, and expect rejections. But keep submitting. Remember it's a marathon, not a race. So learn to enjoy running, and maybe the view along the way.
Bill Muller, Northwestern University
The most useful thing I have found to help maintain trajectory is to realize that you are in it for the long run. This is easier to say than to do, but if you focus on a question or series of questions that you want to answer and stay focused on answering them-knowing that science never proceeds in a straight line-you are less likely to get too distracted by the usual disappointments that come with the territory (e.g. manuscript rejections, bad grant reviews, getting "scooped") or worry how much time you are losing by moving your lab or your institution. Hot topics go in and out of fashion, so don't run around like a groupie following them. Stay focused on the science you want to do and do it really well. Eventually, it will be a hot topic again and then you'll be in the middle of it. Most of all, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have spent your life doing exactly what you wanted. And how many people can say that?
Kristy Red-Horse, Stanford University
I try to maintain my trajectory by making time to push my brain in new directions. When I feel myself starting to go on autopilot with the same thinking, proposing the same experiments to address a question, I take the time to read and think about something completely different. This is tough as time goes on because of the increased amount of administrative tasks that need to be done as you progress in your career. For example, the other day I had so many tasks on my plate, but gave myself permission to instead take time out to read (slow reading, not scanning) about the collective behavior of ants. I left that day inspired and invigorated instead of with a head bussing from a day filled with completing tasks. I find doing this on a regular basis translates to me giving more creative advice to my trainees.
Linda Shapiro, University of Connecticut Health Center
I raised three children while my husband traveled extensively and have been fortunate to have been able to maintain NIH funding since my first award in 1996, when my youngest was 3. I think the most important part of combining a research career with a family is organization- I'm a great list-maker and avoid procrastination. My kids had the most elaborate excel spreadsheets outlining their summer camp schedules, immunizations, soccer practices etc.! One mistake that I do regret is that I stopped attending meetings for the 5 years when my kids were in high school- too old for babysitters but too young to be trusted to not have parties when Dad's in Germany and Mom's at NAVBO! Getting to know other investigators, learning what's at the cutting edge and selling your science is very important to advance your career and harder to do without establishing face-to-face personal contacts.
My advice to early stage investigators is to concentrate on their personal careers - publishing, obtaining funding and networking/presenting at meetings to the exclusion of many 'public service' roles such as study sections and institutional committees. The goal should be securing funding as the highest priority-this will enable your promotion to the next level- tenure (if available) or senior faculty, to prove your ability as an independent scientist and obtain some degree of stability in this very unstable career.
Once your funding is in place, I feel serving on a study section is an invaluable learning opportunity to discover how the system works and ways to improve your grant writing. SROs are constantly in need of fair and reliable reviewers- ask colleagues who have served to suggest your name to their or other study section leaders. Continue to come up with new research projects and lines of investigation- this keeps the science fresh and much more interesting as you learn about new fields and systems. Never stop writing papers and grants- it takes so long now to publish a paper or get a grant that you have to have a few in play at once.
Finally, once you are established, it's time to give back. Emphasis at this point should be on training the next generation and serving the organizations that have supported you for so long. I don't mean to stop your research, but you have the experience to make it work with less effort. Finally, never stop striving for diversity and inclusion- valuable insights and opinions are critical!
Cindy St. Hillaire, University of Pittsburgh
I strongly feel that a key to success at your own institution it to have people know you and like you and your work, thus, try and say yes to things that matter to those who will be reviewing your promotion and tenure documents. Almost more important, anything you say yes to, you must adhere to timelines and follow through with good work.
Published April 2, 2020 - NAVBO NewsBEAT