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 5^th 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

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 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