This special edition of FOCUS In Sound is a panel discussion on career development from the Fund’s headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina on October 10, 2018, during the Networking Meeting for New Awardees.
Transcription of “2018 Career Development Panel”
00;00;00;28 – 00;00;28;26
Ernie Hood
Welcome to a special edition of Focus In Sound, the podcast series from the Focus newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood. In this special edition of Focus In Sound, we bring you a panel discussion on career development that took place at the fund’s headquarters in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, on October 10th, 2018.
00;00;29;08 – 00;01;00;24
Ernie Hood
During the networking meeting for new awardees, the awardees were treated to the wisdom of four distinguished guests from different backgrounds and at different stages of their careers. Dr. Nancy Andrews is the Nanaline H. Duke, professor of pediatric and Dean emeritus of the Duke University School of Medicine. Among her many achievements, she has been chair of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund board since 2015.
00;01;01;13 – 00;01;29;09
Ernie Hood
Dr. Merrie Mosedale is a research assistant professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapy Ethics at the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She is the recipient of a Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Innovations in Regulatory Science Award. Dr. Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena is chair of the Department of Genetics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
00;01;29;22 – 00;02;05;11
Ernie Hood
As chair, he oversees the department’s research enterprise, including multiple dedicated research centers. He is an international leader in the field of genetics. Dr. Rasheed Gbadegesin is a professor of pediatrics and professor in medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine. He is the principal investigator of a recently awarded Burroughs Wellcome Fund Physician, Scientist, Institutional Award. We begin with a brief introduction by Burroughs Wellcome Fund President Dr. John Burris.
00;02;05;25 – 00;02;40;14
Ernie Hood
Then each of the four panelists will speak about their careers for a few moments, followed by questions from the event’s attendees. I will voice the questions from the audience to enhance their audio quality. We hope you enjoy the discussion and find it a value wherever you find yourself in your career path. Dr. Burris Today, we’re very excited to have four distinguished panelists who are going to provide advice from their perspectives on establishing a career established in your laboratory.
00;02;41;00 – 00;02;46;27
Ernie Hood
Each of them comes from a slightly different perspective, and I think that will be helpful to you, Dr. Andrews.
00;02;47;18 – 00;03;09;13
Nancy Andrews
So in thinking about what to say today and having done this, I don’t know, three or four times, maybe more, before I wanted to choose a topic that I thought probably wouldn’t come up with the other speakers because they’ll they’ll be able to help you in in practical ways that I may be a little too remote to help with.
00;03;09;29 – 00;03;32;00
Nancy Andrews
I should say I maybe this is another disclosure. For ten years, I was the dean of the medical school at Duke. And so I watched many new faculty members come in in that role. And so I know something about it from that perspective and years ago, starting my own lab. But I wanted to to mention something that I think might otherwise be forgotten.
00;03;32;00 – 00;03;54;26
Nancy Andrews
But looking back at my own career was very important. And in fact, your in being here kind of taking the advice I’m about to give you. And and that is that in science, perhaps this is true in any field. Networking is really important or building your network. And you do that in many ways. You do that by going to meetings like this.
00;03;55;06 – 00;04;23;19
Nancy Andrews
You may do it by being coming involved in a professional society that you work with. You do it by just getting to know other people at the institutions you pass through during your training. And as you start your career, I would say, may be the least effective way to do it is to go up to a famous speaker after he or she gives a talk and say, Hi, I’m so-and-so, shake their hand and that’s it, because it’s not really going to start a relationship.
00;04;23;19 – 00;05;01;20
Nancy Andrews
But looking back at my own career, the people who I met starting in medical school and graduate school, and then through different kinds of committees and organization and and travel to give talks at other institutions. The people I sat down with for half an hour when I was a visiting speaker who I thought were in a completely different field, end up being people who enriched my science in various ways, made it possible that when I needed to learn a new technique or find somebody who knew something about something I didn’t know anything about.
00;05;02;03 – 00;05;30;19
Nancy Andrews
I could call on people from from that whole rich spectrum of connections that I developed over the years. So it’s something that in a way you’ll do passively. But I just want to urge you to, to value that because it makes a huge difference over time. I still think back to people I knew even as an undergraduate and they at the time, you know, we were students or they were faculty and I was a student and I didn’t really think about it.
00;05;30;19 – 00;05;55;04
Nancy Andrews
But now being able to call them up and say, you know, I need to know something about malaria way outside my field, or we’re trying to recruit somebody who is in your field or whatever. It’s made science a lot better to have that breadth. Sometimes it can mean going to a seminar in an area that’s completely different from what you think about, and you might not even get to know a new person through that.
00;05;55;04 – 00;06;16;28
Nancy Andrews
But but constantly stretching the way that you look at science going outside of your own field and developing what really turn out to be often lifelong connections is the version of networking that I want to put in a plug for. I think it makes a huge difference and you’re already doing it. But but over time, do it a lot more.
00;06;17;29 – 00;06;46;00
Merrie Mosedale
Hi everyone. I’m Merrie Mosedale. I’m a research assistant professor and assistant director of the Institute for Drug Safety Sciences at the U.N. C Eshelman School of Pharmacy. So I am at the very opposite end of the spectrum here in terms of career experience as some of my more established colleagues on the panel. But I’m happy to share my experiences and my thoughts and hopefully they’ll be beneficial to you.
00;06;46;13 – 00;07;14;21
Merrie Mosedale
So if I’m a research faculty member in the School of Pharmacy, it’s a little bit of a different position than a tenure track faculty. And I’m actually in the process now of trying to make that transition from research faculty to tenure track. And I’ve taken a little bit of an alternative route to get there. I was actually a research investigator at a toxicology research institute called the Hamner Institutes here in the Triangle area.
00;07;15;06 – 00;07;55;00
Merrie Mosedale
And at the end of 2015, when Hamner closed down, I actually transitioned with my whole group over to the School of Pharmacy to serve in this research assistant professor role. And, you know, I have to say it’s been definitely a nontraditional route, but a great opportunity and great experience for me for many reasons. So serving in a research faculty role has allowed me to serve as a principal investigator for independent research projects, to secure my own funding to apply for and obtain funding many of the same types of funding opportunities as you can in a tenure track role.
00;07;55;27 – 00;08;19;15
Merrie Mosedale
So I’ve been able to apply for and receive NIH grants, industry contracts and also private foundation funding. And I was a 2017 recipient of the Innovation and Regulatory Science Award. And so of course, that’s helped me bolster my CV, which is great as I prepare to make this transition into a tenure track role, I’ve been able to lead research projects.
00;08;19;15 – 00;08;47;15
Merrie Mosedale
I gained that experience, which has been very valuable. I’ve been able to manage a team of students and post-docs and research scientists and research associates. I’ve, you know, with my own funding, been able to gain experience in managing funding and then also managing a research lab, which is very valuable as well. You know, I think it’s been a great opportunity to prepare me as I make this transition to a tenure track role.
00;08;48;08 – 00;09;06;24
Merrie Mosedale
So, you know, I was thinking about the kind of advice I could give at my level that could be valuable to other folks participating today. And, you know, I was really thinking other three kind of things that I’d want to talk about. But really, when I thought more deeply about it, they all really fall under the same umbrella.
00;09;06;24 – 00;09;50;25
Merrie Mosedale
And it’s similar to what Nancy was saying, that relationships are very important and they’re important clearly at all stages of your career. So I think the three kinds of relationships that I thought about were mentorship. And I’m sure you’ll hear this from other folks on the panel and probably other folks you’ve heard in these kinds of settings before how valuable it is to have a mentor that really believes in you, that supports you, and that can help guide you as you try to move forward in your career, both scientifically to provide feedback on your research projects and research questions and and pursuing funding opportunities, but particularly on your career and how to move forward in
00;09;50;25 – 00;10;19;06
Merrie Mosedale
your career and to help make the right connections with other individuals that can help you move forward. Second, you know, relationship wise, are collaborations. So this day and age, it’s impossible to be an expert in everything. In fact, it’s impossible to be an expert in even a few things. So you really need to have new relationships with other scientists and other individuals that can help contribute to your research.
00;10;19;27 – 00;10;50;21
Merrie Mosedale
You know, you want to make those connections with people, not by thinking about how can somebody help you, but how can you help them. And I think when you have that kind of relationship and that kind of collaboration with somebody, you have a much more valuable relationship, like Nancy was saying, as opposed to, you know, just meeting somebody after a seminar and introducing yourself to actually work with somebody day to day or, you know, weekly or monthly is much more valuable kind of relationship than you would have.
00;10;51;02 – 00;11;10;09
Merrie Mosedale
I just by introducing herself at a meeting. And then third, the relationships of the people that work for you and work around you. You know, I’m sure this is true for other people, but I much prefer to go to work when I feel like I’m working around other individuals that are also very excited about the work that they’re doing.
00;11;10;09 – 00;11;34;13
Merrie Mosedale
They’re motivated, they’re smart, they’re hardworking, and that motivates me. So I think it’s important to surround yourself with individuals that, you know, show that kind of work ethic and interest in the work that they do. So as you try to recruit students and postdocs staff to to work with you and to work around you, to recruit individuals that help to build that kind of culture.
00;11;36;01 – 00;11;58;17
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
My name is Fernando, Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena, and I live between I am closer to Nancy, actually careerwise than to Merrie. I’m a professor and chair of the Department of Genetics and one of many synergies and see, I have an unusual background. I was talking with John. I’m mostly French. I had a very long Spanish name and three quarter of French, one quarter Father.
00;11;58;17 – 00;12;18;07
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I came for a post-doc for a year at Temple University in Pennsylvania 25 years ago with the idea of going back to Europe and doing science in Europe. And I had stayed here for 25 years. So and this is going to be part of my advice. There’s places where you fit and that is as important in for your career as your excellence in science.
00;12;18;07 – 00;12;44;17
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I am assuming that all of you are the experts in your field. You are the news hard saying that is going to move science forward. We know that. But part of your career development is going to be find a place where you can be as good a position can be realized. And that is not necessarily the same place for everybody fitting in the culture of your department, your institute, your center, your university is really important.
00;12;44;29 – 00;13;04;14
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
You need to be aligned with that culture and it has to be both ways. And you need to to make sure that your bosses or the people that supervisor, the people are going to give you tenure or get you for promotion value The research that you do. If they don’t, you’re not not in the right place. Move somewhere else.
00;13;05;00 – 00;13;26;21
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
On the other hand, you also need to value the culture of those places. Duke has a different culture, and I would say we get along much better than what people think, but actually within you and say the department of Genetics had a very different culture, Department of Cell biology. So and that is driven in part by the people that are in leadership position and by their colleagues.
00;13;26;21 – 00;13;49;26
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
So be sure that you ask questions, because if you don’t ask questions, you don’t know. And some of these questions may be a little probing and they seem a little irrelevant because you are talking about your paper in nature and it’s out. But they are going to be as important. I mean, you want your department to recruit, you having skin in the game, that your success is their success.
00;13;50;05 – 00;14;09;01
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
If they don’t do that, that person is going to move on. You’re just leaving, You’re leaving money on the table. You don’t want to do that. Some places may have better resources, but different cultures. So think about that really, in every step of your careers. But at the very beginning, it is hard to ask. Those question is hard to think.
00;14;09;16 – 00;14;37;16
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
It starts to think up as a profession because you are so excited about your own science that you don’t think about careers and and I think that way. I mean, we, the senior people, need to do better to make sure that we pay attention to these kind of of of issues. So if you have a chair and your have tenure track position, make sure that your chair therefore it’s five, six, seven years, that’s got to take you to get tenure, that that will ensure that that person is the person that recruiter, the person that actually wants you to succeed.
00;14;38;08 – 00;15;05;25
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
So that’s my first piece of advice. The second piece of advice, I think that I’m going to keep insisting on what Nancy and what Merrie was saying, but I’m going to take a slightly different task. There is nobody that can do team science interview value search today without having colleagues and those colleagues as far as they are from your own field, probably the most successful, the more groundbreaking your site is going to be.
00;15;06;17 – 00;15;26;06
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
And you need to choose people that they are going to be good at their field, but you need to choose people that you trust. And trust is key for relationship insights. You are going to be junior and the question is can you trust somebody to support professor or a member of the National Academy of Science? Is that person going to take advantage of you?
00;15;26;15 – 00;15;47;08
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
And you need to make sure that when you do that and that type of conversations I have, it with all my my, my faculty, my junior faculty, I mentor. So ask questions that do not be B.S. When you are starting a collaboration, make sure that you understand who is paying for what, how credit is going to be given for success.
00;15;47;22 – 00;16;08;27
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
And if you think that you are not okay, it’s okay to walk away. I mean, there is no reason. There is plenty of of of experts in the world. And as a addendum to this is and that has been my experience, I think that imposter syndrome is something that we should all science to have a level we should.
00;16;09;09 – 00;16;27;20
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
Dr. Sales is a good thing if it goes to the extreme is not. On the other hand, remember that the people that you look up, the Nobel Prize winner or the member for the National Academy of Science, the leaders of your institution are not that much better than you are. You can go approach them. You can actually talk to them.
00;16;28;02 – 00;16;32;22
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
They have probably the same subtypes that you do, and if they don’t, they should.
00;16;33;20 – 00;17;07;15
Rasheed Gbadegesin
My name is Rasheed Gbadegesin. I am a professor of pediatrics at Duke and I’m a pediatric nephrologist and I work on molecular pathogenesis of a kidney disease called nephrotic syndrome. I came to Duke about ten years ago. I think that’s just around when Dean Andrews I was just starting tenure, and one of the first thing that that was very challenging to me was actually moving from University of Michigan to Duke, because I, I worked as a postdoc in the lab.
00;17;07;15 – 00;17;37;11
Rasheed Gbadegesin
I really enjoyed working there. And I, you know, for, you know, for that time. And, you know, I was very productive and I had no doubt in my in my mind that I should be able to have, you know, some kind of law career in science. Okay. So I got all the offers in Michigan, and then I just got a call from my immediate past division director who just said, Would you mind coming over here to come and have a look?
00;17;38;08 – 00;17;59;27
Rasheed Gbadegesin
So I came to Duke, look around, and in talking to people that you walk with, you know, significant or there’s people in social circles that could be very important in terms of, you know, making a decision. And one of the scene was, well, you know, when I talk to people that, okay, I’m going to duke to look at things.
00;17;59;27 – 00;18;21;17
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And they said, why you look, why are you living setting for uncertainty? Who do you know at Duke? Okay. So I came to Duke and and, you know, very smart set up. When you come for interview at Duke, people actually know how to set you up to the extent that, you know, you get there and you see this is actually where I want to be.
00;18;22;02 – 00;18;43;25
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And that’s actually what worked for me. What actually what actually informed my decision, You know, moving to Duke is actually the atmosphere exactly what you were telling me, that, oh, you know, it’s highly competitive. So I’ve got there, you know, highly competitive, compact institution. And people are actually very approachable. But the second most important thing that actually clicked for me was mentoring.
00;18;44;28 – 00;19;08;22
Rasheed Gbadegesin
So I go to Duke and I actually found a mentor that is doing exactly something very similar to what I’m doing, who is actually very, very accommodating, despite the fact that we were actually not in the same department. In fact, for the first five years of my career at Duke, people actually thought that my primary department was internal medicine.
00;19;09;19 – 00;19;45;16
Rasheed Gbadegesin
It took a while for people to know that my primary department was actually going to Department of Pediatrics. So choosing a mentor is actually very, very important. I do not measure mentorship by, and it’s very important that you want to associate with, you know, very, very successful people, people who have the track record, no doubt about that. But actually, one of the things that I find the most important is actually and I’ve been a mentor that is approachable, someone that you can sit down with and say, this is the problem, someone that is actually going to be outrightly honest with you.
00;19;45;26 – 00;20;10;07
Rasheed Gbadegesin
Look, you’re not in the straight. Why don’t you? Why didn’t you do it this week? So mentoring is actually very, very important. The other thing that people have actually talked about is collaboration and trying to establish collaboration. It doesn’t work like, oh, you know, I listen to this person, you know, work of the division. I should know. It’s it’s much more dependent that you need to identify people that actually work in the same space with you.
00;20;10;22 – 00;20;34;02
Rasheed Gbadegesin
Find someone you know, someone to introduce you to the person. And that’s why you need to mentor and sponsor in terms of actually trying to get to know people that are within your space. So that’s actually very, very important too. And the other thing that is important is, you know, we’ve had all the formal training and we’ve done all these fantastic post-doc.
00;20;34;02 – 00;21;02;26
Rasheed Gbadegesin
We have our cell people, we have lot, you know, nature, genetics, people. You move into an institution, you do not exist in a silo. You have to look at the institution broadly. And that actually differs between and between institution. So I was talking to I did not know up until yesterday when I told me that actually UT Southwestern do not have is not an undergraduate university.
00;21;02;27 – 00;21;47;06
Rasheed Gbadegesin
That was my first time of actually, you know, hearing about that. So your colleagues in chemistry, your colleagues in, you know, Trinity School at Duke, everyone you just asked to look around, talk to people from that, you know, community of scientists, you know, peers. That’s actually very, very important that I think that is very important, especially when you have someone like, you know, Dean Andrews Azharuddin is that you have to be on the lookout because as Dean Andrews, probably in terms of, you know, initiatives at Duke, it’s like you just it’s just difficult to to keep pace, you know, different initiatives seems to, you know, seems to come up.
00;21;47;11 – 00;22;26;02
Rasheed Gbadegesin
You have these you have people will discuss things they hear I disagree. I think what can we use to solve the problem? Next initiative. Let’s try this. We see what is going to work or not. So you have to be on the lookout for things that I believe. And I I’ll give you one very good example. So after my training in the labs, the only other formal training that I have in addition, you know, apart from just interacting with my fellow, the only other any that I have in terms of managing a research group, managing managing a lab group was actually an initiative that was started by Dean Andrews called the Leader Program at Duke.
00;22;26;15 – 00;22;53;23
Rasheed Gbadegesin
So essentially what it means is that you get young and open, combine investigators together and you actually mix them together with, you know, very senior colleagues and, you know, teach them that this is the way in which you run a research group. It’s a I think it’s a seven days program at Duke. That is actually what is, for me, the fundamentals of the we in which I’m running my research group.
00;22;54;04 – 00;23;13;06
Rasheed Gbadegesin
Up till now, that was where I learned that. And that’s actually very useful for for, you know, what I’m doing now. That’s where I learned that if the fact that you are not physically present in the lab doesn’t really mean that you shouldn’t know what is going on, there is a way by which you establish communication with people, what with you?
00;23;13;06 – 00;23;32;10
Rasheed Gbadegesin
Everybody has, you know, different styles. My style is all the people that are working with me. Research technician, postdoc, junior Junior Faculty. We exchanged emails at the end of the week. This is what we’ve done, all right? This is what we do and this is what we’ve accomplished. This is what is going next. And I call it Sunday evening email.
00;23;32;10 – 00;23;49;20
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And it’s Sunday. You know, after lunch on Sunday, I reply to this email and then we set the agenda for the week. So even if I’m not there, I know that things actually going on. So this are some of the things that I, you know, what have we done? But I don’t think I’m very wise. But these are some of the things that work for me.
00;23;50;19 – 00;24;02;17
Ernie Hood
At this point in the program. Dr. Burrows opened the floor for questions. The first question to ask the panelists to describe one mistake they had made in establishing a lab.
00;24;02;28 – 00;24;32;19
Nancy Andrews
It’s sort of not a single mistake, but but may be something that I was approaching wrong in the beginning. I think and I say this with a little bit of hesitation because you have to find your your place within the range from not doing this at all to doing it a lot. But and resources matter. But I think when I first started, I was not as brave about trying new things as I might be.
00;24;32;19 – 00;24;54;08
Nancy Andrews
I, you know, it was easy to stick with the things I knew. And I began to realize after a few years, fortunately, only two or three years, that I didn’t have to be limited by what I already knew how to do. And so around the second or third year after I started my lab, we focused on a problem that we wanted to solve.
00;24;54;08 – 00;25;19;28
Nancy Andrews
At that point, My my field is ion biology, and at that point no one knew anything about how ion got into and out of mammalian cells, and we wanted to solve that problem. But a lot of people were trying to solve it with difficulty because it was at the time a tough problem. And we realized that genetics, mouse genetics in particular could give us a handle that that would help us solve the problem.
00;25;19;28 – 00;25;48;03
Nancy Andrews
And ultimately it did. But I went from never having had a genetics course in my life, never having done anything except scream when I saw a mouse to it, to becoming a mouse lab and using mouse genetics to solve that problem. And it was a great lesson for me, not to be afraid. I think you need to be adventurous in your science if you’re going to have all of the tools possible to solve big problems.
00;25;48;03 – 00;25;59;15
Nancy Andrews
And it’s important, in my view, to to choose problems that are important. And so I should have been more adventurous in the beginning, but fortunately, I think figured it out.
00;26;00;22 – 00;26;25;18
Merrie Mosedale
Hard to think of just one, and obviously I’m still learning at this stage of my career, so I’m sure there are some that I’ve made I’ve yet to discover. But perhaps along the lines of funding, maybe I’ll say I think maybe being afraid to spend money has been a mistake of mine. You know, obviously you want to be as conservative as you can.
00;26;25;18 – 00;26;50;29
Merrie Mosedale
It looks much better on paper to be very productive with a few amount of resources. And certainly you you want to save you don’t want to spend on things that you don’t need, but sometimes you need to make an investment that’s a little scary to get things off the ground. Sometimes you need to make a risky decision to to have a big payoff.
00;26;51;14 – 00;27;07;10
Merrie Mosedale
And I think as you’re looking at funding, wanting to consider, wanting to make sure that you can support yourself and to support your staff and it’s worth the research, just make sure you’re not too conservative in that, you know, sometimes you do need to spend money to get the best outcome.
00;27;08;14 – 00;27;32;24
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I’m going to keep saying this. I’m saying the biggest mistake is I mean, I disagree with Merrie, Spend all your money the first year. And that is actually if I actually can afford to fund that project within three miles that I arrived and therefore I didn’t need to use my salon and because I didn’t need to start my I set up my my view was I will keep it for a rainy day.
00;27;32;24 – 00;27;49;11
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
So it’s like a safety valve that’s wrong. Spend it. And meaning don’t spend anything that they are not relevant. But actually, I mean, spending crazy ideas and things that they are going to change. They feel this is the moment that you have deliberately to do that and you have the money to do it. And that’s my first advice.
00;27;49;15 – 00;28;20;18
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
And the second set of questions we expect that somebody is got to ask the i don’t know how to do deal with h.r. To hire your first technician or deal with with the animal protocol. When you arrive to an institution and there is this sense because hold your you are very proud that you should know this face, but you talk and just ask question and just be insistent ask question and don’t let people leave without giving you the answer and senior people and all the ways around because they don’t go through the same challenges that you do.
00;28;21;00 – 00;28;27;18
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
So asking your people how they hire a person in a wig instead of three miles, that it was thanks to everybody else to do it.
00;28;29;01 – 00;28;57;18
Rasheed Gbadegesin
I’ve made many mistakes, but I would just focus on a couple now. So the first thing is actually having tunnel vision, saying that this is what I’m doing and this is the only thing that I’m going to be doing. Okay? We have to be very, very creative. And creative could mean, you know, opportunities to come up and you just have to you just have to take that opportunity.
00;28;57;18 – 00;29;32;29
Rasheed Gbadegesin
So this is the this is the big example from me. So when I started at Duke, I saw my my late mentor, Michelle. I mean, she actually walked on, you know, Familiale kidney disease. And that was what, you know, I was doing, too. Then an opportunity came up. The Doris Duke Career Development Award. And I just look at it and I was basically writing a grant, just, you know, to be in line with what we were doing internally in the lab.
00;29;33;17 – 00;30;01;12
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And what she said is she looked at me like this and she said, Well, you know, that’s all well and good. You know, we have to believe that everything is good and whatever. But the problem with that is that how are you going to differentiate yourself from me in another couple of years? So it’s really so so I looked at it and so she said, you know, I’m you know, I’m an internist, you know, nephrologist, you know, you are a pediatric nephrologist.
00;30;01;18 – 00;30;31;06
Rasheed Gbadegesin
There are definitely some things there, some bony question in pediatric nephrology that you may actually be able to focus on primarily. And that actually made me, you know, thinking that, oh my God, by that time I had my I think I’ve just submitted my key, got a very promising score. So I discussed with her and everything. I said, well, that one thing that that’s, you know, do genomic research and bought the trend now is that people actually talking about, you know, population genetics.
00;30;31;06 – 00;30;58;16
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And the problem is that I do not have any skill on how to do population genetics, how to put together a cohort out to out to collaborate with people who said, yeah, they can learn it. And it turned out that I got to Korea to with women towards within the same the same year that’s second career achievement award where she was telling me that you need to to broaden your horizon.
00;30;58;16 – 00;31;25;04
Rasheed Gbadegesin
That’s actually what is most of the things that I do now in terms of research actually stem from the data that actually get that from that second theoretical mental ward. So you need to to, you know, continue to do your work. You have to be very, very enthusiastic about it. And when something is staring you in the face, like, say, this is a questionnaire, this is a question and we have an answer to this.
00;31;25;13 – 00;31;47;08
Rasheed Gbadegesin
There’s no answer to it. There’s an RFP that is out that is that is actually focusing on that. It’s not necessarily likely that you are walking in, but is tangentially related to eating pick up the challenge. You know, educate us everybody, find people who actually have, you know, monolithic diet. Then you collaborate with people and put things together that may actually be your career.
00;31;47;08 – 00;31;47;24
Rasheed Gbadegesin
Ultimately.
00;31;49;07 – 00;31;57;29
Ernie Hood
Another questioner asked the panelists to comment on what traits they look for when hiring for their labs and what traits they avoid.
00;31;58;23 – 00;32;18;11
Rasheed Gbadegesin
In terms of, you know, are people. The thing that I look for that I look for is I want a team player. So you have to be it simple, yet you have to show it to me within the 30, 40 minutes that I am going to interview you, that you’re going to be trustworthy and you are going to play with a team.
00;32;18;17 – 00;32;36;15
Rasheed Gbadegesin
Once I can establish that, I mean, let’s face it, most of the people that come across, you know me, I mean, there’s a majority, you know, have, you know, average intelligence. So what you actually need is actually to get someone who is trustworthy and somebody who can play with any team. So those are the two big things that I look for.
00;32;36;15 – 00;32;39;04
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And of course, the person must be enthusiastic about my science.
00;32;40;09 – 00;33;09;13
Merrie Mosedale
Yeah, I would second that and say the soft skills are much more important than expertise and in a particular area, it’s much easier to teach somebody, you know, the science that you’re working on than it is to teach them the soft skills. And certainly, you know, they can teach themselves the science, get familiar with the literature, attend seminars, etc. But you it’s very difficult to teach somebody to be enthusiast, to be trustworthy, to be hardworking, to be a team player.
00;33;09;13 – 00;33;40;22
Merrie Mosedale
So looking for the soft skills is really important. But actually one bit of advice I got from sitting in your seat in this panel last year was an individual on the panel who said that and I will agree with this, that even when you do the most vetting you can in looking for a candidate, you know, you look for a good CV, you have recommendations, you speak to people that the candidate has worked with and they give great references.
00;33;41;00 – 00;34;03;22
Merrie Mosedale
You still end up with about 25% of people that are great, which is wonderful, 50% of people that are somewhere in the middle and then 25% of people that just don’t cut it, you know, And it’s it’s very difficult process. It’s so difficult just from paper and from interviews and from references to know who’s going to fall into what category.
00;34;04;04 – 00;34;27;22
Merrie Mosedale
So I would say, you know, don’t beat yourself up when that happens. You get somebody that isn’t a great fit. And it may not be that they’re not a great fit because they’re not a great person. They just might not be a great fit for the culture of your lab. But don’t let that linger. You know, if there’s something you can do to fix it, have weekly or monthly, you know, performance discussions and something you can do to fix that, that’s great.
00;34;27;22 – 00;34;36;05
Merrie Mosedale
If not, I’d say it’s better to end those relationships. Don’t let them linger because they’ll disappoint you both. They won’t be beneficial for either side.
00;34;36;19 – 00;35;06;04
Ernie Hood
An audience member said that apparently there is a statistic showing that only a small fraction of individual peers, those who have successfully obtained their first year or one managed to attain the second or one. So there is a huge problem of retention and a lot of peers fail at some point in the pipeline. He asked the panelists if they’ve seen any traits or behaviors that contribute to this failure to obtain a second or one.
00;35;06;25 – 00;35;33;15
Nancy Andrews
That kind of aggregate data is a little bit deceptive, and there are a lot of faculty members across the country who get one or one, and that is for them a big milestone. And their institution loves it and they’ve made it. I suspect that those of you in this room are going to be in a different cohort from that that aggregate group.
00;35;33;20 – 00;35;59;26
Nancy Andrews
I not that it’s necessarily easy to get your second or other subsequent grants, but there’s a very large cross of people who get one out. And there’s also a large cross-section of people who apply and never get in our own. But I think that if, you know, if you continue on the trajectories that have brought you here, I don’t think that’s going to be your worry.
00;35;59;26 – 00;36;20;06
Nancy Andrews
I mean, I grew up in a city where during the summer I would work at the university in the biology department and it was a huge deal if a faculty member at that university ever got in or a one. And so it’s I guess what I’m trying to say is that that you guys are kind of in a more elite part of that aggregate.
00;36;20;06 – 00;36;29;11
Nancy Andrews
And so I would be very surprised unless you change your career plans if if that is a big problem for you guys long term.
00;36;30;02 – 00;36;53;23
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I completely agree with Nancy. You guys are not really part of that statistic. But as as an administrator in a department, I worry about who I am hiring and I worry about the three groups, the junior people. Are they going to be able to get our one and make it to tenure? I’m concerned and this is a real concern in the country, the founding of the mid-career.
00;36;54;09 – 00;37;10;06
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
But I’m going to say my experience as a chair of a department and a department that started I was the second hire in the department. So 18 years ago, USC didn’t have a Department of Genetics. I was hired by Terry Magnus to come here. Terry Magnuson moved to be the chair, and I was the vice chancellor of the university.
00;37;10;06 – 00;37;32;06
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I have done my entire career here. So what I have learned is two things. We have never had somebody not get tenure in the department. So we have 100%. I say great, and we are we are good in hiring, but we are not that good in hiring. So what means is actually the culture of the place. I mean, you do you are driven by what you see around you.
00;37;32;06 – 00;37;52;09
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
So you may not be thinking of getting a second or one of work in somebody P50 or in the United. But if that culture around is to do that, you will add you will be a natural part of the mid-career. I am not having too many problems. My, my real worry is when department my department is 18 years old, we are getting old.
00;37;52;28 – 00;38;11;28
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
We are going to have a lot of old professors and people that have done the same thing for 25 years, like me. And at the end of their careers, you need to reinvent yourself. You need to change. You need to assume that there is other things to do that little problem or problem that you are addressing and people that are not able to do that.
00;38;11;28 – 00;38;31;00
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I just said I am willing to to explore something else. I’m not going to say LaHood problem that if you don’t solve a problem in ten years, you are failing and you should move to something else. But something like this, I mean, reinvent yourself. And that’s part of the problem of the career development. So don’t worry too much about tenure.
00;38;31;00 – 00;38;39;11
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
Don’t worry too much about my career. I would be more worried about what’s going to happen to you 40 years from now when you are. All right, distinguished professor.
00;38;40;08 – 00;39;10;00
Nancy Andrews
Actually, could I just add one more thing? I think that’s a really good point to turn your question around. What makes somebody successful all getting the second arrow. And I think it’s really, really important. And I did this for every grad I ever applied for to have other people read it and people who will be critical and will tell you, you know, this doesn’t make sense to somebody who is slightly outside your field or you forgot about the possibility that X might happen instead of Y.
00;39;10;00 – 00;39;27;01
Nancy Andrews
And and so I think that it helps a lot to take advantage of the the generosity of your colleagues and mentors to help you not only learn how to write grants, but but help you put your best grant forward throughout your career.
00;39;27;18 – 00;39;47;04
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
And there is a group of people in these institutions that are particularly important to you. And you should be no them. You should have them now. And if you don’t go, I lost a viewership. Who are the study section members of all the study section in your situation? And if you have study section members of the L of the study section, tell your grandma, go, go and talk to them.
00;39;47;29 – 00;40;03;15
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
The grants can be great science, but there is grandma and chief and there is tradition with study section. I’m a member of the U.S. and I can tell you there are grass that they just don’t belong there. They may be great, but they are going to score horribly because they don’t feel the need that that study section does.
00;40;03;26 – 00;40;24;23
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
And that is something is you cannot ask them how to score your grant, but you can ask them what they need to do. What do you need to do to belong in that group? So it’s part of the of the network and you need to do that because you are going to depend for the success. And I have one faculty member in my department that has never failed to get a grant funded in 100%.
00;40;25;02 – 00;40;37;12
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
She’s extremely successful, extremely strong. And the way is always to go to the same study section. And she basically ran the study section without being there for ask other questions.
00;40;37;13 – 00;41;02;10
Rasheed Gbadegesin
I agree entirely, which are wartime. The panelists have actually talked about along this line and the, you know, getting the first hour one, it’s a big landmark, you know, in this business. There’s no doubt about that. So we’re talking about metrics yesterday. That’s you know, the metrics, you know, to say that, okay, you’re going to become or you are an established independent investigator.
00;41;02;29 – 00;41;38;22
Rasheed Gbadegesin
The Way in which I look at that is that as you’re going along the way, you should be thinking about innovative and creative we by which what is don’t just look at that, you know five year period how is the oh is this question how is this field going to evolve in the next 5 to 10 years? And when you are thinking along that line and you’re walking along that line, that is that’s that’s that’s actually a way of, you know, projecting, you know, so you don’t have you need to have big plans.
00;41;38;22 – 00;42;05;13
Rasheed Gbadegesin
You know, like you were saying that, you know, spend all the money in the first year. You know, you need to have a big plans. So that is actually very, very important. The other thing is that there is no set time limit for. So you got you got the first hour one. It doesn’t mean that you have to be two, three years into the first hour before you start thinking about the second hour one.
00;42;05;23 – 00;42;17;03
Rasheed Gbadegesin
As far as I’m concerned, you are ready to write the second hour one once you have a compelling prelim data, you have a compelling prelim. B, that is something new, is something innovative. Go for it.
00;42;18;09 – 00;42;46;03
Ernie Hood
The next questioner said that one of the things he had heard a lot at the meeting was the importance of being open to new ideas and being willing to broaden your focus. He noted that one of the pieces of advice he got a lot was to remain focused and not be distracted from his primary mission. He said that he could manage that kind of at a distance, but he understood that both concepts have to coexist for success.
00;42;46;16 – 00;43;00;27
Ernie Hood
He asked the panelists to comment on times when they felt that they really had to stay the course and stand by their ideas. He asked, When is the right time to be open and when is the right time to sit in?
00;43;00;27 – 00;43;26;23
Nancy Andrews
I think it’s true that the focus is really important and and that’s something that probably invariably institutions or departments will look for. As you’re applying for jobs to know that you have an area that you’re going to accomplish something. And focus is a good sign of that couple of thoughts. One is that even being very focused, you can still let your mind wander.
00;43;26;23 – 00;43;52;06
Nancy Andrews
And I know every time I go to a seminar, no matter what it’s about, or almost every time I get an idea relevant to my own work and, you know, it could be something completely far afield, but it makes me think about my work in a different way. And so in that sense, I’ve got the focus. But but I can let my imagination wander as I learn about new things.
00;43;52;16 – 00;44;16;04
Nancy Andrews
But then you can have focus in more than one area in the same time. And when I started out my focus project was continuing what I had done as a post-doc, and my ultimately adventurous project was something completely different from what I had done as a postdoc. And and they were related and in a way, but I was very focused on both of those.
00;44;16;04 – 00;44;33;04
Nancy Andrews
But but there was more than one area of focus you probably don’t want too many starting out, but you could categorize them as sort of a bread and butter project and the high risk, high yield project or. But they don’t have to be that way. But but that’s one way to think about it, and that’s probably what it was for me.
00;44;33;05 – 00;44;39;17
Nancy Andrews
And the high risk, high yield one paid off and ended up being an awful lot more fun than the the bread and butter. What?
00;44;40;18 – 00;45;08;12
Merrie Mosedale
I’m not sure I can come into my job and research focus. I’m not great at this myself. I get very excited about new opportunities and I have a lot of projects in very diverse areas and I’m frequently told that I need to be more focused in one particular area, but in terms of responsibilities and you know how to decide what to focus on and what’s going to be most valuable in your career, I think this goes back to mentorship.
00;45;08;12 – 00;45;38;13
Merrie Mosedale
Any time I get a request to do anything service wise, committee wise, journal wise, you know, I always run it by my mentor and they’re very helpful in deciding what’s going to be valuable to you what’s worth your time versus, you know, something that will consume your time but probably won’t pay off. So I would say, you know, having that mentor to help you make those decisions at an early stage in your career is very important.
00;45;39;14 – 00;45;53;01
Ernie Hood
Another audience member asked the panelists how often they change directions and whether it was because they had a post-doc or a graduate student who looked at things in different ways that made them take up a different question.
00;45;53;16 – 00;46;20;06
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I’m a biologist. I’m a geneticist. Half of my students are computer scientists. They’re in the college. They speak a language that I barely understand, and I have been doing that for 15 years. And how it happens is that I, I needed I was doing something completely different. I was starting a completely different project that it was a big thing and I needed I knew what I was going to need a computer science hub in doing that.
00;46;20;19 – 00;46;41;20
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
So for two years, me and my select group of my students, not all of them, we forced ourselves to sit down in a lab meeting with a group of computer scientists and their student, and for the first two years, for the first year, it was really, really, really painful because we didn’t know what we were talking about. And it was the second year would get better.
00;46;42;00 – 00;47;01;20
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
Now, 13 years later, I have ten student, I have a mentor and one of them is most of them have been extremely successful. Computer Science Student I rarely go to academia because Google or Amazon. So one of them is coming tomorrow. She works at Google and she’s offering the students have you and say to just quit your Ph.D. that’s not worth it.
00;47;01;20 – 00;47;23;04
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I will give you a half a million dollars and you will. So they are extremely successful. But that relationship was driven by a need. But without the students, it would not have happened because me and my collaborator Christine and I just grant that we have been funded for 15 years together in different grants. Computer science. We talk to the students still today.
00;47;23;04 – 00;47;33;04
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
The students are the person that actually acts as I think they are much more flexible than we are, and they can talk to each other in a much better way. So I think that, yes.
00;47;33;18 – 00;47;59;09
Nancy Andrews
Both ways I’m going to take a slightly different take on that and and two thoughts. One is, the way I got into Ion originally was because there was a medical student who had a deep interest in it, which has got to be a pretty rare thing, or at least was back then. And there was nobody around who was working in that area and he just nagged me until eventually I got into it, which turned out to be terrific.
00;47;59;21 – 00;48;22;08
Nancy Andrews
But the other thought is that most of the time, occasionally there were trainees in the lab who would drive us in one direction or another. But more often it wasn’t that they came in with an idea they wanted to pursue. It’s that they did something. And every time I had a postdoc leave the lab, I just got out of whatever aspect of Ion they were working on.
00;48;22;08 – 00;48;42;12
Nancy Andrews
It’s a huge field. There was tons to do and as soon as someone developed their expertise and their their project in a particular part of the field, when they left to go start their own research, I just started working on some other aspect of it. And so in that way they kind of drove it in a different way.
00;48;42;12 – 00;49;06;08
Rasheed Gbadegesin
So for me, it’s not necessarily just changing direction because the young people that I’m working with in the lab, you know, this is what they’re interested in most of the time will happen to me when I veer off a little bit, is actually, you know, the younger ones, you know, coming to me and saying, yeah, you know, this is what I know, this is what you do, this is what you’re interested in.
00;49;06;18 – 00;49;25;09
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And I want to do. This is not exactly what you are doing, but, you know, it’s a little bit related to it. You know, can you can we just look at it together? Even if I don’t have expertise there, I’ll sit down with them, you know, look at the things together and try and find someone that has expertise or need, you know, do some readings around it and actually put things together.
00;49;25;18 – 00;49;45;25
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And most of the time when I’m putting it together, is that okay? What’s pretty much what is going to happen is that, you know, I’m creating a project and, you know, that’s you’re going to do that. You know, you’re going to create your own niche with that. So some of the things that I have to do of, you know, tangent from, you know, what I’m doing now, that’s actually how that’s do happen.
00;49;46;14 – 00;49;52;01
Ernie Hood
Dr. Burris Then ask the panelists to share any last thoughts or take home messages.
00;49;52;20 – 00;50;15;24
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
I am going to take one thing that Nancy is going to be furthering your career path, but I hope that you think about it and you do what Nancy did and part of your of science, that you are not alone. You are building up all the other people, research are part of our offer of a pedigree, your training, your mentor, and you are going to have trainees.
00;50;16;05 – 00;50;48;23
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
And that part of science is really important. Being generous in that part of science is key. I mean, Nancy’s right. When people come to your lab and they live, do not compete with them because hopefully your bosses are not your mentors are not competing with you, you need to leave people room to grow. And it’s really sad when you see people competing with their former mentors to just get their job and the audience takes action and you have basically the post-doc work and their bosses side by side and they are exactly the same ground.
00;50;48;23 – 00;51;09;01
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
Please think about that and think about that in a career path. So when you are now at the beginning that you’re going to have a postdoc, if that post-doc needs to leave, wants to leave the lab in two years, you need to think, God, that makes you look. We respect your role. One so is you need to think, when are you ready to get let go.
00;51;09;02 – 00;51;19;18
Fernando Pardo-Manuel de Villena
Six grad students don’t take project with them typically but postdoc need to if they are going to have a career in science. So think about it and be generous if you want to be successful.
00;51;20;19 – 00;51;42;08
Rasheed Gbadegesin
One of the way in which I look at it is that we have all of us, we have our big, you know, pet project, that this is something that I am very passionate about. I’ve been doing this. This is, you know, I’ve gotten, you know, this big grant with this. It turned out that most of those things are usually medium to long term stuff, you know, that you are working on.
00;51;42;17 – 00;52;17;19
Rasheed Gbadegesin
It doesn’t mean that, you know, because you are working on that. It’s okay. I don’t want to think about something else. You know, It’s like you’re just you just trying to build beauty career. You’re trying to, you know, to build yourself. There are some small, small, you know, side projects that actually gives you more fulfillment than, you know, The big thing they are looking at And I’ve had this from, you know, very, very successful investigator Bob Lefkowitz will tell you that some of the things that actually give him the fulfillment is actually some of the, you know, tangential, predicting that it does.
00;52;17;19 – 00;52;36;22
Rasheed Gbadegesin
And then, you know, just look at it and say, oh, wow, look what this actually led to. So the most important thing is that, yes, you will have your very big picture, the long term things that you are doing. But at the same time, there are jobs. This is, after all, let’s look at it. It’s serendipity is, you know, big thing in science.
00;52;36;22 – 00;53;01;08
Rasheed Gbadegesin
You may be looking at things, you know, in this direction and then you keep getting all these results and, you know, it’s negative results. You know, you’re frustrated about it actually. You can generate an hypothesis and form a negative result and actually see maybe maybe I’m actually approaching it in the wrong in the wrong direction. So it’s always nice to keep a very, very open mind when, you know, moving forward.
00;53;02;06 – 00;53;27;12
Nancy Andrews
I agree. I think some of the unexpected results turned into the biggest deal for us. I just want to sort of pick up on what Fernando just said. Whenever I interviewed a potential student or postdoc or also technicians most of the time for the lab, I ask myself, is this someone whose career I’m going to care about, you know, for the rest of the time that that I know them?
00;53;27;23 – 00;53;55;06
Nancy Andrews
And I’ve always gone into it thinking about it as a long term relationship. You know, that’s my student, not just for the time that he or she is in the lab, but for the rest of their career. And I think really caring about the people that you have working with you is important. And if you interview someone and you think, you know, there’s no way I’m going to want that person to be mine forever, it’s probably not the right person.
00;53;55;06 – 00;54;18;07
Merrie Mosedale
All this is really expert advice here, so I will let them take the serious stuff and I’ll just say enjoy it. You know, don’t forget that in order to be extremely successful, you have to love what you do. So don’t forget to enjoy the big things and the little things. Celebrate your successes. Celebrate the successes of the people that work for you.
00;54;18;12 – 00;54;22;17
Merrie Mosedale
Have fun in the lab, you know, and make sure you’re working on something that you really enjoy.
00;54;23;18 – 00;55;00;05
Ernie Hood
With that, Dr. Burris concluded the session, thanking the audience members for their participation and the panelists for sharing their wisdom so generously. We hope you’ve enjoyed this special edition of the Focus In Sound Podcast. Until next time. This is Ernie Hood. Thanks for listening.
