How do you let go? Developing your ability to delegate on the tenure-track.

When during your tenure track do you stop being a postdoc and a PI at the same time? I am struggling at the moment with being pulled in multiple different directions and still doing the bench work, while managing the lab and various professorial tasks. Running a lab feels like being on strength training: first you lift 30 lbs, then 40, then 50, and as you get stronger the weight keeps piling on. Whatever you thought was overwhelming 6 months ago, has doubled in intensity now, yet you can manage or try to.

The biggest priority is finishing two papers: revisions on a collaborative project and submission on the lab's first manuscript. The pressure on paper #1 comes from not wanting to let my collaborators wait, while paper #2 is necessary for my R01 submission. Yet this month is a perfect storm of other commitments that cannot be moved: most of my teaching is happening now, I'm hosting a faculty candidate, I have to put together two progress reports and specific aims for two grants. Plus all the random BS that fills your day like meeting with seminar speakers, faculty meetings, tracking down orders, etc. Next month I'm gone for back to back conferences, so the clock is ticking. Since things are not moving as fast as I wanted with the papers, I took it upon myself to help speed things up, to the point that whenever I can, I do experiments for one paper in the morning and for the other in the afternoon. As I struggle to keep my head above water, I wonder, is this right? Am I supposed to be both postdoc and PI right now?

While my undergraduate advisor was a fierce micromanager, my doctoral and postdoctoral mentors were very laissez faire. Any pressure to publish, or do anything really, was completely self inflicted, but their careers did not depend on me at all. As a manager, I think I'm pretty hands off, but all my people are young and freshly graduated, and they still ask advice on experiments and data interpretation, so I want to be available to go over their data as necessary. Just for reference, my postdoctoral advisor never saw raw data I generated, ever...I think. Data was presented in fully structured lab meeting talks every 6 months or in manuscript form. Some of the questions in my mind are "How do I get them to the level of independence necessary to become a PI?", "Should I stop picking up their slack?" and "What kind of relationship do I want with my trainees?"

Honestly, I think my postdocs work a lot. They're at work on weekends and holidays and during snow storms. They'll be there whenever is necessary and would never think twice about coming in at odd hours to get me data for a deadline. Still I'm struggling to accept one of the most common advice I received while starting the lab "You have to remember that your people are not you". Even if I don't know where anything is in the lab any more, I'm stuck between two conflicting thoughts 1) that I'm faster and more motivated than they are, and I can get things done; and 2) that I don't have any idea of how long it takes to do something and I should just let them do their jobs. And this is the real conundrum, by stepping in as the fourth super-postdoc, am I helping or actually hindering their ability to become independent and more efficient? Am I making my life harder by doing two jobs, while I should give them time to get things done? I always try to lead by example, so by seeing me running around like a headless chicken (and deathly ill for the past week) should they be motivated or just realize that this job is crazy?

Any advice or comment would be greatly appreciated.

Getting my ducks in a row for the twin R01s

We are 18 weeks out from submission day and I have started putting all my ducks in a row to see if this crazy idea of submitting two R01s at once is really going to work.

Just a note on where I am coming from to put everything into prospective, since there was a really awesome discussion on Drugmonkey's blog about whether it makes sense for a new investigator to go big with multiple grants in rapid succession or at the same time.
My lab does two things which are in the same field, but that overall can be quite different and use different approaches and animal models. The reason why I do two things is that these two projects have been continuously funded for the past 7 years as I have been writing back to back grants on them for that long. My strategy is: the moment you get a grant, you write another grant, because money begets money. These projects got me four postdoctoral fellowships, and when I started my K99, I also received an equivalent internal grant for the other project. As a new faculty I have my R00 and I have equivalent (actually, a bit more) foundation funding for the other project. So the way I look at it, they're pretty much even. No project is new, no project has no history of continued funding/productivity, hopefully in the next few months I will have last author publications for both, and both projects have direct human disease relevance. Also, my start-up is fully banked, my R00 ends in 2016 and my other funding ends in 2017, so I am not panicking and I have money to resubmit these babies over and over again as I get comments on them for the next 2 years. I am not trying to brag, just saying that this is not a desperate ploy to con the NIH, this is just a strategy to keep my research program going the way it is....well, maybe a tad bigger. Only one R01 will mean I have to fire people in the long run. I have always felt that it takes 6 months to plan and write a good R01 and I'm not advocating that you do this if you don't have the data.

So, we were talking about ducks...These, in no particular order, are the initial steps I have taken.

- Put together an outline of the data we have and of the most compelling specific aims I can think of for both projects. Define what we need to move forward and define a timeline for obtaining the additional data for the specific aims.

- Peruse NIH Matchmaker (my new favorite website). You can paste you summary or specific aim page and find grants with similar scope to yours (see the description here). This allowed me to figure out how other people framed their questions. Some proposals were from direct competitors, but some were also from good colleagues, whom I immediately emailed them to ask for a copy of their Specific Aims. I also plan to discuss their strategy with them to see how they felt about their study sections.

- Based on the proposed experiments, contact the collaborators and co-PI to meet/Skype to discuss the preliminary experiment or resources needed and develop a timeline to obtain the data.

- Contact the grant writing service at my university to get organizational and editing assistance.

- Block out an afternoon once a week where I leave the lab to read and write in peace, since writing in my office is nearly impossible nowadays.

The next step is actually to sign up for the gym and get a packet of yoga lessons, so that I can keep sane while this is going on, as I'm also doing experiments on both papers (one in the morning and one in the afternoon)...

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
I don't miss Boston much, but I did love these ducklings.

The beginning of the R01 twin strategy

Parents of twins will probably laugh at my naivete, but as someone who always wanted two kids

Mother with twins

I always thought that twins were the most efficient way to achieve that goal: you have two of them at once and you're done. So I didn't bat an eye when one if my senior faculty mentors outlined what I will call the "R01 twin strategy" to me.

His reasoning was that getting a first R01 with early investigator status, a good funding history and good productivity should be doable, but the big ordeal is then getting that second R01, which is orders of magnitude harder that the first one. If my first R01 goes in in June and the second in October as planned, the Just In Time update for the second grant will include a funding decision for the first one...the unlikely chance that the first one gets funded could kill the second one. The alternative strategy is to develop them as fraternal twins, separate in all fashions (topic, approach and study section) and send them out into the world, i.e. the CSR, together. Then the JIT will say "pending" for both. If they get rejected, you resubmit together. If one gets funded, mazel tov! If both get funded, double mazel tov, golden confetti, and a serious discussion with the dean about lab space!!

It's bold and some will say it's suicidal. The huge issue is planning, because splitting the time to work on two major grants means half the writing effort and, in this funding climate, that could mean disaster. Yet, this is very appealing to me. I thought some of my other senior mentors would yell at me for proposing this, but they actually were intrigued and thought it was a viable idea as long as it was carried out correctly. Anyone who ever knew me in college knows my multitasking schedules to be the stuff of legend (and cause of endless teasing)... I have 19 weeks: if split in alternating 4 weeks intervals for each grant, that gives me 2 full months each, plus 3 extra weeks. So I'll commit to a pilot run: 1 week to outline 2 sets of specific aims, 4 weeks for each grant, then I'll decide whether to drop one or keep going on both. I've been on break from grant writing since August and this is an exciting new challenge.

I'll try and blog through it. Just as a preview of what's to come, today I had an experiment planning meeting with the co-PI on one of the grants and I started working on the new biosketch that will be used starting in June. This last endeavor caused a minor meltdown. You see, the new biosketch gets rid of your publication list and asks you to point out your major accomplishments and contributions to science, and I had nothing to say. What have I done that is really significant? I don't have a single major discovery that pushed science forward. No Science, Cell or Nature paper. How do I fake this? After a moment of panic and some soothing rounds of Candy Crush, I started writing possible contributions and grouping papers under them. I have been at the forefront of next-generation sequencing identifying multiple novel disease genes. I have defined guidelines for genetic testing in different population. I have pioneered blah, blah, blah. I have made sure healthy babies were born, goddammit! Okay, maybe R01 #2 will have a presentable biosketch...but that's the one with the least preliminary data. Where are the cell biology and mouse genetics pubs for R01 #1? Crap, that's the R00 conversion. This paper we're writing better be going out pronto!...And as you see I'm rapidly spinning out of control.

What do you think, readers, am I a) insane, b) ridiculously cocky, c) just right? Will I survive?

PS: I think the twins need names...

Are you a grasshopper or an ant? Risk taking in lab management

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about risk-taking behavior lately. Just a few months shy of two years I have six people in the lab and staring at their faces at lab meeting fills me with happiness and dread. I have made clear promises on the number of years I can support them, but they are all great and the last thing I want to do is to let them go in the middle of a promising project...hence the dread to keep the grant money flowing to keep them going if they need more time.

Before starting my lab I asked a lot of people for advice and put together a couple of collections of words of wisdom (here and here). The most frequent and consistent advice was to hire very carefully and take my time to hire the right people, which I followed religiously. I waited for the lab to be set up and I was more than a year in before I posted a job for my first postdoc and it took two rounds of interviews, a couple of thousand dollars in travel money and six months before I found the right fit. The other ones came very quickly, partially because grant money generated new jobs which needed to be filled.

While most of the advice I received was unanimous and made sense, there was one topic which was divisive: How to expand. Some people said: "Hire as much as you can, blow through your start-up and get as many hands on deck as possible to generate preliminary data for more grants", and others recommended the opposite: "Save your startup for a rainy day, plan very carefully and deliberately so that you don't exhaust your resources and become overwhelmed". So what to do? People have been equally successful with both strategies, but the "go all in" approach was more appealing to me so I ended up with a full lab in less then 2 years (I designed the lab space for 6 people and my ideal lab size is 6-10).

Am I right? Am I wrong? Will I die in the winter like a grasshopper? I don't think it's that simple. The more I do this, the more I realize that your lab is a projection of yourself. As you define the culture in the lab and assemble the combination of people you want, you also set the long term strategy. I am a very careful planner, but I am also not afraid of risk. I think a good proportion of risk can lead to higher pay offs and that you have to incorporate risk in your strategy. You accept a certain amount of risk if you invest in the stock market or if you purchase real estate in a transitional neighborhood. You have to able to roll the dice and see how it goes. In a small business you must include systemic losses in your business plan, i.e. that a percentage of your customers may not pay or that a certain amount of merchandise will be stolen. So my strategy is to have as many competent people as possible generate data in the best possible environment so that I will be able to write grants to support them further. Also, I like to collaborate widely and openly with the expectation that it's possible someone will screw me or take data from me, but that that is a risk worth taking in order to find people who will enrich my research instead.

I know people who are very uncomfortable with this approach, who got burned by past collaborators and do not want to share, or who want only 2-3 people in the lab to be able to work with them closely. And I think that's perfectly valid. What matters is that you have a strategy and that you figure out what is comfortable for you. We'll see how mine works out...

Dear Delta, it's not me, it's you, and we are done!

This is a somewhat unorthodox use of my blog, since this issue is only tangentially related to my science or lab management, but this is the most public forum I have. So I thought instead of sending in a complaint on Delta.com, why not put my letter out there for everyone to see.

Dear Delta, we are done! You are not my preferred airline any more and I will stop going out of the way to fly with you. We have been almost exclusive for 15 years and while many people kept saying "Are you crazy? Delta sucks!", I defended you "Have you ever flown United or American? They suck even more! I like Delta." This warm and fuzzy feeling towards you was helped by the fact that I maintained status (either Silver or Gold) for all this time and because you or your partners got me where I needed to go, hence I got to fly mostly Air France or KLM, which are lovely. Then this year it all ended and I am relegated back to Skymiles Member....despite logging almost 40,000 miles with you, going to Mumbai and Paris and Milan...plus a few US destinations. All because I am a very thrifty traveler and snatched up the best possible rates, so didn't reach the new $2,500 dollar limit you set.

Well, Delta, I travel a lot for work and for pleasure, but as a scientist I don't have much money and I like to be mindful of what I spend, so even when I fly on a funding agency's dime, I make sure I choose my flights carefully. For this reason, unfortunately, I have to tell you that you're back in the same pool with all the others and will receive no preferential treatment. I can cancel the silly AmEx credit card I never use and on which I most certainly never spend 25K in a year. You'll say "Good riddance! I only really care about the business class people, anyways. They book a few days in advance and reach that $2,500 limit in one sitting." Yeah, maybe you never loved me, then... Sometimes, it felt you did, but you may have been faking it. When I really think about it, all those business class upgrades were on KLM, Alitalia and Air France.

Goodbye, Delta. Now I can go where I have secretly wanted to go for a while and find a way to take Emirates everywhere (that camera on the nose of the plane rocks!) or maybe I can give a chance to Lufthansa. The world is my oyster....apart from Heathrow. I hate Heathrow like the plague and will do anything in my power to avoid it, even when the connecting flights are "oh so cheap".


PS: Note added in proof on 1/18. In the 2 weeks since this post I had to book 3 flights (2 domestic and 1 to Europe) and though one was still with Delta, one went to United and one went (oh, yes) to Emirates. I tried to see if I could use my 60,000+ miles to go to Europe, but Delta wanted a whopping 110,000 miles for the flight. I'm so glad I quit you...

Do you want out of the lab? Advice to prepare for your non-academic job search

In the middle of academic job season or right around when you're planning for your defense this Spring, you start thinking about jobs outside of academia. But how do you apply for a non-academic job? To complement my post on advice for the academic job search, I have enlisted a guest blogger from industry, a grad school friend who after leaving her postdoc has risen through the ranks of medical writing and pharma marketing, AND who through the years has interviewed many hopefuls like you. This is what she wants you to know.

So, you are sitting at the bench in your graduate program/post-doc and you say to yourself; “this is not where I want to be.” Although it has been nearly 8 years, I remember that moment. It wasn’t a singular epiphany, but more a series of telltale signs that couldn’t be ignored. First, my search for a postdoc lacked focus and long-term planning. Second, once landing a position, I realized quickly that I may be doing a second postdoc because of my lack of planning. Finally, and this is controversial for some, the financial realities of my academic life could not be reconciled with where I needed to be.

The non-academic job search is very different from an academic track. Even simple tasks like resume writing and post-interview thank you letters are not necessarily fundamental skills that one acquires in graduate school. But, after some trial and error and a little experience, I would like to share some tips and fundamentals to help you along the way.

Beginning the Process

The question you have to ask yourself is why not academia? Your answer to this question will help you focus your search. If you want to be at the bench, but not in academia, then you will be moving towards the industry postdoc (as a newly minted PhD or graduate student) or staff scientist (more experienced postdoc). If you do not want to be at the bench, then you must adjust how you view your PhD/postdoc experience and decipher how transferrable your skills will be in a different field. This is especially important if you a moving outside of science/medicine/healthcare.

This brings me to the resume. First, a resume IS NOT a CV. Second, your resume is not one size fits all. It must be adapted to the type of position you are applying for. Resume dos and don’ts include:

• Do make sure you describe the skills you gained during that time explicitly. A hiring manager (often the first line in the job process) has no idea what it takes to get a PhD; so, make sure you let them know. Your degree is your greatest asset in the absence of job experience.  
• Do let a group of peers read your resume, especially those employed in fields that interest you
• Do limit it to one page
• Do not send a resume which focuses on lab techniques when the job has nothing to do with working in a lab

Remember, a resume is a living document. Keep it up-to-date and ready to go. You never know when an opportunity will come.

Where do I look?

The first rule of any job search is to look within your network.  Start by reaching out to those whom have completed the job seeking process. Often times, their companies may have open positions or searches that are not being advertised. Furthermore, there is generally a financial incentive for people who refer candidates that are successful.  Now that you have a resume that you are pleased with, set up a LinkedIn profile. This will help you build professional connections beyond your immediate circle and give you an idea about the diversity of positions that exist. The LinkedIn job search allows to you tailor your search by company, geography, and certain key words and if you have the premium service, you can actually see how your profile compares with other applicants. If you know that you want to go into a specific field such as tech transfer/IP law, consulting, or data science, investigate potential on-campus recruiting events that could to internship/fellowship opportunities that could turn into permanent positions. Other useful searches include:

•         Drop-Out-Club (www.dropoutclub.org)
•        Biospace (www.biospace.com/jobs/search-results.aspx)

While I have not talked about the cover letter process, the writing of a cover letter generally follows the same rules of the resume.  These should be tailored to the position with only the relevant skills highlighted. If you are asking a colleague/associate/friend for a referral, please make sure that you send a cover letter with your resume. It is not their responsibility to sell you to an employer. They are a more direct conduit to the hiring process and putting more expectations on them beyond that is not professional.

At the end of the day, you have to be realistic about your immediate and long-term goals. Are you looking to “just get out” or do you have an ultimate goal? Just be prepared for a potentially long process that may not yield the results you expect.

The interview(s)

If you made it this far, CONGRATS!!! Depending on the field, your first interview may be with a hiring manager, HR representative or recruitment company. This person will be looking at your general qualifications and potential workplace compatibility red flags (i.e. Is this person crazy?). They may have some general knowledge about people with your background based on their experience, but don’t expect them to have an intimate knowledge of your field or explicit skill set. This is where your cover letter and resume are keys.

 In preparation for your interview, please review the website and review your potential interview roster on LinkedIn (if  known). If this is a referral, do try to speak with your contact regarding the company. I know it seems like common sense, but I’ve interviewed people that had no real idea about the company or what we did. If the company is public, review the annual report as insight into company strategy. Regarding printed copies of your resume, always have a couple just in case your interviewer doesn’t bring one of their own.

Most interviewers will give you their cards, please make sure send a thank you note post-interview. It seems to be a dying art amongst the younger job-seeking crowd these days. Send them individually (no mass emails), and note that while it may not get read, it will be noticed if one is not sent. If you manage to land a position, please note that they may want you in as early as 2 weeks after the interview. So, be truly ready to roll!

Final thoughts

You’ve been through the entire process and it hasn’t yielded one hit. Look, it happens. You will have to go through several rounds of this process over the course of your non-academic career. The keys to success are analogous to those of acquiring your PhD:

•       You have to possess staying power, “stickwithitness” even when it seems like an impossible task
•        Do you research and be thoughtful and realistic about your prospects
•       Be prepared for an unexpected result/opportunity. You never know when/where it will come
•       PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD

All the best with your job search!!!

2014 as The New PI

Following DrugMonkey's lead I put together a year in review post, as dictated by the blog meme rules:
-Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.

Despite realizing that my first sentence is often quite verbose, I found that this really reflects what my blog is all about and some of the greatest hits of 2014 made it in.

January: Happy 2014 everyone!! A new year is starting, so I thought I would talk about trends and about how the world in changing...

February: The NIH emailed me 2 months ago that my Progress Report was due on February 15 and so as busy little bee I started working on my progress report and got everything done until I found out that the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR) is the new progress report format for NIH funded multi-year awards starting on January 31 (NOT-OD-14-026).

March: I wanted to share a couple of books which list all the things I wish I knew before I applied for my first research grant from the National Institutes of Health: Research Proposals: A Guide to Success and How the NIH Can Help You Get Funded: An Insider's Guide to Grant Strategy.

April: I now have one year of being a PI under my belt.

May: Your website is your labs' ambassador to the outside world.

June: When I was leaving my postdoc lab, my boss told me to be careful about my effort because when he started he did not pay much attention to it and soon he was stuck with no effort to give. In my head I was thinking "That's a nice problem to have, but that will definitely not happen to me".

July: Lovingly nicknamed the "kangaroo" grant by the NIH, the K99/R00 Transition to Independence award is designed to help postdoctoral fellows leap into a faculty position by supplying two years of mentored research time to obtain training to develop their independent project (K99) and supporting the newly independent investigator for 3 years (R00).

August: As my team grows I have been fretting not only about finding the best people, but finding the best people who are compatible with each other.

September: Wikipedia defines a pilgrimage as "a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs" and I would add that in general you embark on a pilgrimage to ask for something or reach some kind of enlightenment.

October: A recent NYT article on women being criticized in workplace reminded me of the time I received a lecture on how not to be a bitch.

November: For the first time I am learning what it's like to be in the SfN host city and while everyone in the lab gets to go for cheap, the prep is not trivial.

December: I finally made it to the other side!

Life on an academic search committee

I finally made it to the other side! Not only I have a faculty position, but I get to be involved in picking other faculty since I'm now part of a search committee. I already had the sense that there were a lot of variables to be considered when finding a job, and now I'm even more certain of it. Bottom line, don't take it personally if you don't get an interview!

You have no idea what is going on in that room.  There are some great posts out there describing how a search committee gets to the short list (here and here) and why jobs sometimes disappear (here), so I don't need to rehash in detail that there is a huge amount of politics and that there are directives from the people who hold the purse strings. Unless you or your boss know someone at that institution who can tell you what current priorities, you will not know whether you are a good fit or not. Even if you have excellent publications, your very worthy application may be dropped because 1) you don't have the right expertise the group is looking for, or 2) you don't bring in enough money (or are likely to bring in money) or 3) it's badly organized and difficult to read.

While I used to be obsessed with helping people develop the perfect research statement, now I realize that there are other parts of the application which are as critical, simply because when you have >100 applications to read in a limited amount of time, you look for any kind of short-cut to get rid of 85-90% of them. As a newly minted assistant professor, I did my absolute best to develop a coherent spreadsheet and look at every single app with an open mind, because I still remember when I was applying. Be certain that more senior faculty has no time whatsoever to do this.

My strategy was the following.

1) I would look at the CV and look at the number and quality of first author publications, then look at the number of fellowships and grants. That got rid of around 70% of the applications. The fact that every CV looked different was a huge problem as you have to scroll up and down all the time to figure things out. If you want to make the life of people in the search committee easier I would recommend to a) make sure your CV is organized and readable; b) list the amount for each grant you have active/completed (Do not list $100-200 travel grants...those don't count. Put those in the Honors section.); c) number your publications and separate those accepted/in press and those in preparation, because padding your CV with 10 articles in preparation looks pretty bad and make this committee member annoyed.

2) Then I found myself gravitating to the cover letter more than the research statement. A really good cover letter giving a succinct and clear summary of your interests and a brief overview of your past accomplishments can actually do wonders to sway a search committee member. In my case it informed the decision of whether or not I was interested in reading the research statement or not.

3) I finally read the full application of the top 30 candidates based on my spreadsheet and narrowed it down to 10 as required by the chair, but also flagged another 10 which would be equally good. The applicants and committee members were from a variety of fields and there were some candidates who would not have been interesting to me, but could have been interesting to other people. For this reason, i.e. that search committee members can be from different departments, remember to make your research statement very simple and clearly understandable.

Since this was my first time, my primary objective through the meeting was to stay quiet because I really didn't want to make the faux pas to put someone down or to step into some interdepartmental infighting. There were very clear directives from the top, which gave us some guidelines, and luckily many of us agreed on several candidates, so that my 3-4 top people actually made it to the short list. It was a bit terrifying to see how easily someone's hopes and dreams could be cast aside, but the applicant pool was exceptional so many great candidates were left out. I know people don't want to hear this, but that is where a call from your boss to the right person or a friendly face in the committee can make all the difference, because literally all that is takes to get you in the shortlist is a strong advocate or just someone that knows you and can say you are good.

I'm a professor now. A week in the life..

This week there have been a lot of firsts which finally made me feel like a real professor. Since my teaching is still very limited, I just spent the first year preoccupied with the lab and getting everything up and running, but that didn't necessarily make me feel "professorial".  So while things are a bit crazy, this week I get to delve into different aspects of the job. Everything is new, so it's all very exciting. It may soon become a chore, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
I don't know if I have been protected so far or if I'm on track for things I should be doing at this point in my career, but I'll just list what's happening, which is what I'm thankful for in this Thanksgiving week.

- Sunday-Monday: I got to be an ad hoc reviewer for a big grant for a foreign funding agency. This was likely a present from a senior investigator, but it was great fun especially because the grant was great! I did consider the bias of giving some slack to a well known investigator over minor experimental issues, but overall the work was really cool and should get funded, so I was exceedingly positive.

- Sunday: I worked with a collaborator to rewrite a paper for resubmission. The first from my lab without any "mentorly crutches".

- Monday: I was part of a thesis committee for a colleague grad student and tried to give cogent suggestions.

- Tuesday-Wednesday: I wrote the mentoring plan and sponsor information for my postdoc's NRSA application. While this is not the first mentoring plan I write, since I wrote all of mine, this is the first one I really mean. This included a lot of tap-dancing to navigate the trickiness of writing a mentoring plan for my very first trainee. I'm very curious to see how it is received. And yes, we do have a senior co-mentor.

- Wednesday-Saturday: I have to evaluate and rank 100 faculty job applications in the next 4 days (Happy Thanksgiving to me!). As part of my first job search committee, I'm really looking forward to our first committee meeting next week, to see how things shake out. Will I get to pick a buddy? What will the dynamics be?

- Sunday: As soon as I am done with the job applications, I have to finish a couple of powerpoint presentations for a mentoring workshop for postdocs I'm running next week, where we will discuss grant and faculty job applications.

- Next Monday? Finally, at some point I should get to read a semi-final version of my postdoc's grant application to give it the final polish before submission.

In the meantime, for the following week I was invited to review a paper, to give a talk and to participate in one on one mentoring program for female postdocs. Sweet!
I still feel like I'm trying this new skin on for size, but so far it seems pretty comfy.

You never know who your peers will become

In the comments section of my last post about networking at conferences we discussed whether as an early trainee it makes sense to randomly go up to senior scientists just for the sake of networking and this brought up a couple of excellent point which I think merit an independent post. 

1) As a young trainee (grad student, early stage postdoc) you feel that you are not justified in going up to someone without a valid reason, i.e. a brilliant question about their work or wanting a job in their lab. It's scary and daunting and often they are in a huddle talking to their equally famous friends. I tend to go back and forth about the schmoozing just for the sake if it. I have friends who are fantastic at it and will just go up to anyone and engage them in fascinating conversations. This has made them well known to a lot of people and has resulted in a lot of exposure, because the more people know who you are the more they will invite you to speak at symposia and meetings. Unfortunately, science is a popularity contest, in addition to your publications and grants, your tenure also relies on how many national and international talks you have given and on how many meetings you have been invited as a speaker. These early interactions to "make yourself known" can make a difference. While introducing you to people should be your advisor's job, some advisors are not as adept as others and you need to take your networking into your own hands.
This said, there are multiple ways of networking, and I find that small meetings are much more useful than large meetings. I hardly ever meet people I didn't already know at large meetings, but at small meetings you can have a meal or a drink with lots of new people in a much less frantic environment. Getting to know people happens over time. If you genuinely enjoyed a talk, just go up to the speaker and say what struck you. Very very few speakers are 100% sure that their message got across and they will be happy to hear that they made an impact on a young trainee. This may lead to a brief conversation. If the person is in your field, you will see them again. The next time you'll remind them you met at the such and such meeting and talk again and this person will begin to know you. Years later you go on vacation to their country and say "Hey, can I come see your lab?" and they invite you to give a talk and talk to their students. There you meet other faculty who would like to invite you to a symposium they are organizing...and maybe a few years later one of their awesome students becomes your postdoc. True story (potential postdoc still wishful thinking). You never know how a scientific relationship will progress over time. The important thing, I think, is not to expect the world from that initial interaction. The people you need to know, you will see again and again and again, so you can network bit by bit.

2) Never underestimate your friends. The postdocs and students you work with already ARE your scientific community. You all can grow up to be the keynote speakers you admire at the meetings. So when you go to meetings, it is often easier to strike conversations with other students and postdocs. You can share your experiences, learn about their work and their institutions and just start building your network from the bottom up. I can say that right now 70% of my network is people at my level or immediately above I have met through grad school and postdoc. Many have progressed to faculty jobs, they sent me examples of their grants and job applications, they read my stuff, they invite me to speak. Some have been really close friends for almost 20 years, some I have met as conference buddies (people working on similar things whom I always met at the same meetings), some overlapped somewhere and have kept in touch. Many have moved on to industry or other jobs and they are as important as the academic contacts because you can refer students to them when they are thinking about switching jobs, or you can just talk to them about their experience if you need a pharma collaboration or maybe another career altogether.
Your pipeline can go in many different directions as I discussed previously. My network happened organically throughout the years. There was no intent to have all these people in place all over the world in all different aspects of STEM. They are friends, buddies, people I met over time, who have spread out in often unexpected ways. Everyone watching out for everyone else. If in addition to your grad school friends, you comfortably meet 4-5 new interesting people at each meeting you go to, over 15 years of grad school/postdoc your network will grow a LOT. You never know who your peers will become and it's amazing watching everyone evolve.

It's conference time. Network! Network! Network! But how?

The approaching madness of the Society for Neuroscience conference bringing 30,000 neuroscientists to DC had gotten me thinking about the relative calm of the American Society for Human Genetics with "only" 6,000 people and the absolute bliss of small conferences. In all cases, be it your society or your subfield conference as a graduate student, a postdoc looking for a job or a new investigator, it is imperative to network. It's that dreaded pit in your stomach when not only you have to discuss your work in front of the world, but you actually have to go walk around introducing yourself to people selling yourself as a job candidate, a seminar invitee or just as an all around fascinating scientist.

I've had multiple discussions throughout the years with friends who refuse to accept the public relations portion of their science job. Well, I'm sorry, but with scientists becoming more and more specialized and funding dwindling, how you write, talk and present yourself makes a huge difference and unless you are a rare exception, PR is just part of the job. As I have written before in a post about the struggle of getting noticed as a new investigator, your network, i.e. the people you know, you collaborate with, are critical for your success. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear, does it make a sound?

One of the most important things I learned during my PhD was how to network, since my PhD advisor was great at introducing us to everyone she knew...which was a lot of people. We were included in conversations with scientists visiting for seminars, we were introduced to several people at conferences and even now she still makes frequent email introductions to people she thinks I should meet. This made things much less intimidating when I went to a meeting alone as a student, because I could just go up to people and just say "Hi, I'm M's student. We met in her office." and immediately strike a conversation. A lot of PI's don't do that, and I find that male PIs do it much less than female ones. This is not necessarily a malicious thing, since they are just generally oblivious of the importance of introductions for a trainee who may be otherwise tentative to approach an established investigator. I would urge the new investigators and even the postdocs, especially the male ones, to remember to act as "connectors" for trainees and colleagues. And you can always just use your friends for introduction, like LinkedIn in real life. Grad student should remember that other students they meet at meetings may one day be the other junior investigators in their cohort and that decade-long transition and evolving relationship has been great fun to watch.

While it's definitely easier to have a previous introduction, the standard "Hi, I'm X from Y. I work on Z." or "That was such a great talk! I really liked...I was wondering about..." would work with most people. The vast majority of scientists will react positively to a nice comment about their work and will want to talk about what you do. Don't be intimidated. After all we go to conferences to present our work and to communicate with other scientists. Everyone would like to have a very insightful fundamental question which will impress the target scientist, but sometimes even a simple question or clarification can lead to a deep conversation. In the past 2-3 years, one question I tended to ask a lot after striking a scientific conversation with a successful scientist was "What is your advice for a new investigator starting out?" and it has always led to great discussions on running a lab and on academia in general...and to multiple blog posts here, here and here.

Science is a common language all over the world. It doesn't matter how different your language or culture is or even how broken your English is, scientific discussions break those barriers. Large conferences bring together scientists from all continents and that is just a remarkable opportunity to meet different people and generate collaborations you may not otherwise have started. However, large conferences can be more difficult to navigate and isolating than small conferences. At a small meeting career networking can be much easier because you have more direct access to possible collaborators and high-profile investigators in your field: you can sit next to them at lunch and have a higher chance they will have time to stop by your poster or hear you talk. For large conferences, you'll need to do more legwork, in the sense that you need to schedule meetings and coffees in advance, since virtually all keynote speakers will be booked non-stop at committees and other events. At a recent large meeting I wanted to touch base with a keynote speaker with whom I had spoken before and on whose radar I need to be for possible tenure letters, but both our schedules were crazy and I just told her I would stop by after her talk. I said Hi, commented on some cool new data she presented and went my merry way. Showing you face periodically is always better than fading away. Eventually, of course, the goal is that work out of my lab will stay on her radar because it's awesome and relevant, but it may objectively take time to get there.

As your papers are brewing and your projects are moving along, communication with potential collaborators, reviewers, or future colleagues will make your career trajectory much easier and most likely your science better. Sometimes a collaborator you had been looking for comes out of left field when you least expect them, or a really cool project is born over drinks at a social. Think of all the possibilities! Go network!

SfN 2014 restaurant guide and other things to do in DC

For the first time I am learning what it's like to be in the SfN host city and while everyone in the lab gets to go for cheap, the prep is not trivial. I have been suggesting restaurants, making reservations, organizing dinners, lunches, etc for the past couple of weeks, so now my readers get to reap the benefits of such activity and get a break from my new lab management rumblings.

Restaurants

The best source for restaurants in DC is usually the Washingtonian “Very Best Restaurant” list. I’ve never gone wrong trying one of these.  Several are already booked for the weekend of the conference from 5pm to 9pm, so make your reservations pronto. The list is across DC, Virginia and Maryland, so make sure you figure out where they are located.

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/food-dining/the-100-very-best-restaurants-for-2014/

This said these are my favorites in the Convention Center area (in no particular order). Click the names for more info.

Casa Luca (Italian) 1099 New York Ave NW (11^th and NY Ave – 5 min walk) Great central Italian food from Fabio Trabocchi who is one of the most popular chefs in town. This is the cheapest of his restaurants which also include Fiola @ 601 Pennsylvania (6^th and Indiana Ave – 12 min walk) and the hottest new restaurant (and Obama favorite apparently) FiolaMare @ 3100 K st NW in Georgetown (31^st and K on the waterfront– Take the Circulator bus). So far I've been unsuccessful at getting into Fiola Mare, but I've heard it's great.

Zaytinya (Middle Eastern) 701 9^th St NW (9^th and G – 5 min walk) and Oyamel (Mexican) 401 7^th St NW (7^th and D – 12 min walk) are two iterations of the tapas empire of Jose Andres, who took over the DC food scene with Jaleo (Spanish) 480 7^th St NW (7^th and E – 10 min walk). Zaytinya and Oyamel are awesome. Small tapas to share of Turkish/Greek or Mexican inspiration. The tequila selection at Oyamel is extensive. Jaleo I find kind of blah so for tapas I go elsewhere…see below.

Estadio (Spanish tapas) 1520 14^th St NW (14^th and Church, after P – 18 min walk) has my favorite tapas in the area. Make sure to try the slushito…a slushi for adults.

Around Estadio on 14^th street is the hottest new restaurant area with new places opening every month (some are too new to even get reviewed). Other options are:

Birch and Barley (American) 1337 14^th St NW (14^th and Rhode Island/O)

Pearl Dive Oyster Place (Seafood) 1612 14^th St NW (14^th and Q). Oysters, yum!

Le Diplomate (French Bistro) 1601 14^th St NW (14^th and Q). Hard to get into French spot from the people who brought you Buddakan and Morimoto in NYC. Good brunch. One of the 10 places to eat this Fall according to the Washington Post.

Ted’s Bulletin (American) 1818 14^th St NW (14^th and S). A DC staple with its original in Capitol Hill, it’s worth a visit even if just for their homemade pop tarts. Also good lunch.

Other good options around the convention center are

Brasserie Beck (Belgian bistro) 1101 K St NW (11^th and K) Mussels, steak frites and hundreds of beers in menu.

Ping Pong Dim Sum (Chinese fusion) 900 7^th St NW (7^th and I – basically across the square) Fun twist on dim sum also…dim sum all day!

Mandu (Korean) 453 K St NW (5^th and K) Great Korean + Soju martinis

Busboys and Poets (Breakfast/brunch) 1025 5^th St NW (5^th and K) another DC staple with multiple locations

El Rinconcito Café (Salvadorean/Mexican) 1129 11^th St NW (11^th and M) a hole in the wall with awesome tamales, papusas and burritos. Good for lunch.

Daniel Boulud just opened DBGB in the City Center  (9^th and I) and it usually looks mobbed, but I have not tried it.

Rasika (Indian) 633 D St NW (6^th and D) is very famous and Michelle Obama's favorite, but I've never been able to get in there.

If you want burgers the closest Shake Shack is on 9^th and F, Bolt Burgers by the convention center (11^th and L/Mass) is not very good, but fries and smoothies are okay.

Places with lots of restaurants to explore are also Georgetown and Capitol Hill. Georgetown is easily reached on the Circulator bus (1$ fare) which has a handy tracker website.

http://www.dccirculator.com/Home/RiderInformation/NextBus.aspx

Also in DC you have to try food truck food for lunch. Closest trucks to the Convention Center will be in McPherson Square between 13-14^th and I-K. A lot of good restaurants have trucks and all will take credit cards. Trucks can be tracked with Food Truck Fiesta and are usually only around Mon-Fri.

http://foodtruckfiesta.com/

Other useful places

Closest supermarkets: Safeway (New York and 5^th just walk on NY from the Convention Center) is open 24 hours and Whole Foods is on P between 14^th and 15^th

Closest CVS: tucked away on 10^th and L

For a moment of peace the National Portrait Gallery/American Art Museum building is just a few blocks away at 8th and F and you can sit and use the free Wi-Fi in the Foster re-designed courtyard or walk around the exhibits. Both the American Art and the NPG have lovely things....unless of course you want to go for a real art trip to the National Gallery (Should I mention the only Da Vinci in the American continent?).

For the runners and #rundouchery fanatics

3mi #1: from the Convention Center area go straight south to the Mall, run west along the Mall, say "Hi" to the Obamas, run back up on 17th and loop east on J until you hit New York Ave all the way back. This is also a good evening route...Secret Service is every 300ft or so.

3mi #2: go straight south to the Mall, run EAST along the Mall up to 1st street and the Capitol, wave your fist at Congress demanding more science funding, loop back along the south side of the mall and come back up on 9th or 10th.

4mi: Combine #1 and #2

5mi #1: Combine #1 and #2, but also go say hi to Lincoln at the west end of the Mall.

5mi #2: go straight south to the Mall, at the Washington Monument keep left and go towards the Tidal Basin, run all the way around, say "Hi" to TJ in his marble temple, slow down at the FDR Memorial which is really awesome and under appreciated, dodge the ducks, avoid the mobs at the MLK Memorial...here you can run back, or since you've come this far, make 5.5/6mi, go say "Hi" to Lincoln via WWI and WWII...if it's early enough in the morning you can try and pull a Rocky on the steps.

Water fountains for your convenience at every Memorial :)