Archive for the 'academia' category

finding small pots of cash

Feb 08 2012 Published by under academia, grants

The vast majority of my time and energy as an assistant professor is spent trying to get funding for my lab. Without money, there is no one to do my kick-ass science. Start-up funds don't last forever, and (at least at my MRU) if you don't get an R01 from the NIH you won't get tenure. Even if you don't need an R01 in your gig, if research is a big part of your job you are probably expected to secure some sort of federal funding. So, yeah. You are gonna write applications for the big grants.

But at many places there are other, smaller pots of money that you should also keep an eye out for. These can be called "pilot grants" or "seed money" or "intramural funds". These are usually small grants, IME from 10-50K/yr. They generally last only 1 or 2 years. Just enough to do a fun experiment, develop a reagent, or pay part of a salary. In the first years my lab has cobbled together a not-insignificant amount of cash from the pilot/seed programs around here.

I <3 THE SEED $$!!

The question is: how do you find the seed money and get some for yourself? This is clearly going to be specific to your home institute/MRU. If there are any consortium or project grants around these sometimes will have funds for pilot grants. Some Uni will also use some of the money they earn from licensing IP to fund new pilot grants. You may have to keep your ear to the ground, because these opportunities tend to pop up without much warning. Another great thing is that the money can also show up pretty quickly. I have had less than 3 months from application to budget number, for example.

The applications are generally short. You need to propose a project that you can do in just a year or two, after all. It is not realistic to drop a 3-Aim R01 on a pilot grant. When I write for a pilot grant, I try to make it as explicit as possible how doing the proposed research will set me up to write an R01 (or equivalent) in the future. Most of the seed money sources that I am familiar with really want to know that they did something to start up a new project and that their money has been leveraged into something bigger.

The review of these grants can be internal, or your grant could be sent out to external reviewers. Either way, you will want to be familiar to the folks that have this kind of money and run these programs. You gotta get to know the folks that are running the big project grants in your area. Just like any other area, networking is a Good Thing. Even if there isn't a pilot grant on the line (now), you want these BSD folks to know who you are. Pitch your research program to them, and see what they think is most interesting. I have used these kinds of interactions to get an idea of how folks outside my MRU are gonna respond to different research ideas. And it is helpful to know what outside folks will think are the weaknesses, so you are ready to defend them.

There is almost nothing to lose from applying for pilot grant seed money. IME, junior faculty can be really successful in getting these kinds of funds. In fact, some of these programs are actually LIMITED to us jr. faculty. And it may be that more established researchers aren't going to go through the trouble for such a little pile of cash. But little piles of cash can be a big deal when you are starting out. You can generate some preliminary data, and get some feedback on a future Aim for a Big Grant. So, fellow assistant professors: I say, go for the seed money! Good luck :)

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seriously? who writes this stuff?

Jan 21 2012 Published by under academia, gender

"The application should be no more than 3 pages. They need not be in the detail requested by NIH for R01 grants"

Is it just me, or are those two sentences stupidly redundant?

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Sometimes people are just assholes

Jan 11 2012 Published by under academia, gender

The other day my new lab had a happy hour to ring in the new year. I have also just landed a new grad student (WOO HOO) and also convinced a super-awesome high-level research scientist* to join my group. I'm seriously psyched. :)

While my newly-expanded group was all sitting around a table I realized all of the sudden that we are overwhelmingly female. Including undergrads and rotation students right now we are 7 women and 1 man. Weird! When I first started my lab we were pretty close to 1:1 but when numbers are small it is easy to fluctuate pretty quickly, I guess. I'm really happy with my group right now. Everyone is engaged and works together really well. I don't really care how many X or Y chromosomes we have.

Shortly after noticing that my lab had skewed in one direction someone on twitter made a comment about how the gender distribution of their lab was skewed (I'm not sure who started the thread-the first one in my timeline is @27andaphd). As expected with low n numbers, there were labs that were mostly male, and some that were mostly female. No big deal, right. But then the conversation took a weird turn. Someone* mentioned that they were in a male-dominated group and that this was good because they don't like to work with women because "I'm a hard ass". This was followed by @agreenmonster who tweeted:

I have a big problem here. This is an idea that gets kicked around a lot. The idea that women who are faculty are somehow not as rigorous as their male colleagues. And the ones that are competent are mean or psycho or evil and "pull up the ladder" because they don't want junior women to succeed.

I CALL BULLSHIT.

Yes, there are some women academics that are assholes. There are also men down the hall that are assholes. Sometimes, people are just assholes. It has nothing to do with their gender. But there is a common stereotype that women are worse than men. And THIS is the kind of attitude that makes it hard to be a women in the sciences. If you get along with everyone you are "soft" and probably not rigorous. Maternal, maybe. But if you are a hard-ass then you are a "psycho" that is "pulling up the ladder". This is a ridiculous double standard. If this is what you expect from a woman scientist, then this is what you will perceive. It will be a self-fulfilling prophesy And it is FUCKED UP.

There are some shitty mentors out there. Some of them are women. But not all of them. If we only highlight the women that are assholes this leads to a perception that women and men are different. This sets the bar for all women, and it makes the whole academic situation harder. Because now, if you are a woman in academia you might try to behave in such a way that everyone won't think that you are "psycho". Maybe you try not to be aggressive or "bitchy" (the feminine of aggressive, to some). Now you are perceived as less rigorous or engaged. You can't win.

We have to stop this. If you hear this kind of bullshit, call it out. The twitter conversation about this topic ended with everyone agreeing that assholes gonna be assholes. And hopefully convinced some folks that they can't let these kinda statements just fly by without comment.

There is no such thing as a "male" way to do science. There is just culture and the way groups interact. I'm kinda a hard-ass, myself. I've been told that my lab has a pretty "male" culture**. In my group, I expect a lot of people. It's OK to be wrong, because if you are never wrong you are Doing It Wrong. But you have to be willing to defend your ideas and recognize when your arguments fail. Sometimes discussions get pretty animated (even aggressive). But we all understand that, while it is OK to be wrong, it is not OK to be disrespectful. You can tell someone their idea is full of shit, but it's not personal. Attacking ideas is expected, attacking people is not tolerated. There is nothing "male" about that. It is just kick-ass science.

 

*since they have a protected twitter account I won't list them by name here.

**don't worry-I also make sure the person that said this knew how fucked up it was.

NOTE ADDED IN PROOF: Hermie totally scooped me!!! Make sure that you go and read her views on this, which are spot-on.

[edited to remove my html cheating]

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32 responses so far

Not the time to say No

Jan 05 2012 Published by under academia, tenure-track OTJT

Hey everyone! I'm still buried under my grant. I'm trying desperately to beat it into submission. Right now I think the odds are pretty even about who is going to win, but I'm working hard to not get beaten up too bad. I'm lucky to have supportive friends like Namnezia and PLS to make me feel better about freaking out. Here are their responses to one of my tweets (read from the bottom up):

Fig. 1: thanks, guys...I think

That's right. I might be peaking in my freaking. Awesome. While I duke it out with this grant, though, I realize that some of you out there are having your own struggles. One tweet earlier today caught my attention, from @dr_gena:

I agree with PLS's reaction to this that turning down an interview isn't really a good idea. Negotiating a two-body problem can be tough, even if the other body is not looking for a spot on the tenure-track. And it may very well be that there is not really anything for Body #2 at this institution. But (as mentioned by @SciTriGirl), interviews are about more than just trying to get a job. Interviewing for tenure-track positions is a networking gold mine. You will get to speak to a lot of people, some who are very important. You will automatically be on the radar as a person that is "good" (I mean, you interviewed in their Dept., right?) and as a new independent PI. So I say, go to interviews. You never really know what is going to happen until it does. There can be surprises. At the very least you get practice interviewing, have a chance to market yourself and may even get an offer that you can use for negotiating.

My advice: keep your options open, and don't limit your possibilities before you even have the offer.

What do you all think? Are there good reasons NOT to accept an interview when you are on the job market?

 

 

 

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18 responses so far

The fabric poster is FULL OF WIN! But...

Dec 11 2011 Published by under academia, jr faculty, on the job training

I was a little reluctant to try the fabric posters, but the one I made for this last conference was FANTASTIC. The images rendered well and it was so. easy. to. travel. with. There is no doubt I will be using fabric posters for ever and ever as long as I am doing this. Fabric posters and I are now officially BFF, as it were.

Not only are fabric posters easy to travel with and look great, but there are all kinds of interesting uses for fabric posters when you bring them home! Now, you might be able to do this with paper posters but, to be honest, I never actually bothered to do anything with them except throw them in the trash. It was a PITA to carry them wherever, I was certainly not going to schlep them home and hang them on the wall or whatever. But I digress. Now, since I just jammed it in my carry-on, I could use my poster as a cape (h/t Zwitterionique) or even make cut-out-snowflakes (Dr. Becca FTW! via Dr. Zen).

This raises an important question.  Now that I'm a PI, are my days of posters over? According to CPP:

"At this stage of your career, you should not be presenting posters at all. Indeed, you should not be submitting any abstracts at all to scientific meetings for which you are the presenter. If you don't get invited to give a talk, then you don't present. Only your trainees should be submitting abstracts as presenters."

I can actually see the logic in this...but I wonder if there might be exceptions. For example, it might take your graduate students a year or so before they are ready to present at a conference. Especially your first grad students. For example*. And perhaps you really want to take every opportunity to interact with folks and make sure they know about your most recent awesomeness.

So, I leave you with a question**: What do you think about PI's that present posters? And does it matter what kind of meeting they are at?

 

*at least one other extenuating circumstance came up in the comments to the previous post

**I would embed a poll, but this apparently requires super html ninja skill that are beyond me.

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14 responses so far

poster tradeoffs

Nov 27 2011 Published by under academia, help

It has been a while since I gave a poster at a conference. I've been to a lot of meetings recently, but was lucky enough to be chosen to give talks. I always jumped at the talks, as I was either on the job market or just starting my own lab and was happy for the publicity. But, to be honest, I kind of miss poster sessions. The amount and type of interactions you have with folks at a poster is much more intense than in questions after a talk. Of course, you are more likely to have someone hunt you down at the bar to grill you about your talk.

In any event, I am going to be giving a poster at the next conference I go to. On the event of this special occasion I am considering having my poster printed on fabric instead of the normal glossy print. That way I can just pack it up with the rest of my stuff and don't have to worry about leaving my poster tube on the plane. Again. Ahem.

Tonight, I asked folks on twitter what they thought of the fabric posters. Especially those that just got back from SfN. Several folks (Nam, Dr. Becca, GR) were encouraging. The poster ninja, Dr. Zen, pointed me to a post he wrote about the fabric posters. But others (@benchwise) were convinced that posters should be shiny to make a good impression.

What say you, beloved blog readers? Can a fabric poster rock your world-or is high gloss a must? If you have seen fabric posters that you liked (or didn't) was there a specific reason*?

Is the tradeoff of more convenient transport worth losing the high-gloss print?

 

* I'm a little concerned about how images look when printed on the fabric.

-

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General Exam Questions from Hell

Nov 09 2011 Published by under academia

A right of passage for most graduate programs is the General (or Qualifying) exam. These vary in format between programs (and disciplines-but I am only familiar with the biologically-centric flavors). IME, these consist of a 2-3 hour oral exam, where the student presents and defends their dissertation project and is also expected to be answer "general" questions related to their chosen field of study. Most students work pretty hard to prepare for these exams. In my grad program, it was often stated that the day of your general exam was the smartest you would ever be (because you would not be able to recall much of what you learned after another year or so).

Well, it is now my turn to sit on the other side of the table. The season of general exams is upon us (at MRU), and I have to give several of these exams in the near future. These are a bit of work, because I have to think up good questions that test the breadth and depth of the student's knowledge and reasoning skills. Which leads me to...#GeneralExamQuestionsFromHell, a twitter game that Odyssey and I have been playing. Here are some of what we have come up with so far:

Do you have any General/Qualifying Exam horror questions? If you are a student, what do you remember from your exam?

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17 responses so far

out for a penny...?

Oct 31 2011 Published by under academia, help, queer

I was recently invited to be a "table leader" at a big conference mentoring/career luncheon. I had been volunteered nominated by a colleague because I have just set up a lab, and one of the topics is "setting up your first lab". Today I was finally filling out the RSVP form, in which you are asked to select all appropriate tables that you could lead. One is "gay and lesbian issues in science". Now, of course this one is relevant to me. And I'm glad to see that the big conference is working in this area.

Here's the weird thing: I am hesitating to check that box. I don't know why, but I'm definitely feeling a little anxiety about volunteering for this one. Now, I'm fully out. Not just here, but IRL. So, why am I scared? I don't know. Maybe part of it is that I would be coming out on such a large scale. My name will be in a program book, and this will be a thing that becomes "searchable" in my professional world. In the future, grant reviewers and the like will run across it if they google me. It is always a little bit of a nervous charge when I come out to a new person. And this would be that x 10^4.

I think I am, deep-down, a little worried this will come back to haunt me. Also, what am I going to say? I don't really know if I have any good advice for other non-heterosexual folks out there that are in this business. In fact, it would be useful for me to talk to someone about this that is a few years ahead of me on the tenure-track. So maybe if I was just there, as an example that some of us queer folk are making it, that would be useful?

This is getting a little rambly (is that a word?). So I'll stop and ask for input. If I'm "out" for penny, should I just bite the bullet and be "out" for a pound*? Do you think I should check the box, or keep my "coming out" on a more person-to-person level? And if I bail, is that dishonest of me?

 

*ouch. that is rambly and mixing up the metaphors. sorry.

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saying "no" FTMFW

Oct 28 2011 Published by under academia, awesomeness, exhaustion

As you all know, one of the things I struggle with A LOT is the fact that I'm not great at saying "no" (but I'm trying). Physioprof has an insightful perspective on how feeling like you can't say "no" is a load of crap. But when your department Chair is sitting in your office maybe you (like me) have a hard time executing the "no".

You are in luck! This webpage, "7 simple ways to say no", is like a cheat-sheet for us "yes-sayers"! Seriously, as soon as I found this I started imagining how things could have been different.  I also realized that some of these strategies I had already implemented, naturally. For instance, number 6:

“I’m not the best person to help on this. Why don’t you try X?”

At first, I figured I was throwing X under the bus (it was turnabout, so I was OK w/ it). But maybe I have natural (awesome) tendencies for no-saying that I am not fully realizing?

I know that I, for one, will be practicing these phrases.

 

In case you are keeping score, I totally said "no" to 2 different requests this week. w00t!

 

 

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GOOOOOOO Labbies!!

Oct 24 2011 Published by under academia, jr faculty, lab management, mentoring, on the job training, tenure-track OTJT

Background info: I played a lot of sports as a youngster, but I was never a cheerleader.

One of the crazy things you have to learn to do when you start up a lab is figure out how to keep people motivated and productive. I am certainly not an expert in this area, and I'm sure that I have made some real mistakes. But, the general approach I have been using is to try to emulate some of the great mentors that I have had. Many of these were not ever my actual lab PI, but they are folks that I have talked to about mentoring and lab management or witnessed vicariously through friends that were in their lab.

So, what did I learn that I am trying to use in my own lab? Well, (obv) everyone is different, so you can't have the same mentoring relationship with all the peeps. But in general, I try to be a cheerleader. This was explicit advice from one of my most-trusted mentoring mentors. I give advice, and try to nudge folks to do what I want. But often I just try to encourage the peeps if they are having difficulty nailing down an experimental result, finishing a fellowship application, or whatever. Because sometimes doing science is hard. It can be discouraging, particularly as a new student. I have good students in my lab. They are smart and work hard. Most of the time I just have to cheer and stay out of the way. This does NOT mean that I am not critical with the folks in my lab. If you fuck up, you'll know. We have discussions on areas in which they need more work. But this is all in the realm of constructive criticism.

I was thinking about this recently because of an interesting interaction I had when I was talking to another Asst. Prof I had called to get a reference for someone that had applied to be a postdoc in my lab. This was the second person I had talked to on the phone about Dr. PD App, and everyone was very enthusiastic. But I was asking open-ended questions and trying to see if there were any red flags (or strengths/weaknesses that I should know about if s/he was in my lab). In the course of this discussion, Asst. Prof mentioned was talking about how independent Dr. PD App was and how s/he had never needed a lot of "cheerleading". This was meant as a compliment to indicate that they were very self-motivated and persistent even when shit didn't go their way. Fair enough-score 1 for Dr. PD App! What was surprising is that Asst. Prof went on to lament about how many of his students did need cheerleading and how this was one of the most exhausting and irritating parts of his new job as the head of a lab.

I totally agree that learning to manage people in the lab can be overwhelming. But..."irritating"? Not so much. I rely on the folks in my lab to be productive so that I can write papers and grants and get tenure. In return, they get an education and a chance to develop as a young scientist. Sure, I didn't have any formal management training before I moved from the bench into the office. It is a lot of work (and pressure), but it is also rewarding. I guess I didn't really mind taking on the role as lab cheerleader.

What do you think - is cheerleading is part of being a good mentor?

 

 

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