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Sam Staples

Hey Community Leaders! Share with us some of the best advice you've received from a professor/supervisor/mentor throughout your career. 

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Julia Araujo

Once more, I loved the topic brought for discussion!

Though it's such a hard task choosing just a single piece of advice, I believe it has to do with something I've recently heard from one of our coordinators (here at my university): "Once you're in doubt between options to pursue research at, just write a piece of review."

Here I justify that, although it has much to do with the situation I'm currently at - and I highlight it, just as I've said in my latest post, here at the Community Leader's forum - I'm truthfully in the opinion of having it applied to further circumstances in any scientific career.

For an instance, it doesn't matter how much you already know about a certain subject (or its subdivisions) going back to the simplicity - just as a review article might look to be like - helps us figuring out better options and visualising the scenario from multiple perspectives.

Certainly, from plenty of help I've received throughout High School and short time of undergraduation, so far, I've recently started to realise, whenever we're in doubt, advices start coming up as both a assurance (a relief, whenever it coincides with our personal choices) and as a new way of seeing things. Nonetheless, in this last case, it's impressive how much we got to learn, doesn't matter how old we are. Assuredly, anyone is able to teach and to learn. (Is that a second advice I've had already received? I guess so.) 

Back to the piece I've decided to emphasize, along with summing up, while picking up my path of research at college, the review article I prompt myself on writing can be published by the end! Which scientist doesn't like the feeling of publishing our works? Thank you, professor, for your advising!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Hugo Sanchez-Castillo

Hi Everybody! Fortunately, I have been surrounded by valuable and pretty smart scientists during my professional formation. Because of that, is really hard to choose a single one!!. However, I will do my best in choosing two of them. The first one came from my postdoctoral adviser; one day we were discussing the results of one experiment, at that moment the data were unclear and without direction, I suggest to look the data and detecting subjects with bad performance to check out what is going on. The Dr looked at me and said: You can do that, you can look, but you can´t interact with the data. Our compromise like scientists is to explain the data, find the causes, explain the phenomena, and learn from that, but never, ever, modify, change, duplicate, or any other kind of interaction: THE DATA IS THE DATA. I think that sometimes we are so immersed in our research that we don't realize that if we changed something (for minimal that it appears). it could change our understanding of the nature and that could affect us for many years.

The second one came from my bachelor's tutor. In those days I was lost in what does mean to be a scientist. I thought about the awards, the traveling, the excitement of finding things, and the understanding of nature. One day I was playing soccer and I didn't finish my experiment, when I was asked for that, I apologize for my behavior but I said that It does not matter because I can repeat the experiment and I was capable of doing everything again if it was necessary. My tutor turn back slowly and look at me with a surprised expression. He ask me to sit down and said: Hugo I want you to listen carefully; I know that you are capable of repeating the experiment, I know that you are smart enough to change the design and do so many other changes. However, that skill does not mean that you respect science. Science is knowledge, experimental data, publishing, interchange of ideas, etc. However, science is compromised with society, it understands our role and returned the trust that the society deposit in every scientist. They expect respect, honesty, and compromise. If you are not capable of compromising with your experiments, how you can compromise with society and behave ethically in science?

 

Best

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Kristen Ashley Horner

What is the best advice you have received from a professor/supervisor throughout your career?” 

This is a good question.  Let me reach way back into my cortex for the answer.....

So, this is a story about the advice that I didn't take.  As a neared the end of my post-doctoral fellowship training, I started applying for faculty positions---some positions I applied for were at large, research institutions, others were at smaller liberal arts colleges that focused more on teaching, with less of an emphasis on big-time research.  I ended up being offered a faculty position at a medical school that was part of a small liberal arts college in rural Georgia.  I was going to be given my own lab space, and I was expected to support my lab with extramural funding, like at any other medical school, but I was also going to be required to carry a pretty hefty teaching load (roughly half my time was to be spent teaching first- and second-year medical students).  I didn't have much exposure to or opportunities for teaching as a graduate student or post-doctoral fellow, but I knew that teaching was something that I really wanted to pursue.  When my post-doctoral mentor found out that I had decided to take this position, she strongly advised me against going to an institution that wasn't primarily research focused and where I would be required to do a lot of teaching.  She was worried that spending so much time in the classroom would potentially ruin my career as a researcher.  

Well, I thanked her for her concern and advice, and I took the position anyway.  I spent 15 years at that small medical school that was part of a liberal arts college, and I don't regret it a minute of it.  I was given the unique opportunity to have a thriving research program (albeit very small compared to other neuroscience research labs), while learning to teach and design medical school curriculum.  Without that experience, I never would have ended up in my current position, where I'm now part of a team starting a new medical school.  So, I guess the lesson here is that sometimes the best advice comes from yourself---trust your instincts, listen to your gut, and don't be afraid to take a chance. 😁

 

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Wael Mohamed

Hi all.....I think the best advice from my supervisor was try to FOCUS. Focus on what you are doing and move slowly towards your careers goals. Also he advised me to expand my network and collaborate with others. I apply these advices till now and I have a motto of : United We Concur.....so I am always eager to expand my professional network and keen to start new collaboration. 

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Lalitha Devi Mallarapu

Hi all, the one advice that really made me think was that "every single experiment has to make some sense" though its not significant. As a PhD student, I always struggled with understanding the purpose and significance of the experiments I conducted. I would often find myself going through the motions without truly comprehending the underlying concepts. Without really realizing what is the bigger question I am going to solve by doing certain experiment was really depressing. Following my supervisors advice, I started to approach my experiments differently. I took my time and started questioning everything before I start something. It helped me a lot to stop doing unnecessary stuff and saved lot of my time.  

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Mathew Abrams

Hi all! The best advice that I received during my career as a neuroscientist was from the Program Director for the Neuroscience Training Program at Tulane University during my first year as a PhD student. Before tell you what he said, I have to give you a little background so that you understand the context. Before entering into the Neuroscience Training Program, I worked for 3 years at in-patient facility for people living with psychiatric disorders. In my quest to better understand the mechanisms underlying the various disorders, I contacted the Program Director and asked which course(s) in neuroscience would help me to better understand the disorders. Long story short, I took the recommended course, fell in love with neuroscience, and applied for the program convinced that my area of research would focus on neuropsychiatric disorders. Now to the topic at hand: the best advice that I received. The Program Director was aware of my "shortsightedness" encouraged me to do rotations in labs other than those focusing on neuropsychiatric disorders before committing to a specific lab. Specifically, he recommended that I: 1. go to labs using technologies that I found interesting, 2. go to labs researching other concepts that I found interesting, and 3. evaluate the lab culture and what resources would be available to me. Following this advice completely changed my career trajectory.  It led me to stem cell research which led to me conducting my thesis research at Karolinska Institute; and the mindset that that advice instilled moved me from neuroscience to neuroinformatics--my true love. Thank you, Dr. Harlan

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Kristen Ashley Horner

Hey!  I graduated from Tulane's Neuroscience Program, too and also got good advice from Dr. Harlan!  I was in the home stretch of my dissertation research and was suddenly unable to produce any meaningful data.  I went to Dr. Harlan, and he told me to trust the data, even if it wasn't positive.  I went back to the lab, combed through my results, looked through my records, and discovered that were using the wrong Tris solution, which was keeping my quantitative receptor assays from working.  So, thank you too, Dr. Harlan!

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