EP 41: 2025 Training Mentoring Award Interview with Marisa Bartolomei

Welcome to The Future Conceived, the official podcast of the Society for the Study of Reproduction! In this episode, host Cam Schmidt has a fascinating conversation with Dr. Marisa Bartolomei, Perlman Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Pennsylvania and the esteemed winner of SSR's 2025 Training Mentoring Award.

Dr. Bartolomei shares insights into her unique journey, transitioning into reproductive biology as a faculty member after starting in other fields like genetics and epigenetics. She discusses the evolution of graduate and postdoctoral training, the challenges of navigating an ever-growing sea of scientific information, and the increasing length of PhD and postdoc programs. Listen in as she reflects on her diverse mentorship experiences, from her early days knocking on lab doors as an undergraduate to her current approach of fostering not only research skills but also crucial "soft skills" in her trainees.

Discover what Dr. Bartolomei finds most rewarding about mentoring, her advice for early career scientists starting their own labs, and essential tips for trainees on how to navigate their scientific journeys. This episode offers a candid and insightful look into the past, present, and future of scientific training and mentorship within the reproductive sciences.

Sponsored by SSR's Virtual Education Committee, dedicated to education, highlighting member careers, and sharing the latest scientific advancements in reproductive biology. Learn more at ssr.org.

Transcript

Speaker 1
OK. Again no online. So we would go to the library and look at these red books and the red. They were called the Red Book, and they had a list of faculty and research and just for like like all universities. And they would update it every once in a while and you'd go in to the library and you look through and you just look. Through the fact like. Well that looks. Like you know, oh, that would be interesting program. And then all the graduate programs you apply to, they were like posted on bulletin boards. No, there was a a flyer that would post on bulletin boards and then you type your application and send it in the mail. And that's the way. It worked and. Hard to imagine, but that's the way we did. At least there was a mail service we didn't have. To carry it ourselves. So.
Speaker 2
Little listeners and welcome to the future conceived the official podcast of the Society for the Study of Reproduction. My name is Cam Schmidt, assistant professor in the Department of Biology at East Carolina University. Today I have the pleasure of chatting with Marissa Bartholemy Pearlman, Professor, Cell and developmental biology at the University of Pennsylvania and winner of SSR's 2025 Training Mentoring Award. We had a great time discussing how her training experiences have shaped her role as a mentor and I learned a lot from her advice. I hope you enjoy your discussion as much as I did. Reset. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1
It's my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2
Can you tell me how long you've been a member of SSR?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I've been a member for about 25 years, which is less time than I've been on the faculty at Penn, and it just to make it clear, I became a member as a faculty member, and I wasn't trained as a reproductive biologist and really did no reproduction. And it's just that my field, sort of. Entered the questions. Entered the germ line and that's when I was advised by a really strong reproductive biology community at Penn that I should join Sr. and participate and and and the rest is obviously history.
Speaker 2
How was that experience transitioning into reproductive biology from another field?
Speaker 1
It wasn't simple because I think that going to into any field requires you know a change in mindset, a change in the way that you normally do normally do things and the kinds of questions that you can ask. But again, the people at Penn, Richard Schultz and at that time, Stewart Moss were incredibly helpful in. And leading me into the field and and now probably one of my stronger identities is is in reproduction and in in the work that we do and and in fact most of my post docs have come from the reproductive biology, so that's needed actually even easier, right? So I rely on them. They know things that I don't know, and so and they have skills that I don't and so that has been really helpful to me. So so once you get it an identity, you can attract the trainees that that strengthen it and it's really is a positive feedback loop.
Speaker 2
So you still kind of view yourself as having one foot in reproductive biology and 1 foot and another field.
Speaker 1
One foot in reproductive biology, 1 foot in genetics and 1 foot in epigenetics. That's sort of where I really sort of feel. I guess that would make give me 3 feet, but obviously my sort of persona that it gets divided into to three really major field.
Speaker 2
I have a similar problem. I'm more like an octopus.
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2
Do you have any standout memories from SR's annual meetings that you'd like to share?
Speaker 1
So I think that you know, there's been really great talks and really great sessions that have provided me. With a lot of new information to chew on, but really the best part for me of SSR is connecting with an ever expanding network of people and and each meeting gets better and better from that standpoint, knowing more and more people and being able to connect and discuss. You know, mutual interests and collaborations and and for me that is the reason to go. That is the reason to be there and it's actual. To be 1 of. The more fun and comfortable places to be now after you know 25 years and and that I'm grateful for.
Speaker 2
So you got your start in research at the University of.
Speaker 1
Maryland, yes, I started as an undergraduate and and sort of really unintentionally in this sense. I'm I I had a friend whose sister older sister said, you know, why don't you go and try and see if you can do some research. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I grew up. And so in those days, since it was a long time ago, you actually went around and. You knocked on door. And so I started. I was alphabetically and I just went through I I was in the biochemistry major and I started knocking on door doors and when I got to see Doctor Kemp Unioni, somebody answered and I presented myself as wanting to be involved in research and he welcomed the opportunity. And wealthy to shadow people and do a little bit in the lab. But then that sort of opened other doors. And I actually worked in two different labs as an undergraduate. And then I thought ohh there could be a career in that that's sort of where the whole thing started to move. Forward.
Speaker 2
What was the other lab?
Speaker 1
So I also worked at Uniform Services University so so that was in it's across from the NIH in Bethesda. And at that point somebody I think I saw an advertisement looking for summer or actually part time students. You had you start. They they used to have this program called 1040 program which you could work 20 hours a week. I mean it as in in, in the school year you couldn't. It was hard to work 20 hours a week. But I joined that lab for a year and a half or so, and that was also an incredibly important experience for me. So there I was really able to have my. Room project and organize things and the Pi of that lab was around all the time and gave me a lot of advice. And so it was really, really important for me to have those research experiences. Now it's a little bit obvious, a little easier. To to get research as an undergraduate labs filled with undergraduates, some are students. All that, but that was a little bit harder. Many, many more than 30 years ago. OK, I'll said so and. And so it was, it was really. It was really great advice, actually that that this person gave to me. And it wasn't. It wasn't that obvious. I have to say, as an undergraduate in a very large university. Me. I didn't actually meet with an advisor for the entire four years I was there. And so these other official, unofficial advisors in in these research experiences were key to to driving me in the direction that I am in.
Speaker 2
What was the advice you said there was advice? Maybe I maybe I missed it, sorry.
Speaker 1
Yeah, just to. Get in there and and just get some research experience.
Speaker 2
Was the mentorship coming from the API's or was that mostly coming from the other students? In the lab.
Speaker 1
So in the lab at the University of Maryland, it was mostly from graduate students. But when I went to uniform services, there was a lot more ability to interact with the API's of the labs, cause the labs were very small. They are and postdocs.
Speaker 2
So how? How did you end up choosing a graduate program?
Speaker 1
So so I you know, I I ended up so I was at University of Maryland. I ended up going to Johns Hopkins. I think that I applied based on people's recommendations. Some people said oh, this has a really good program. So I applied to a number of different programs, most of which I didn't get into. But I did get into Hopkins. And and one or two others. And so I definitely loved Hopkins when I visited. And that's how what what I ended up where I ended up getting in my early experience. But I I really think that it worked for me then. Now. Again, there probably would had had I known more, I might have applied for more programs, or more than I did that work. Then I went to, you know, went to prominent places and applied. And of course I didn't get in.
Speaker 2
We're the training programs structured pretty similarly to the way that they currently are with like 2 years of course work in the PhD and then three years or so of more independent. Search time.
Speaker 1
So the So what happens? It was one year of course work and then you took your preliminary exam at the end of that year and then you could just take these paper reading classes to fill in a few more electives. But you really did end up in your lab at the beginning of the second year, which I don't think is such a bad thing. You know, courses are great for helping to bring everybody to the same place, although our. Graduate students come in pretty sophisticated, and probably it would be better to get people you know running on the ground, running faster. As an aside, we've been looking into this in our own programs, you know, do should we be getting prelims at the preliminary exams at the end of the second year? Should we try to do it earlier? Should we really figure out a way to shorten the length of the PhD program which I think in a lot of places is getting longer and longer? Part of that is unavoidable because journals. Make it every publishing, every paper taking you know more and more and more. And so it becomes harder if you want something sort of high impact. It's a little bit more complicated. I think that it worked. Having the prelim at the end of the first year for me and and. Being able to just go into my my graduate work, yeah.
Speaker 2
So you so you mentioned you've been thinking about that or having discussions about that?
Speaker 1
And we haven't really spoken to students about this yet and it's really sort of administratively people are getting more concerned about the length of the PhD program. And I think that one potential solution has been, you know. Trying to to take time off at the beginning where there's so many classes. And. You know, sometimes people spend an entire semester preparing for their prelim, and that could be, you know, it may be excessive, although a lot of the reading that you do, it turns out to be incredibly beneficial. Fields are huge. It's hard to, through all the information. So. Well, I don't know. I think there you know it could. You could also say, you know, 40 years ago, there wasn't as much we didn't know as much as. So you could really do all of you know more like in the biology and in, you know, a semester and and you were done. You didn't have to learn about all this extra stuff all you. You learned about all the things you didn't know, so as opposed to having to, but I think that and it's good to introduce people to facts. But I do think the most valuable part ends up being learning to read the literature critically. And learning how to do science, that's really what we need to be focusing on in our training is you. Know. Thinking critically about doing experiments, learning how to write, learning how to review papers, learning how to write grants because you can always, you know, there's AI and Google. That can help you learn facts and and details. And once you have that nice from rounding.
Speaker 2
That's a really good point about the amount of information I've been struggling with that a little bit for some of my students that are going into their candidacy exams and everything you search has like, you know, a small search result is 30,000, it's and and more general terms will get you millions of hits. And I think they don't really know what to do with that.
Speaker 1
Right. No, I mean when. I.
Speaker
When I first.
Speaker 1
Started working on. Both my graduate and my postdoctoral project. You could search. You know, again, whatever kind of search engines we were doing and that obviously was a little bit easier as a post op and for imprinting, you pull up 100 papers.
Speaker
You know.
Speaker 1
The edges is hard to fathom. There, you know. And there's more sophistication in the assertion engines. But the proliferation of information and fields is, like you say, is enormous. And so learning to figure out. What's the important information versus what's maybe not is is actually also another skill we have to teach our trainees because it is it's it's overwhelming, but you. Can think about it. You learn something that you're doing an experiment. You end up in a totally you pull out a protein that has an interaction or gene that as an action or you identify. Something and all of a sudden you're in the middle of a whole new field and you're just you're, and then all of a sudden you're like, where do I start? OK, so you start. You read a few reviews. But then how do you get beyond that to so it's. It's it's, it's sometimes it can feel insurmountable, but you have to do it in little bits. But you're right. Teaching students how to, you know, go through that. That's tough. Yeah, it is. It is. It is a challenge for all of us, I think.
Speaker 2
When you think about the structure for PhD training programs, do you think that the post doc is sort of a necessary extension of that? Like our PhD programs designed to train postdocs?
Speaker 1
So you see, you mean what you mean? Is that do you have like it does? Is it important for a PhD student to do a post? Rock.
Speaker 2
Our PhD programs if, as as universities, are thinking about how they might change the timing of PhD programs, are they doing that with post docs as a necessary follow on to the PhD?
Speaker 1
I see. You know, I it's interesting to look at what people are doing, right? So some of your pH. D students will go into post. Docs most of. Most of my students have gone into, but not everybody because some of them don't want to continue in, let's say, a bench work, type of position or and they know that they want to go in and do, you know, right, do some of the jobs that are involved with more. Writing and more industry level positions and I do see some students going a lot of students going directly into pharma, biotech. I think a few years. Ago that was happening more frequently. Some of that has changed a little bit. However, and and occasionally you have sort of a superstar student who can track directly to the position, but I still think that the postdoc is absolutely essential for people who want to track to, to faculty position, or even want to see if they want to track to faculty positions. Maybe they. Decide they don't want to, but having an independent research experience, a different institution, a different Pi, a different field. For us, when we look at faculty candidates, seeing somebody be successful in too independent fields, two different appendable situations, meaning it as. A. As a graduate student and a PhD and postdoc, is is really. A great indicator of future success. It's not the perfect indicator. Lots of people that only one experience where they really were successful and still they do fine. But it is. Still a pretty good indicator of future success. That said, you know pH. D's and postdocs are taking an increasingly longer and longer amount of time. Like when I for me as a graduate who knows graduate student for a little bit over five years, about maybe five years and half or so, a little bit less than that and a post doc for five years. I mean that's on the shorter end of things now, right. We see students six years or more. Postdoc six years or more, and so that is a long time, especially if you're taking time off in between and you don't start your graduate work. So we really have to. Revisit this although. I still think the biggest impediment to. You know, quickly progressing through these is is is you know that how long it takes to get a really great publication that somebody and and that's you know. That's really probably, in my opinion, not everybody's is what's taking the longest amount of time.
Speaker 2
So we left off at the the PhD at Hopkins and then is that from there? You moved to Princeton? Work with Shirley Tilman.
Speaker 1
Yes.
Speaker 2
How's that experience?
Speaker 1
So. That was a great experience, and so you know my pH. DI worked with Jeff Gordon at Hopkins. He was. Breed scientists, he loves science, he. Really liked to do. You. You know new things and everyone, every time we would do something new in the lab, he'd come in and try and set it up. And that was really fun. He was more. Junior, when I went to. Shirley's lab at Princeton. It was a bigger lab. It was a more established lab. There were, you know, a large number of large. You know, there could be 6 or 7. Students same number of post docs technicians. So there was a lot more of. It was definitely a bigger laugh and. And so Shirley wasn't in there every day, she was accessible.
Speaker
Well.
Speaker 1
But usually you were interacting a lot more with your colleagues. And which was. Fun because people came from a lot of different places and they had a lot of great experiences and so scientifically it was wonderful from the standpoint of of having this great. Vibrant community Princeton Department was smaller at that time, so a lot of. Interaction with other labs, but what's truly offered was was in a sense, in addition to, you know, her amazing intellect and great ideas. She offered a more rounded professional experience. So there, you've got more of the soft skills, skills of writing grants, reviewing papers she would. You know, she got invited to loads and loads of meetings. And so if you had a really mature project, you would ask the meeting organizer how I can't go. But how about one of my senior post to your post so you'd be able to. Do that and so. She helped to build the skill set that you needed to to go off on your own and and and. She was just. You know, she still has. She's just a great, wonderful, ethical, you know, grounded human and again, super successful without being, you know, overly competitive in a sense. And so it really was. A great experience and. I think those two experience is pretty different, graduate and. That have really. Gave me a great grounding to start my independent research careers. You know how to think about science and write grants, etcetera, which was great.
Speaker 2
It sounds like it was important to have multiple perspectives, like you wouldn't really want to train in the same kind of environment more than once.
Speaker 1
I mean, for me that worked right for. Me that worked. Going to two really different places. Hopkins was big. It was that I was very fortunate. The department I was in hiring a hired a lot of junior faculty. So you had you had some interesting experiences that way? And then and then going to Princeton, it was small, it was, it was small, there was, you know, 1 seminar A. Week or everybody.
Speaker
That.
Speaker 1
You know. Now in our own institutions we, you know, at Penn, we have, you know, 1 seminar an hour. So you can spend your whole day going. So I think that having the different opportunities allowed me to understand what I might want to do. As a faculty member, should I? You know, you know. Should I just have decided I wanted to go in that direction? Had been fortunate enough to to get a faculty position, so for me it really worked. It doesn't work for everybody, and there are people that, as I said, there's some people that don't even need a post doc and who've been really successful going straight forward. There are people who stayed at the same institution but have gone to a different lab or different department. Even since it. But it it everybody's different for me. I needed that and it's just because. In those days, again, in those days there were we didn't have a lot of opportunities. Now I look at students, they coming probably into grad school. They've already had three research experiences and three independent places and really robust research experiences. And. And so they're coming in, more knowledgeable than. Then a lot of us did in those days of starting our faculty positions. So again and and and, but. And now even you look at what it's like to start a lab now, that's what it was like to start a lab 30 years ago. I mean, you have to hit the ground running. There's a lot more expected of you. You know, it's expected that the mentorship aspect of this is a lot more important central than it was. Over 30 years ago, and so I think that there's, you know, you were expected to have more grants. You're expected to be pushing out grants that pay lines are lower. So you have to apply for more. I mean, I think that. The expectations are a little bit different than they were back then and the training was different. So you know it's hard to say, oh, this works really great for me. Would it work? You know, now, I don't know.
Speaker 2
Have you? I guess through through your career, especially in training students and postdocs, do you ever feel like those things are in conflict? Running a research program and providing the kind of training that students and post docs need? I certainly feel that as a new faculty, I think sometimes like I have ideas for things that I want to do and. Then the students are dragging me. In other directions and things. And sometimes it's a little stressful.
Speaker 1
I think that when I first started out, probably that would have was the case. This and now you come in and people are and your students are like no, I want to do this. I don't want to do this thing that you, you know, you say you have. I have the. Luxury of saying OK, if you want to try it. I mean actually in the old days, my students would. Say that that my strategy was I'll give you enough rope to hang yourself or, you know, you know, in other words, I'll give you the a certain runway to try this idea. And if it goes? Then it's great, and if it doesn't? But you're right, because sometimes you write things in grants and you need to have them done and and people don't necessarily want to do them, so they can be in conflict. This is true and and again in a small lab, you don't necessarily have that luxury. And so and so the another compromise will say is you say, OK, you have to work on this thing. I want you to work on. But on the side you could try your idea. And so there are compromises that we have come up with. In the. You know in our in the in our time because I have to say sometimes students or postdocs can come up with, you know, projects and you know that you were like, wow, I didn't think that would ever work. Count me wrong. You have to be willing to be wrong, right? Because you'd be like, no, that's not going to work. And it does. Or they'll say that's not gonna work your idea. And they're right. It didn't work, you know? So we have to give them certain amount of. Of. Responsibility or whatever credit for these things. But yeah, it can be in conflict. I see some people. You know their strategy is just to take more and more people. In their lab. To to you know. The law of mass action for getting research done. We used to have conversations about this all the time, you know, do the bigger labs proportionately push out more paper than papers that per capita, than the smaller laps? Probably not. And I think becoming inefficient when the lab gets bigger or you may be when you have a smaller lat, everybody has to be successful. So you put more work in per person. So there are these all kinds of, you know, conflicts in, in, in a sense, in running a lab. And I guess you have to figure out how to work your. Way through that.
Speaker 2
Do you think or is is this maybe part of the the broader discussion that that universities and and other scientific institutions are thinking about? Our training programs have coalesced around training a lot of people and clearly the the research support is getting thinner and thinner and the system kind of depends to some extent on trainings moving through the system. Do you think there's like a a restructure in the future?
Speaker 1
Oh, that's a really good question. You know, we've already seen in the last. Last year, right HD programs are admitting fewer people because of general. I think in, I think in a decrease in what the university could provide in, in the support for the. Well, yeah, but also. Just Pis are having a harder time, you know, supporting their students and and it's. And it's getting more expensive. All aspects of of the education, you know, especially some places where you live, you the cost of living is so high that that stipends. Have to go up and then insurance is is becoming more costly and as that increases more as being put on the the principal investigator. And so if you think about you know here's my $250,000 you know. Grant and students are costing you know anywhere from 50 to 85,000, depending on how much of that you have to pay. You know you have to think about, well, can I even afford more than two students in a lab? And so. So as that happens, I think the programs. Are shrinking and we've probably a lot of our universities have grown. And so I, you know, I'm hoping that. Funding won't collapse, but you know, and we all need to be more creative with our funds and our revenue sources, but. It's anybody's guess on on how we go about and support the structure and you know, some people have said and and I, you know, I'm less clear on this ideas if many, many of our students are going into pharma or buy attack. Should we be getting more help from pharma and biotech who are getting a trained workforce? That comes with other conflicts of interest and and and. So it's harder to say philanthropy is really important. Depending if if you're in a private institution. So yeah, everything. We do, especially now, is under review, so. Time will tell where we. End up with this so.
Speaker 2
Once you finish the post doc at Princeton after that is when you started your lab at Penn.
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I went directly undergraduate to grad school grad school to postdoc and postdoc to to faculty position.
Speaker 2
How has your I guess approach to training? Maybe let's just stick with PhD students or graduate students for this one, and then maybe we could talk about post docs in a minute. But how? How is your approach to training graduate students evolved over the course of your career?
Speaker 1
It has evolved so much, so again when. I was when I was a postdoc, I had a little bit more opportunity to interact with undergrads and graduate students in a sort of an informal mentorship. None, none, as a PhD student. Zero we were. All just pH. D students in the lab. So when I came in to Penn, I had really very limited. Mentorship training now nowadays, right we everybody has to take mentorship trainings to all kinds of different things, but back then. It was the Wild West of mentorship. And so. And so I just winged it. I have to say I just winged it and so I learned on the on the job. And. And because I was in the lab a lot and I sort of was for the 1st 10 years, a lot of the training. And my lab was smaller, came from me. Now his time has gone on and my lab has gotten larger, and it's probably smaller than it was at its peak. There was more senior graduate students training, you know, younger graduate students, postdocs training now. And to me, it's really. I. Evolve to to not only do they need to learn how to do experiments, but again the professionalism, the soft skills, so mentoring the mentors so having everybody have an opportunity. To mentor, having everybody be involved, everybody has to write grants. Everybody has to will they write their own grants? Everybody in my all my students submit apps or reply. To 230 twos and and then in some cases I actually have to work with me. I'm writing bits of grants and and it's the students, the post docs more so, but the students definitely I give them all papers to read you. So everybody has to do presentations. I'm adamant that everybody. Absolutely, 100% has to participate in lab meeting, meaning asking questions. They don't just get to sit there starting conversations, thinking about questions to ask, making students go to, you know, seminars, at least to assert that are relevant and and and interacting with seminar speakers. To think about. What they want to do in the future, so there's a lot more of that. That's provided by the university and the program. And for me, it's really important that students have the whole range of experiences and there's more opportunities for that than there was when I first started. So. So my approach is more more collaborative with the students and more. And more building of soft skills in addition to the the research skills. And that's just because also. You know when you. Again, when I graduated with my pH. D. You know, I maybe had learned did 5 different techniques for the entire time and then as a postdoc there were, you know, few more now, you know, you do. Five different techniques in the morning to, you know, and so the the amount of research that students can do is so much more, but then? There's a lot more. You know, learning they have to do on the side and researching the literature and stuff. So it's changed because by by my, by the conscious effort to do more training and soft skills, but also because that's the way the programs have changed and they science has changed. By necessity.
Speaker 2
Do you find that different students, just as people, are very different in the way that they are motivated and and what they want out of their training? How how do you navigate that?
Speaker 1
Yeah. So that's probably one of the harder things, right because you think? To yourself. OK, I've trained all these students. I've seen it all. I've seen it all. And then the next person comes in. You're like, wow. I didn't see this. So each person is different. Some students want. Some are high touch students. They want to, you know, talk all the time. Some want to just be left to their own devices and you know some. Hit a brick. Wall and just shut down and some just. You know, there are students who, you know, just try through no matter what. Keep keep doing the same thing over and over again. And you're like it didn't work the previous 25 times while you're doing it at. 26 times. And so you know, you have to figure that out pretty early. And sometimes sometimes students. Changed so much also during the course of their train. Meaning where they've come in with very inexperienced and you're not sure what their trajectory is going to be and their direct directory blows you away. So you know and and some may not have so much to learn or so much. But you know. You're right. Every single person requires sort of an individual. Training plan and so that's why some of these very. You know, large labs, you depend a lot, a lot more on the hierarchy of the post docs and the senior graduate students, stuff like that. And so they may be you know, so they're gaining really important experience but you know, but that that is offered less by the Pi. And it is by the by the, you know, by the by the post docs and things like that. And again I depend a lot on my post docs and senior graduate students. Sometimes they even have my undergraduates training people. It's really awesome to see that. But you know they they enter the lab but as freshmen by the time they're seniors, they. They can do it all.
Speaker 2
So that kind of covered graduate students and I I mentioned, I kind of wanted to compartmentalize postdocs because I assumed that the the training experience is very different with them, so maybe I'll pose that as a question. Actually is is the training or the mentoring experience very different between postdocs and graduate students? And how has your approach to post docs evolved over? The course of your career?
Speaker 1
So one of the things maybe that. It it's a little bit different for at least for me. From my experience is that most of the post docs that come to my lab most not all. Absolutely not all want to continue in academia. And that's not always the case for the graduates. And and also we need really talk about MD PhD students because they have a more a, a different sort of trajectory and and it sort of an accelerated timeline in in, in theory but. But for postdocs, it's it's absolutely for me, it's more essential. That they're writing. More grants and and I I talked to them a lot more about the Pi experience so they know a lot when they leave my lab. And and some of them have told me, you know, when you talked about blah, blah, blah, I didn't really believe you. But you're right. So so. Yeah, this that was sort of you know something that I thought you were over exaggerating. Like for example, I'll say I spend most of my time writing since I was a recommendation. They're like, you had a lot of what the recommendation. So as a as a, you know. But I think that I think that it has changed because. Because you have to this, you know, everything is more accelerated in this in the academic world. And so they can't experiment with the concept of writing a grant. They need to learn how to write a. Grant they need. Everybody, I don't know. So if Once Upon a time I used to write the papers in my lab first, probably. You know, 5 papers I largely wrote myself. I mean. Now if I have to sit down and write a paper from scratch, it's, you know, it's like, oh, how do I do this? But, you know, they have to be able to do that and to to work with other people. And again, the pressure is really on them. To be leaders and as an experience and and they they decide to go into farm or buy a tech or or whatever. I think that all the skills you learn in writing and in and and in working with mentoring, working with people they're going to be. Applicable if you just, you know, want to go into going to the NIH and and and work in in grants, grant review or as a program officer. All these things are going to be important we and so. I think that. Again, it's just not by having people in the lab doing, experiment, experiment, experiment. They have to. They have to learn all these other things.
Speaker 2
Is there something about mentoring and training that you find particularly rewarding?
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, I think that the most rewarding thing is watching a trainee develop from, you know. A person that required a lot of mentoring to the person who's offering the mentoring to the person who's just leading their project and and you know, coming up with the next 5 ideas or coming up with whole new ideas that you never thought that is the most rewarding. Thing and I've had trainees than I thought. You know, here's a project you know. We'll get through this. You'll get your PhD in May not be the best thing ever, but. And they've gone on to, just to, you know, really wonderful things. And so seeing that transition is is pretty awesome. You don't see it as much as the post docs because they usually come in more formed. You can't necessarily modify a lot of, but you still can't graduate. Students are. Still, you know a little bit of a of a, you know. This blank white board where you can really, really. Moderate their their skills and their and their learning and their attitudes. It's great. It's really great.
Speaker 2
Do you have any advice for early career scientists who are just beginning to work with trainees in their labs?
Speaker 1
I always I always have a lot of advice. For them so. Number one, don't feel your lap up with. Any warm body? Because you can end up with conflicts, you can end up with people not being trained as well. And and you have to put more work. You know where you have to put work in to get really good workout and the other really important thing I think is that if a mentor, mentee relationship is not working. If you're not working for them or they're not working for you, or they can't fit into your, you have to cut losses. I mean, you know. It may be the best thing you can do is to release them to tell them it's not working out and for for a trainee. If it's not working out, don't stick around. If you feel like this is not what you need. Because I think. That's it's those are the hardest decisions, but they may be the the most important decisions and so so for starting in a new lab, you know again it takes a lot of work, it's incredibly rewarding. It's so fun. You know what other job can you wake up in the morning and do whatever you really want to do that? Well, you know and, you know, work on whatever you. Want to work on? I mean, obviously, as long as it's fundable and things like that, but but you know you have to. Do enter it with you know, eyes open and cautiously and and and be ready to make those decisions.
Speaker 2
I think that actually about wraps up most of my questions, but I did want to give you the opportunity to discuss anything that I didn't ask about.
Speaker 1
But I mean, I think maybe a bit of more advice for trainees because I. I mean, I would just say. As a trainee should read a lot. And you need. To become the expert in your little bit in the lab. Right. And and you know you can do that by reading, asking questions, etcetera. And you need to be fearless about doing experiments. But I. But but I would say that has to be balanced and that is the balance is. You try, you learn what is to pivot right? You've done enough. This isn't working. You need to pivot. And but you also need an but. But the other thing is, you know, don't just do experiments without thinking, and you know, so there's some trainees can talk themselves out of doing any experiment. You have to be fearless, but others, just as I said before, can keep on doing an experiment. An experiment when there's really not. A path forward, so and and so these are really important things to think about and these are going to be skills that are going to help life, skills that are going to help in doing this. And so I think that you get in what you put out. And you know, you get out what you put in, etc. So you need to you need to to balance things.
Speaker 2
Well, thank you so much for for joining us today and for sharing your experiences. This has been really, really interesting and I have learned a lot.
Speaker 1
Thank you very much. It's been really fun to talk to you. Thanks, Cameron. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2
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