Dr Cristina Nostro is a Senior Scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at the University Health Network (UHN), a research hospital, as well as Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. She recalls challenges in demonstrating research independence.

Cristina started her research career not taking no for an answer. As an undergraduate student in Florence (Italy), she had hoped to access the Erasmus programme. There had been strong links between her university and the University of Manchester. However, the programme had been stopped. She managed to challenge this change and created an opportunity that enabled her to go to the University of Manchester. She was encouraged by a professor from Florence to reach out to one of his collaborators. This led her to work in a research group in her spare time and the summer while on her Erasmus exchange; it allowed her to discover what doing research was about.

After she finished her degree in Italy, she returned to the UK for a PhD at The University of Manchester. Her PhD then became a springboard for further research opportunities. She initially considered doing a Postdoc in Europe and was quickly offered a position.

This first Postdoc offer built her confidence that she could indeed obtain a Postdoc. It allowed her the time to take a breather and consider more carefully what type of Postdoc she may want to do to optimise her research direction. Cristina realised this career stage was a turning point between different career directions. She also had a job offer for a position in a pharmaceutical company. Her family would have probably liked to see her return home. This can feel like being pulled in many directions. Conversations with peers and mentors were critical in convincing her that finding the right space to take her expertise mattered.

The right space emerged in conversations with an academic she had met at a conference, followed by an interview and the courage to pester this academic to see a Postdoc opportunity manifests itself. Taking the first offer could have been easy, but having the patience to build a chance to be in the right space took persistence and self-belief.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• How may cutting ties with your PI be needed, even when you would prefer not to, to demonstrate your independence?
• How supportive PIs invite Postdocs to build ownership of new research directions?
• What’s our role in getting others with less privilege the opportunity to discover the world of research?

To read the whole blog post:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/cristina-nostro

Prof. Milica Radisic is a Functional Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (University of Toronto, Canada). Her work sits at the interface of engineering, stem cell biology and chemistry. Her ethos as a PI is to create interdependence between team members to build a collaborative and effective research team.

Milica is part of a generation of scientists for whom the transition from PhD to academic positions could appear to have been incredibly fast compared to the current generation of aspiring academics. The funding context and institutional expectations were different at the time.

Milica explains that the start-up packages were small then, and the access to research funding took a long time. This meant it took several years for newly appointed academics to get started with building their teams. Milica feels that in the current context, whilst there is a higher expectation at the point of recruitment, those appointed may be able to access research funding more quickly to start building their research group.

Milica’s transition post PhD was likely helped by the fact she had done her PhD in an incredibly prestigious research environment at MIT and had been surrounded by a very talented research community.

Her experience at MIT was one of support, motivation and inspiration. We often make assumptions about the research environment in US highly competitive research groups and institutions. We assume that the environment will be highly competitive between team members, but also that work-life balance will be absent. We all have heard horror stories of Postdocs experiencing unsustainable research environments in this type of highly prestigious institution.

Of course, these cultures of overwork and high competition exist, and each person will experience the environment differently. Milica felt that the head of the research group was setting the tone for the research team. She experienced this environment not as one of competition within the lab, but as one of inspiration to thrive as a scientist. It all stemmed from the ethos held by the Principal Investigator to have a healthy environment for his research group.

It is not because a research group is highly successful and competitive externally that this equates with an unhealthy research environment internally. Some researchers may stop themselves from considering applying for positions in highly competitive teams for fear of what the environment will be like. There is no rule. You just need to see what it is like for yourself. You cannot make assumptions about the research culture within a team, a department or an institution. You just need to discuss it with others who are experiencing it themselves or may need to experience it firsthand.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• Are labels (e.g. “world-class”, “highly competitive”, “prestigious”, “high impact”) about institutions and research teams deterring you from applying for roles?
• How much interdependence with your research colleagues are you prepared to have?
• Who do you have to support you in crafting and refining new research ideas?

Access the blog inspired by this interview here:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/milica-radisic

Dr. Catarina Henriques is a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow at The University of Sheffield. Her journey into a research career was ignited by a TV documentary on telomeres she watched as a teenager, which fueled her enduring interest in the biology of aging. Transitioning from Portugal to the UK to pursue her research ambitions involved numerous daring conversations.

Not many people can claim they visited embassies to figure out where to study at university, but Catarina did. Before the internet made information readily available, exploring educational opportunities required courage and perseverance. With the support of the British Council, Catarina discovered various Genetics degrees offered across UK universities.

As an undergraduate, Catarina was on a promising path, with a degree in genetics, ample laboratory experience, and strong recommendations. However, personal circumstances required her to return to Portugal to support her family. This detour didn't deter her from her goals.

Determined to work on telomeres, Catarina reached out to anyone involved in related research, leading her to a cancer research group. She maintained connections with a Principal Investigator (PI) at The University of Glasgow, collaboratively developing a PhD project that bridged her interests and academic relationships. Although her PhD project wasn't directly on telomeres, she kept her eye on developments in that area.

After completing her PhD, Catarina stayed in Portugal, joining a new research group transitioning from yeast to zebrafish as a model organism. This period was instrumental in building her confidence to develop her own research team.

She didn't wait for her fellowship to end to explore future opportunities. Instead, she networked and visited research groups to identify potential hosts for a fellowship. Despite an initial unsuccessful fellowship application, her groundbreaking research showing that zebrafish age similarly to humans caught the attention of The University of Sheffield.

A group at The University of Sheffield was at the time looking to recruit a senior academic for zebrafish research; they contacted her PI who put her in touch with the Sheffield team. She was then recruited via some MRC funding that the department held.

The timing worked in her favour as the institution at the time was running a round of internally funded fellowship recruitments which she was encouraged to apply for and was successful in gaining. This was an exciting period, as Catarina really felt that people were interested in her work and were prepared to help her, but also she was surrounded by many other researchers with expertise in zebrafish. Her momentum in building her research niche could be fuelled by colleagues in her department.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• Do you know what brings you energy in your research life?
• What would be the risk in focusing on key research activities instead of scattering yourself and feeling overwhelmed?
• How do you handle conversations about research ownership?

Some reflections to ponder on the transition to being a Principal Investigator

Embracing Uncertainty and Authenticity

Even with a fellowship, there is a long journey to feeling secure in research careers. Learning to live with this level of uncertainty is a challenge.

Research fellows in their attempt to secure more permanent positions will contribute to their departments in many ways from admin roles to teaching. Excelling on all front is challenging. Knowing whether we have done enough is difficult to assess.

For Catarina, like many early career academics, there is a risk of throwing yourself all over the place in your academic activities because you may feel th

Kristen Brennand is Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics at Yale University School of Medicine. She first set up her own research group in 2012 at Mount Sinai, after a Postdoc at the Salk Institute and a PhD at Harvard University. She reflects on balance in research careers.

From the outside, Kristen’s research career looks like the perfect trajectory without a single faux pas, even though we fully know these do not exist. The metaphor of styles of running emerges in our conversation; running a sprint versus running a marathon is a valuable anchor in getting us to explore how we want to navigate the research environment. Building endurance in research careers becomes even more tangible during the transition from being a Postdoc to research group leader

From an early drive about working with the best people, in the best places, doing the best science, her energy has shifted towards being motivated in supporting her research team; connecting people and seeing the synergy that emerges from bringing together people with different expertise. The motivation is still about doing faster, bigger and bolder research but through the full synergy with her teams.

Kristen shares that it was only several years after she became a PI, when she was feeling she was losing the battle to have some balance between home/ work that she started to believe things could be different. A conversation with her husband got her started in experimenting with working less hours than she had before. This was a personal challenge that shifted her perspective. The pace of working, the goals she was setting for herself, the amount of time spent at work- a lot of this could change if she started to experiment with a different approach.

We are set to believe that we need to follow the paths that others have led before us. Our belief of what it takes to become an independent and successful researcher is based on how others have done it before. Their beliefs shape their mentoring approach. Learning to mentor differently is part of what is needed in research environments. We may want to navigate the research environment in our own way, not the way our mentors have done it.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• How the “too many good advice of others” may not be what we need
• How believing that we have choices in our way of working can create our new reality
• What resilience could look like for you when your research does its usual up and down looping

Dr Dawn Scholey is a Senior Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University. She never intended to become a researcher. After working for an extended period in industry, she returned to academia as a technician. It was the cheerleading of her manager that convinced her to embark on a PhD.

Dr Dawn Scholey’s career is a good example that for some people, entry into the world of research is not part of a professional masterplan. Her career driver was about learning and science, not the ambition of becoming an academic researcher. It took a lot of convincing from the part of her manager, who she describes as an inspirational leader, to make her believe that as a mum of two in her late 30’s, starting a PhD was something she could do.

The cheerleading from her manager, who became her PhD and Postdoc supervisor, has been critical in enabling her to pursue her research career. She is now embracing this cheerleading role with younger researchers who are on their own research journey.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• How you may not see your own potential, but having a cheerleader to make you believe in yourself may take you to places to had never imagined
• How it is never too late to take a professional challenge
• Why choosing a research environment that works for you is a key decision in choosing who to work with and where to work

Some reflections to ponder based on my discussion with Dawn

We don’t all have a masterplan

Dawn’s honesty in sharing her entry into academic research is interesting, as it illustrates that starting a career on this path is not just the privilege of early career graduates, but a viable route for other professionals. Working as a technician for her manager, Dawn did not see herself as someone who could do research as a doctoral student. She was in the technician box and her professional development could have stayed there. What fascinates me is the persistence that her manager had in convincing her that doing a PhD was something that Dawn could do. Her manager could see it in her, when she could not see this in herself.

Dawn is not someone who had a professional masterplan about the types of roles she wanted. She explained that she had fallen into different roles but was not aiming at a specific job.

Traditional career paths rarely exist nowadays, so being open and flexible to explore career transitions is the crux of employability.

If you don’t have a masterplan for your career, exposure to others and their own career paths is an important way of exploring alternative options that you may have never considered. We so often just see the success stories of others and not the meandering path they have taken. Hearing from the twists and turns of careers, when people made mistakes with jobs, applied but failed at interviews, did not receive a grant…is all part of exploring what you want for your own path. We also do not always see ourselves in some more senior roles. It often takes others to tell us to apply for a job that we felt was out of reach for us.

o How can you stay open to unexpected opportunities in your career?

o Who is encouraging you to take unusual opportunities that may create a spark of inspiration to decide what to do next?

o Who is challenging you to take opportunities even when you feel you are not good enough, ready enough, smart enough….?

A supportive research environment looks like what

Doing a PhD as a mature student will have come with all the challenges of balancing family and work, but it brought her some calmness that younger researchers may not experience. She embraced that listening to others and learning from them was more valuable than worrying about not knowing as much as them

Dr Ahmed Iqbal is a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Clinical Medicine, School of Medicine and Population Healthat The University of Sheffield and Honorary Consultant Physician in Diabetes for the NHS. His research interests emerged from challenging the status of understanding of the physiological impact of diseases and how this could be managed for better patients’ outcomes.

More info about Dr Ahmed Iqbal: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/smph/people/clinical-medicine/ahmed-iqbal

Dr. Sowmya Viswanathan is a Scientist at Schroeder Arthritis Institute and the Krembil Research Institute (University Health Network) and an Associate Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and at the Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine (University of Toronto).

She built her industry experience developing regenerative medicine products at Johnson and Johnson before returning to academia to run a Cell Therapy Program at University Health Network as Associate Director. Her expertise as a translational scientist shifted to cell therapy trials, cell manufacturing and regulatory affairs before becoming a research group leader in 2015.

Dr Iryna Kuksa is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University. She describes herself as a cross-disciplinary researcher, having studied and worked, in departments as diverse as History of Arts, British Politics and Theatre, Performance & Cultural Studies. The common thread in her research interests is Digital Technologies.

Growing up in Belarus, Iryna was exposed in her family environment to lots of artists, which fostered her appreciation and interest in creativity. This environment showed her the value of inclusivity when it comes to working across different disciplines. Changes in her country’s political system created new opportunities to access scholarships via the British Council. This allowed her to get her first experience of research in the UK (Oxford and LSE) and later on to embark on a PhD at The University of Warwick.

Her earlier undergraduate experiences as an industrial designer have instilled in her the curiosity of asking questions from multiple perspectives. She has shifted her research questions on personalisation towards paying more attention to reducing consumption. As a designer interested in personalisation and digital technologies, how do you reconcile your interest in new objects and products with the need to reduce consumption towards a more sustainable world. She has developed the concept of “green personalisation”.

Iryna shares:

• How important it is to recognise opportunities when they present themselves.
• How research niche and interest evolve but we don’t always need to reinvent the wheel.
• How having “thoughts partners” can help you shift your research ideas and perspectives. Her interactions with external stakeholders have been important in getting her to embrace the sustainability agenda and to promote among designers a rise in awareness of their role in sustainability issues.
• How the nature of short-term contracts continues to be a challenge and may lead researchers to accept positions with lower salaries; in her case, this allowed her to move to an open-ended contract as a research fellow.
• How volunteering on things that matter to you is a process to build your leadership. Iryna became actively involved in building a community of ECR to promote a positive and supportive research culture in her institution.
• How she has learned to become more outspoken in meetings but also how aware she is of the importance of line managers in supporting progress as an early career academic.
• How progression is never straightforward. Having taken maternity leaves, she is fully aware that the pace of progression and research output may have slowed down for some time. She acknowledges that as a mum of 2 kids with a supportive partner who is also an academic, the balance of work and life is an ongoing juggling exercise.
• How supporting PhD students provides her with a great sense of giving back to the research community.