My first thought on this topic is that there is no right answer. Everyone who gives you advice is just retelling their own story, where advice is based on a sample size of n=1. You can’t take anyone’s advice wholeheartedly. They are not you, after all. Take what bits resonate with you, and ignore the rest. With that in mind, this is part of my own experience of the process. 

When I was a graduate student, I thought I might want to be a PI, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get there. It is hard to see how to get yourself from where you are at, in the middle of grad school, to running your own lab. It is hard to connect the dots between passing your qualification exams and getting tenure. How do you even plan that far ahead? How do you build that long trajectory? My answer: I (kind of) don’t.  

The idea of being a PI seemed too abstract and far beyond where I was during grad school. However,  I did know that I wanted to do a postdoc. I could see what postdocs were working on, how they got their postdoc positions, and what made some more successful or happier than others. I could chart that path. I knew I wanted to stay at the bench to do more hands-on science for the next five years. I could make those decisions.

As a junior postdoc, I once heard a very senior faculty member, a leader in her field, say that her common piece of advice when trainees asked her how they could get to her level was : “Don’t think that far ahead. You’ll just make yourself anxious. Think just five years into the future. Think about the next step and plan for that.” I took that advice to heart. Do the best that you can do at the stage you are at, and plan for the next stage, but don’t worry about 20 years down the line. You’ll get there if you focus on the immediate future.  

I have <mostly> followed that advice with the understanding that what is best in the short term is also often what is best in the long term. Picking the lab that is a good fit for your personality may also be the place you are most productive. Choosing the project that you are most excited about is often going to be what other people are most excited about as well.

With that in mind, how do you plan for the next five years, keeping the idea of a faculty position open?

For me, around the beginning of my postdoc, I decided I wanted a scientific question that I could explain very clearly. It had to have an obvious (though far from immediate, I’m staunchly a basic scientist) relevance to human health and disease as well as be easily understandable. Early on my postdoc, I came up with a question that seemed obviously it should have been studied, but I could find hardly any work on the topic. I asked everyone that I could grab in related fields if they knew anything about the topic and why it apparently had been ignored. Science has a momentum to it, which can sometimes cause a myopic focus on one question and a blindspot to another question. I went after the blindspot. It was important, but unexamined. This became my scientific brand. All of my work since, though on various topics, is related to that central question, around my scientific brand. You have to be able to link your work together. Find the blindspot, then work on it to make it your brand.

Then, after making some initial headway on the topic, I started going to meetings. I would talk about my research, refine my brand, point out the scientific blindspot to the community and say how we could now address it. Productivity is important, but it is also important to tell a good scientific story to get people excited about your work and make them understand the relevance of your topic. The easier that you can make that for them and for you, the more success you’ll have. Let them know what you’re doing and why it is interesting. Engage their curiosity. Make them want to know more. That will help them get excited about where you’re going to go with your work, which is key to getting an independent position.

But keep in mind, this advice is just based on an n of 1.

Next part: Applying for faculty jobs. Stay tuned!

Katherine (Katie) Thompson-Peer, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the department of Developmental & Cell Biology at UC Irvine. Her lab focuses on development of  nervous system and how it responds to injury. Katie received her PhD from Harvard Medical School in 2012 and conducted postdoctoral research training at UCSF. As a graduate student and postdoc, Katie has been a vocal advocate for women in science, by organizing individual events and seminar series, founding and chairing organizations, writing Op-Eds, serving on many committees, volunteering in community outreach groups, and more. You can learn more about her research from iBiology video presentation on “Neuronal Regeneration After Dendrite Injury”