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The Experts:

Charles Craik, Ph.D. Dr. Craik is a professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco.  He is the Director of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Graduate Program and the co-Leader of Chemistry and Cancer Program at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.  For more information, see the Craik Lab website.

 

Michael Marletta, Ph.D. Dr. Marletta is the Aldo DeBenedictis Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He serves on the Board of Editors of ACS Chemical Biology and on the editorial board of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Marletta is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.  For more information, see the Marletta Lab website.

 

Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D. Dr. Marnett is the Stahlman Professor of Cancer Research and Professor of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is Director of the Vanderbilt University Institute of Chemical Biology and founding and current editor of the American Chemical Society journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.  For more information, see the Marnett Lab website.

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Is previous research experience a requirement for success in graduate school?

No, but depending on the project and the discipline, it can make a very big difference. I encourage it since I see more and more, the students who have research experience get more out of their graduate careers.

I think it really helps to have had experience in a laboratory before going to graduate school – the more the better. That being said, somebody who’s a really talented student who hasn’t had that opportunity to do undergraduate research can make it up but it’ll take a while to learn how to move forward in a group. It may even affect how a student chooses a lab – someone who has had some research experience might have a better idea about what smells like a good project and what smells like a dead fish when they’re talking to PI about a rotation.

It is essential and an absolute requirement to join my lab.

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What’s the fastest you’ve seen someone develop the skills necessary to graduate?

About 4 years. This student was extremely bright, driven (worked long hours) and came to the lab with a lot of lab experience.

The shortest I had someone get a PhD with me was three years. That student was probably ready to graduate the day came he the door but they had to do a project. I think the average in the country right now is about five a half years from walking in the door to walking out the door with a PhD. That sounds longer than it is because the first couple of years at most graduate schools are really heavily laden with coursework, prelim exams, and other things that really distract from being in the lab. For the most part, once you really get started on research it takes probably somewhere between three and four years of solid research to get it done. I should say that some of this has to do with the luck of the draw on the project. Sometimes really good projects just don’t work as well as expected. So I’ve had really good students who’ve hung around for an extra year or so because the project didn’t work as well. But in the end they were just as mature when they left so when they went out and did good postdoc they were prepared for an independent career and have done extremely well.

Four years from start to finish. They already had skills coming in and were incandescently bright but it was not until their third year that everything started coming together. They also worked in the evening and on weekends.

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How can a student maximize their meeting times with you?

The most effective interactions are ones that are pretty well-prepared for by the student. I think the student should come in with some sort of an agenda about what they want to get out of that meeting. Do they need my opinion on the direction to go in; do they need my permission to buy a piece of equipment so they can do an experiment; do they need me to agree to a collaboration that might be important for the next part of the project? They should come in with a clear idea of what they want to accomplish in that time with data that get me excited about the project. Or they should let me know where they are having trouble so we can see what we need to do to move forward.

I meet with my sub-groups once a week plus I have open door policy for any time I am in the office so it’s not an issue for me.

Come prepared with their data and questions. Informal chats are fine but if they want to get more out of me, they should spend time thinking about what the “choke points” are for their project so that I can focus my attention on them.

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How much initiative do you want a student to take?

In the end, they should be driving the questions, experiments, etc.. Students will get to this point at different times in their career.  Some very fast, some slower.

Taking initiative is a key metric of success in my opinion. By the time the student graduates, they should be able to ask and answer questions effectively.

I think in the early years when students are really learning about the background of the project, the dynamics of the lab and how you get things done, etc., it’s really important to interact fairly closely with the PI. But an important part of graduate school is developing the independence and the awareness of oneself to be able to leave as an independent scientist. So there’s a progression. By the end of graduate school, the PhD student really needs to be in control of their project. Now, I personally think are a lot of ways to run a laboratory. There’s something like 30,000 principal investigators that are supported by the National Institutes of Health and they’re probably 30,000 ways to run a group. But personally I like students who are thinking about where they can go in new areas but I also like them to be critical about their ideas. That being said, I think enthusiasm and excitement is something you want to build in the laboratory so I don’t punish people for trying to take initiative. But if they continually take initiative in a way that wastes money and doesn’t generate good experimental results, then they have to be reigned in some.

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In an earlier poll on BenchFly, one of the most popular requests people had of their PIs was a good letter of reference.  How can students/postdocs avoid a poor recommendation letter from you?

Be willing to deal with adversity and keep trying to solve the problem. If they give up and become lackadaisical, then it will be harder for me to say good things about them.

Seems obvious – work hard, solve problems, work well with others, etc.

I think most PIs try to be as positive as possible if they’ve had four years to deal with somebody. During that period of time, if they’ve seen things that they don’t like, they should try to fix it. So one hopes that a student about to graduate doesn’t get a bunch of things indicated in a letter as being wrong with them that the PI had a chance to do something about. That being said, there can be difficult personalities. People who are not good group citizens, who are selfish or arrogant. I’m honest in the letters especially if I feel like the position fits the person. I try not to push somebody for a position that I think they would just have a hard time dealing with.

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How are your expectations different for a postdoc as compared to a graduate student?

Not much different.  Postdocs should arrive with a high level of independence. After that, it’s all the same.

With a graduate student one has a younger individual with much less experience who may or may not have performed previous research so the responsibility is to train the student to become a scientist. With a postdoc, that individual is already trained and is supposed to be an independent scientist when they join your lab. So the purpose of the postdoc is to get more training in a perhaps complementary or different area and also develop the ability to think about a completely new problem in a short period of time and formulate an approach to solving the problem. So my expectations of a postdoc are completely different. I don’t spend nearly as much time with postdocs as I do with graduate students. That doesn’t mean I don’t interact with them but we talk about a project at the beginning of their time in the group and I’ll point them in the direction and then it’s their responsibility to go figure out what needs to be done, plan experiments, and interpret them. So there’s a lot less hand-holding with the postdocs than the graduate students.

Post-docs are supposed to already know how be be scientists so I go to a higher level with them. They should be able to exploit their environment and build their own structured learning more so than a graduate student.

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Increasingly, graduate students and postdocs are looking for employment beyond the classic ‘academic or industry’ career options.  How would you advise someone looking for so-called ‘alternative’ careers?

Today’s students have a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of different interests and therefore they should have more options. A lot of graduate schools have programs now that help with that. At my institution we have strong postdoctoral mentoring program that has career counseling with formal presentations by people in various professions. There are a variety of other things that PhD’s can do – it’s just that their mentors may not be the sole resource they should seek out regarding how to get into those positions. Most institutions do have these types of resources and I think that postdocs and students need to be aggressive about seeking them out.

I think it’s a big mistake to make only clones of yourself.  I am open to discussing all aspects of student’s career aspirations.  Once I see where that is, I hook them up with let’s say patent lawyer, a science writer, etc.

First, I do not consider it as an alternative career for someone to go into government, law, publishing, venture capital, non profit, etc. These are all important areas in their own right and biotech, pharma and academia are not a higher level in my opinion. As long as you are excellent at what you do and you take advantage of what you learned in graduate school, these are valuable contributions.

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The easiest way to answer that question is, well- to ask!  So we turned to the experts- three well-established primary investigators who have each trained dozens of graduate students and postdocs.  Given the number of great (and not-so-great) students they’ve seen throughout their careers, in Part 1 of our interview we asked the professors to reflect upon the characteristics that make a truly great graduate student.

The Experts:

Charles Craik, Ph.D. Dr. Craik is a professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco.  He is the Director of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Graduate Program and the co-Leader of Chemistry and Cancer Program at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.  For more information, see the Craik Lab website.

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Michael Marletta, Ph.D. Dr. Marletta is the Aldo DeBenedictis Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He serves on the Board of Editors of ACS Chemical Biology and on the editorial board of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Marletta is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.  For more information, see the Marletta Lab website.

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Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D. Dr. Marnett is the Stahlman Professor of Cancer Research and Professor of Biochemistry at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He is Director of the Vanderbilt University Institute of Chemical Biology and founding and current editor of the American Chemical Society journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.  For more information, see the Marnett Lab website.

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What are shared qualities of great students you’ve had in the past?

They realize that they are no longer just a student but a professional researcher who has taken responsibility for their own career. That independence does not mean that they do not listen to my suggestions but they are not waiting for me to tell them what to do at every stage of their experiments. I can provide guidance and enjoy doing so but it helps if it is more interactive and shared. Of course, initially when the student is just beginning in the lab, the balance is more on the PI making direct suggestions but as the student matures, the student should become as much of an expert as the PI, rising to the level of a peer. That is when they are ready to graduate.

Another key trait is curiosity coupled with a passion for answering questions correctly.  Finally, great students show a sense of urgency. Things move fast in science and it is important to move quickly on ideas. That sense of urgency is critical. Students have to be willing to work very hard and put in long hours, particularly when things are working on the project.

It helps to be smart but much more essential is to be inquisitive. Inherently interested in how things work and being excited to figure out answers. Science is hard so drive, determination and confidence are very important features of a successful student.

I’ve had some really good graduate students with very different backgrounds – some who had experience in chemistry and others that had interest primarily in biology. I would say that there are several features that they shared with regard to their ability to really be productive on a research project and to mature as young scientist. Obviously, they have to be smart but in graduate school we’re dealing with a lot of smart people so it’s a matter of how you differentiate yourself from another smart person. I think that the major feature that I saw was that they really became invested in their project within a year – they knew the literature on their project better than I did and could plan the experiments that they wanted to conduct. They went ahead and did experiments and didn’t wait for me to tell them what to do. The really good ones would frequently surprise me at group meetings when I would suggest an experiment and they would say, “yeah, I did that already and here’s the result.” Our interactions then were more along the lines of colleagues. I would help them set priorities perhaps for a fork in the road or maybe when there was another major direction that we wanted to go in and they needed some advice on whether we should do that – and how we should do that. But basically they were working really as if it was their project and it truly was their project so that by the time they graduated they were the world’s expert in that area. Great students also need to incorporate creativity somewhere in their work because that really is a differentiator.

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What weaknesses have you seen even in great graduate students?

Motivation (lack thereof). Science is more of a hobby than an essential interest. The inability to write is sometimes an issue with a ‘great student’ (meaning great at the bench). I tell people when they join the lab that there are only 3 things they have to do: 1. Do the work, 2. Write about the work, and 3. Speak about the work. They are all three important. Some can do all three great. Some can’t.

At the beginning of the project, not listening and paying enough attention to the experts. It is fine to be bold and creative but there is usually a very strong foundation to build off of and not taking advantage of that can be a waste of time. Yes, sometime the experts are wrong but often they have something to offer. The other side of the coin is falling in love with their own model. Models are necessary but do not let them hide the truth when the data does not seem to fit.

I think a big weakness in good graduate students is that some were very poor writers. That’s a significant weakness for a number of reasons. It’s important to design and execute really good experiments but it’s also important to communicate what you did in a very direct, clear fashion either at a seminar, where you’re discussing and presenting actual results, or in or in a research report or publication. Some of the students I’ve had just struggled with that aspect of science. The very best students combined creativity and investment in the project with the ability to deliver on a project. They were not only technically really skilled but they had the ability to describe in a clear, concise fashion what they did. Not only is it important to help communicate what they did but – let’s face it – most principal investigators are very busy and they’ve got a lot of things to do. They’re trying to prioritize what task they’re going to go with next and if somebody gives them a manuscript that is really well-written and pretty much reflects what they’ve agreed this project has been about, it’s going to get through the process of editing and submission much faster than something that’s very poorly written. I’ve had situations where the amount of work that I had to do to edit manuscripts has been so great that it serves as an impediment to me going in and actually doing it. The other thing is that if I spend the amount of time it takes to rescue a really poorly written manuscript, it means that I’m not able to turn my attention to other people’s manuscripts in the laboratory. So I try to provide very detailed comments on early drafts of manuscripts but one wants to see some growth in young investigators. By the time we’ve been through this process a few times, hopefully students a lot better at it because of the input that they’ve gotten from me along the way.

Another major weakness is the lack of creativity. Creativity is something that is really hard to learn and the lack of it makes it tough for students to tackle hard problems or to work their way around roadblocks.

I’ve occasionally seen, not often, but I have occasionally seen fear of failure in people who are very smart, talented and articulate and are capable of doing experiments. But for some reason they are afraid of not getting a good result or of wasting their time. That holds them back from just jumping in and doing a bunch of experiments, getting some data, and then deciding where to go next.

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Is it possible to learn these qualities or are some inherently better prepared/more equipped to be successful?

I think any graduate student coming in the door has the ability to become a very good scientist if they apply themselves. They can learn how to do experiments (there are a variety of resources either in the lab or outside the lab where they can get the instruction they need); they can develop a philosophy about what an experiment should look like (it should be a complete unit with all the appropriate controls); and they can learn how to write. I can help the student do all of those things. But I’m not sure that anybody can come in and be a truly great graduate student. It’s not necessarily that that students are born great, but the combination of creativity and hard work gives students a real edge. Also, throughout their career some students have just assimilated a lot of really important knowledge and they know how to focus on what are important questions to ask. This is another really important property of a great graduate student – they just seem to have an enthusiasm for it. Great students really want to get in and do it and they like to produce, they like to discover new things. Not all students have that.

Motivation can’t be taught. It can be nurtured and brought out but I find in the end you can’t tell someone what to be interested in. Writing and speaking about science can definitely be taught and I have done this many, many times.

Yes, if there is real passion for the work and an intense curiosity then a lot of the rest can be learned. If someone is not curious then they will probably be more of a follower than a leader.

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What qualities do you look for when selecting a graduate student to join your lab?

Same as I mentioned above to be successful: motivation, smarts, interest in science and interest in our work. For example, if you show up having read papers from the lab and ask good questions about them, my interest goes up.

All of the above that have been mentioned: curiosity, independence, willingness to work hard, and an ability to cultivate creativity. In addition, I want to be able to get along with them. If I cannot imagine myself sitting next to them on a long plane ride (more than four hours) and enjoying myself, I probably do not want them in my lab.

The qualities I’m looking either in a potential graduate student or a potential postdoc are the ones I think are important in being a really good scientist. As I said earlier, independence, creativity and initiative are things I’m looking for. And students in my group or postdocs in my group will have anywhere from 2 to 4 years interacting with me to demonstrate to me that they have those qualities or other qualities that I think are important. Obviously, direct interactions with me are important, but so are interactions with their committee members, in seminars that they give, at international meetings, and with the other people in the group. It’s important to see they are not careless or thoughtless about the people they work with and that they value their colleagues and try to be respectful of their space in their experiments while trying to get as much done as possible.

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Armed with our Graduate School Survival Guide, you’re on your way to becoming a superstar! Check out Part 2 of our interview, How to Become a Great Graduate Student, to learn some specific steps you can take towards becoming a truly great student!

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