Episodes
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Prof. Jenny Clark is a Materials Physics research leader in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at The University of Sheffield. Jenny has sailed the fellowship boat to build her research career while putting her family as one of her priorities. She is an example to showcase that whilst no one can ever “do it all”, researchers with parenting responsibilities can progress in science and protect their family time.
What are the boundaries between work and other parts of your life that you want to reassess and work on?What could be more in control/ feeling more balanced look like for you?What are you prepared to push away/ say no to/ accept not to be involved in to reclaim a sense of control?
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
Read the full blogpost:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/jenny-clark -
Dr Phil Elks is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Medicine and Population Health at The University of Sheffield. His research career has been dedicated to using Zebrafish as a model to study human diseases. Being part of a vibrant community using this animal model has shaped his career.
How spotting small funding opportunities is part of shifting towards research independenceWhat informal opportunities may you consider to construct your leadership developmentWhat could be your best recruitment strategy for building your team
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:Read the full blog post here:
tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/phil-elks -
Missing episodes?
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Dr Cariad Evans is a virology consultant for the NHS, as well as an infectious diseases specialist. After a period of working in Africa, Cariad returned to the UK to work as a consultant. A corridor conversation with a senior colleague kick-started her engagement in doing research via an MD. The recent pandemics have been fertile grounds to contribute to research, as well as impact national policy decisions.
Do you know your motivation and drive to stay involved in research post-PhD or MD once you return to full-time clinical practice or training?When looking at different formulas for keeping your research going- full clinical practice with research on the side, part-time clinical and part-time research or any other possible combinations, what feels most manageable, achievable or exciting?What is going to fuel your desire and interest to remain research-active: a brilliant collaborative team, the pressure to access research funding to answer challenging questions, a mentor who believes you are bringing a unique set of skills/ expertise and perspective, a topic that you feel passionate about addressing, and/or a drive to create systemic change?
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:Read the full blog:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/cariad-evans -
Deanne Bell is Associate Professor in Race, Education and Social Justice at the University of Birmingham. When I interviewed her, she was working at Nottingham Trent University as Associate Professor of Critical Psychology and Decolonial Studies. Her research has the potential to shift higher education towards an era where the colonial past is addressed, but first, it means “exposing and dismantling colonial systems of knowledge and exclusion.”
Working in banking and playing tennis for Jamaica were early steps in Deanne’s professional life that could probably not predict the research that she is doing now. Her re-entry into academic life came about through master’s courses. Her sporting life and psychology background articulated her initial academic interest in performance psychology.She experienced a watershed moment when she encountered Frantz Fanon's seminal text, Black Skin, White Masks. Discovering and analysing this text meant opening the hidden literature of black scholars and intellectuals. This experience seems significant in the direction she started to pursue for her research.
Deanne knows that being a black woman academic in a UK institution puts her in a limited pool of scholars. A recent report by the Women’s Higher Education Network indicates that in 2023, there were only 66 Black Women Professors in the UK out of 23,515 Professors (31% women). It can be hard to feel you belong when you remain one of the rare black woman academic scholar.
Believing that you can progress your academic career to the next level can feel challenging when, by researching racism and coloniality, the opportunities to access research funding remain limited. Accessing research funding is one of the thresholds on the promotion academic career ladder. The limited chance of accessing research funding and the position of her work within the REF structures could make her progression even more challenging. However, this is not stopping her from doing work that she cares deeply about, and that has immense importance in challenging institutions.
Deanne has been involved in several projects with Nottingham Trent University and the Wellcome trust to challenge the structures and framework that maintain a colonial past. This type of “gladiatorial” work is exhausting as it means battling on, and continuously having to justify the ongoing impact of our colonial past on institutional structures. The impact is not residual, it is at the core of how institutions function, educate, research, recruit and promote.
What do you see in your own institution that remains of a colonial past which continues to shape ways of working, policies, assessments etc. and is likely to impact researchers/ academics from minority backgrounds? If you have “white privilege”, how do you use your own voice to challenge practices and policies in your institution or even in your research group? Can you break out of the silence and not be a bystander when you see/hear racism or behaviours/ comments anchored in our colonial past?
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:Read the whole blog post:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/deanne-bell -
Professor Jo Richardson is Associate Dean of Research for Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University and Professor of Housing & Social Inclusion.
Her expertise on homelessness and methodological stance in co-production have created solid and value-based foundations for her leadership style.
Jo’s career was not planned from the start as an academic career. She started as a housing practitioner working in the public sector, such as a national professional body, a housing association and a local authority. Eventually, Jo entered academia via the professional services route with a role as manager for a research centre. The encouragement of an empowering line manager enabled her to get involved in some teaching and join a part-time PhD.Her role at the time required her to gain consultancy funding to renew her year-long contracts. This was a strong motivator and excellent training for her to enter an academic role, as she was already devising different projects, accessing funding, and implementing delivery. She collaborated with multiple external stakeholders, so she built a deep understanding of knowledge exchange, getting her to grasp the ethos of the impact agenda early on.
Her research niche developed from her early practitioner experiences and consultancy projects. Her passion and curiosity about the issue of homelessness had been fuelled early during a gap year as a student volunteering in New York for a homeless charity. This experience and later work as a practitioner anchored her interest in applied research, asking real-world questions that matter to society. Her grant capture strategy was one of “mixed economy”, relying on funding from many different sources. This allowed her to build a significant grant portfolio, and she became a Professor in 2014.
Her next professional step meant stepping into more significant leadership shoes. Again, as with her initial line manager support to do a PhD, she was supported at this stage by the encouragement of peers and her head of department. She now sees her role as a university leader as contributing to the success of others – making them feel at home in the academic space – through working closely with early career researchers and embracing actions that support the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion agenda.
Where is your curiosity driving you in your research journey right now?If you trusted your “open-hearted curiosity”, where would this take you professionally? What are the gaps in your professional skills and portfolio?
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:Read the full blog:
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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.
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?
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking: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.
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?
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
Some reflections to ponder on the transition to being a Principal InvestigatorEmbracing 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
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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 leaderFrom 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.
How the “too many good advice of others” may not be what we needHow 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
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking: -
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.
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 imaginedHow 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
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
Some reflections to ponder based on my discussion with DawnWe 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 whatDoing 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
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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.
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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. -
Dr Sara Vasconcelos is an Associate Professor based at the University of Toronto in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering with a research team in the Toronto General Hospital: University Health Network (UHN). Her research focuses on tissue engineering approaches to address cardiovascular problems. Imagine getting your first grant as a PI and not been able to take it because of visa issues for your partner. That’s the arduous path Sara found herself on, before moving to Canada.
Imagine getting your first grant as a PI and not been able to take it because of visa issues for your partner. This is what happened to Sara, who had gained her first grant as a PI while working in the US. Sara had the modesty and courage to go back to a Postdoc position, before applying for a second time to gain independent funding and be able to start a research group in Canada.Her early experience of the research process at the start of her PhD in Brazil taught her to be meticulous in the planning of experimental work. The level of funding for research is highly uneven across the world and the more limited access to research funding in these early years of her PhD shaped her discipline in being thoughtful during experimental design.
The scope of her learning expanded during her PhD as she was given the opportunity to work in part in the US; the more generous funding situation in the US allowed her to think differently about her research.
As a foreign scientist, learning to work and write in English were important stages in her professional development; she enjoyed learning about different cultures.
Her US PhD mentor in Alabama invited her to come back for an additional research visit before she transitioned to a Postdoc in Kentucky. The Postdoc period was a transition for her work from in vitro to in vivo research.
An ongoing source of support has been a buddy group she is part of, with other women. They meet once a month and support each other to navigate the wave of challenging situation in their academic progression. Protecting time and managing priorities remain one of the biggest challenges. Her buddy peer group is an important anchor when facing the tumultuous time of a building a research team.
Sara feels that the early years of building her team were easier when she still had a small team. Now, with an expanding team, finding a way to manage the many institutional and research demands whilst maintaining a high level of support for her team means revisiting her approach to leading her group.
As a busy research group leader who still wants to hear the details of each research project she supervises, but with new global responsibilities as a team leader on larger multi strand projects, Sara’s approach to supervision, delegation and research leadership is fast evolving.
Sara shares that for her, managing well researchers is about starting from a mindset of curiosity in the way she engages her team member, not assuming that what would work for her will work for others.
Questions are the pivots of good supervision and research management.
Questions take us away from making assumption.
Questions create a space for others to think.
Questions build ownership.
Questions allow clarity in communication.
As a more senior academic, Sara is now involved in institutional committee work. Making change happen in committee work can be incredibly challenging. Sara has learned that having partners/ champions on committees and steering groups help to promote the agenda of what you think need to change. Creating partnership with others to build more voices to influence change is part of what Sara is doing in furthering her leadership involvement.
What is your approach to adapting to setbacks when things your really wanted to
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking: -
Prof. Thushan de Silva is an Infectious Diseases Clinician Scientist at The University of Sheffield.
His research journey started during his medical training and continued thanks to several clinical fellowships that have allowed him protected time to build his research portfolio alongside continuing clinical work.
Thushan is currently working as a Senior Clinical Lecturer at The University of Sheffield. He was heavily involved in SARS-CoV-2 research through the COVID-19 pandemic and was recognised with an MBE in 2021 for services to COVID-19 research.
It took Thushan several attempts to obtain a funded Clinical PhD but this did not deter him from following a mentor to undertake a PhD at an MRC centre in the Gambia. This was the perfect hub for a clinician interested in infectious diseases to experience both field work and laboratory research.This extended period of research in the Gambia during an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship and a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Clinical Fellowship provided a fertile terrain to build his research portfolio, but also to understand the culture of undertaking research in a Global South context. This gave him the time to build a strong network of colleagues and collaborators committed to undertake work in the African context.
Researchers often worry about changing research topics at the end of their PhD or Postdoc. Thushan did change his research direction and accepts that it can be difficult to articulate a congruent and powerful narrative about a shift in research direction to the funders. His logic of choice came from feeling more inspired to continue his work on vaccine development instead of remaining in the area of pathogenesis of HIV-2 infection and the molecular epidemiology of HIV-1 and HIV-2 in West Africa.
Identifying the right balance for compartimentalising research and clinical practice is a crucial step for Clinical academics. It is likely that it will require substantial negotiations in the clinical setting and the academic department.
It may be worth encouraging new clinical academics and clinical PhD students to explore what is working and not working for them. They may not know until they have started. Getting them to become aware of what is going to be manageable in the long term is essential. If a pattern of clinical and academic work has been set but is not working, or is just not manageable, encouraging clinical PGR or clinical academics to not give themselves such a hard time, but go back to the drawing board and explore alternative options for work patterns.
Are the boundaries between your research and clinical responsibilities working for you?Are the boundaries between your research and clinical responsibilities working for you, or are you trying to be a superhuman? Could you negotiate an alternative pattern of work that would allow you to be more focused and effective in both area of research and clinical practice?How are your clinical and academic environments supporting and valuing your dual career?What additional research skills could you consider gaining early on in your clinical research life?
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking: -
Not everyone can say that their PhD recruitment interview took place from an exotic place; well Rebecca started her research career following a phone interview whilst she was travelling in Borneo. To me, this is an interesting career trait of not seeing limitations in a less than perfect situation, but a positive attitude in believing in positive outcomes.
Dr Rebecca Dumbell is a senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University. She is steadily building a research team having gained her academic position just when we entered the Covid pandemic. She has already acquired many valuable practices as a new PI, from practising routine reflection to co-producing agreements on communication approaches with her team.It took Rebecca 2 postdoctoral periods prior to jumping into the PI role as a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University. Her transition to gaining an academic position, from the time she started to apply for position seems to have been fairly quick. This likely stems from the many opportunities she took throughout her PhD and Postdoc positions.
She describes the building of her network as being of particular importance in her career transition. Her strategy in choosing opportunities on the basis of what she enjoys has clearly paid off in her speedy transition. She is all too aware that academics need to make wise choices in the opportunities they take. Her mantra of “what can I say no to, to say yes to” written on a Post-it note on her desk is a reminder that staying focused and strategic is needed to not fall into overwhelm.
How each small leadership experiences build on each other for a transition into an academic roleHow a simple practice of pausing and reflecting is a powerful habit Why building research group practices such as co-creating an approach to communication can help everyone in the team
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking: -
Dr Joby Cole is an Infectious Disease and Acute Medicine Consultant for the National Health Services and an honorary lecturer at the University of Sheffield. He has held several clinical fellowships to enable him to undertake research alongside his clinical work. His current interest to give all patients the opportunity to get involved in clinical research projects as participation improves outcomes. He is also interested in contributing to novel ways of detecting microbial resistance that would allow fast identification of resistance and a faster approach to prescribing to right antibiotics to patients.
Life in research for clinical academics is not a straightforward path. With an initial clinical fellowship and then a Welcome trust fellowship to undertake a PhD, the entry route into research for Joby could have been streamlined. It was not to be, as the Covid pandemic took control of our daily lives. As an infectious disease and acute medicine consultant, the Covid period meant going back full time to the NHS on the battlefield of a Covid ward and having to pause some of the interesting research work Joby had started during his PhD.
As a clinician interested in both basic science and the application of research to clinical practice, Joby sees his role as being an important voice in influencing the direction of research projects that have the potential to contribute to medicine. Bringing in the bedside perspective to his basic science research colleagues and respecting others’ perspectives and skill set are his starting points in his collaborative approaches.
His experience has taught him that there is great value in experiencing being involved in research early on in your career as a clinician, and that getting involved as early as you can in your career makes transitions easier. Being a clinical academic often means being on the look-out for collaborations and funding where the limited time you have for research can be rewarded in a manageable way.
How taking the time to engage in research conversations matters to explore the right fit for what you want to work on and for what type of research environment you choose to work in.How understanding the perspective and specific skill set you bring as a clinical academic allows you to initiate collaboration as a process of complementarity instead of seeing yourself or being perceived as a part-time researcher.How your contribution in research as a clinical academics has the potential to influence not only research directions, but also research practice on a much larger scale. -
Dr Ruth Payne has a dual professional identity as a Consultant Microbiologist for the National Health Services (UK) as well as a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Her interest in malaria vaccines may have been the starting point for her research career, but her expertise in vaccines became the corner stone of her ability to contribute to the Covid vaccine development efforts.
Ruth entered the world of research as a doctor following her appointment on a research fellowship position that became her PhD work at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford (2012 - 2016). Her interest in malaria and vaccine development is anchored in a childhood spent in East Africa and in seeing first-hand the impact of this disease. After her research fellowship/PhD, she went back full time to a clinical role in Nottingham before jumping into a Clinical Academic Lectureship position.
Ruth calls herself “an accidental academic” and admits that it was the inspiring and supportive approach of her academic manager/ PhD supervisor during her research fellowship position and PhD that led her to continue a career that embraced both clinical work and research.Building a research team is never easy but establishing yourself as a new PI when you work 50% time as a clinician and 50% time in research, and then on top of that a world pandemic is forcing you to stop your research…well that is quite a start when you are a new Principal Investigator.
This challenging period has brought her resilience and connections. During the Covid period, her experience in vaccine development enabled her to get involved in many new vaccine clinical trials projects, that she could never have predicted. It allowed her to jump into new projects and build very close working relationships with many new colleagues. It created opportunities to be involved at a national level in policies related to vaccine development (e.g., UK Clinical Vaccine Network, Covid19 task force of the British Society of Immunology).
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:· How embracing the silver lining of the Covid pandemic created more opportunities and exposure than ever
· How embedding yourself into larger projects creates the economy of scale needed when you get started as a new PI
· Why keeping lines of communication within your network increases your opportunities
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Prof. Jason King is a research scientist at the University of Sheffield who progressed his career via the fellowship route. He has spent the last 10 years working as a Principal Investigator and building a team with the ebb and flow of PhD students and Postdoc contracts.
Jason has travelled the country from Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow to Sheffield from his undergraduate degrees to his current role as a Cell Biology Professor. He has held 2 fellowships, following a long postdoctoral period at the The Beatson Institute for Cancer Research.Jason shares how building a research team can sometimes feel quite haphazard, and is shaped by the opportunities that arise. As a new PI eager to start a new research group, it can be difficult to not take opportunities to recruit team members quickly. However, finding your feet when you are transitioning from a Postdoc into a fellowship may takes slightly longer than you anticipate. There is a fine balance between the eagerness of recruiting team members, the availability of opportunities and having things set up for your group to be functional.
His advice to new PIs would be to take their time at the beginning of their fellowship and not recruit too many people at the same time. Research teams are always in flux with team members joining and leaving. One of Jason’s concerns is the challenge of retaining critical technical skills in the team. Thinking about the transmission of key skills within a team is an important consideration for retaining research expertise.
How to be not too precious with your research niche but flexible to see it evolve and even pivotHow constantly appraising your approach to individual team members is needed to best support themWhy promoting efficient working matters more than assuming hard working
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
More about Jasonhttps://jasonkinglab.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/home
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Dr Leili Rohani is a research scientist with a specialism in engineering heart tissues for cell therapy. Leili currently works at The University of British Columbia in Canada in the department of Cardiology and cardiovascular surgery.
Leili has had an itinerant research career across different countries and continents. She started her career as a graduate in Iran, then moved abroad for a PhD in Germany, followed some Postdoctoral positions in Canada as well visiting research periods in Austria and the US.
Leili is now at the threshold of wanting to establish her own research group and shifting towards research independence.
Her interest in stem cell therapy may see her move either way to industry or academia.
Do you have a regular assessment of your resources and support system (for work and home) to maintain your resilience?How are you broadening your own perspectives through experiencing different contexts (e.g., different countries, various professional settings, meeting other types of professionals than just your usual bubble)?What was your last “ah ah moment” that put a buzz in your research life?What magic could happen if you started thinking differently about how you are recruiting your team? Could using more evaluation of Emotional Intelligence in your recruitment strategy change for the better the dynamics and effectiveness of your team?
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking: - Show more
