What does your day-to-day look like in this job? “Well, I have four kids, so it depends on if they're going to school. My day-to-day looks fundamentally different if they're in a classroom or not. I’ve started to become very good at being able to do much of what I do away from the office. That comes from being fortunate enough to have some strong senior research associates and technicians that can look after the day-to-day and the lab. I've really changed the focus of my recruiting strategy to students who are interested in doing PhDs, because that's the length of time that it takes to do some of the sophisticated projects that we do. Fundamentally, I usually start the day at 5 A.M.. I'm doing some reading before any of the kids get up, because I find that's my most productive time. If I'm coming into the office, then most of my day is actually spent in meetings. I have admissions responsibilities, I'm on Senate, I'm the department’s grad chair, and there are many committees that end up chewing up a lot of my ‘nine to five’. I'm almost never in the lab and I don't personally run experiments anymore. I leave that to the people that know what they're doing, which are the students and the technicians. So for me, it’s a mix of administrative work, writing, reading, planning, data analysis with students, and then training them how to write and read and analyze.”
“To get funding, you have to be doing relevant research, but you also have to be doing innovative and, in some ways, risky research.” What are some barriers to your research? “There are two barriers. Number one is prioritizing a limited amount of time. There are a million amazing ideas, but which one do you want to tackle first? Which one's feasible to tackle? Do you have the expertise in the lab to carry it out? Do you have the money in the lab? It’s about balancing the needs versus the wants. Another major barrier is funding. We're fortunate that we’ve had pretty stable funding. But a lot of that comes from planning out like three, five years down the road – making sure that your students are publishing so you can demonstrate productivity so that you can continue to get funding and then staying like relevant. To get funding, you have to be doing relevant research, but you also have to be doing innovative and, in some ways, risky research.” 40
