GATEWAY STUDY OF
LEADERSHIP
TURNING
POINTS
SCHOOL OF
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Developing Skills
Developing Skills
Turning Points Series Discover nuggets of unconventional wisdom through the excerpts of student interviews with Rice University faculty. Copyright 2013 Rice University. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University. Requests for permission should be directed to ipek@rice.edu.
Other books in the 2012-2013 series II Natural Sciences: Choosing Academia Cultivating Mentors Discovering Opportunities Embracing Leadership
Books in the 2011-2012 series I Social Sciences: Choosing Academia Finding Inspiration Fostering Curiosity Sparking Enthusiasm Overcoming Obstacles
Rice University School of Social Sciences
Gateway Study of Leadership TURNING POINTS
{series II | 2012 - 2013} Natural Sciences
Developing Skills
Gateway School of Social Sciences Rice University 6100 Main Street Houston, Texas 77005-1827 U.S.A.
Turning Points Series PRODUCERS
Ipek Martinez, Alex Wyatt, Vinita Israni REVIEWERS AND EDITORS
Bo Kim, Leslie Nguyen, Nathan Joo, Hira Baig, Nitin Agrawal CONTRIBUTORS
The Turning Points, Series II is made possible from excerpts of faculty interviews conducted by 2012-2013 Gateway Study of Leadership (GSL) fellows, GSL codirectors and other Gateway students. 2012-2013 GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP FELLOWS Daniel Cohen (co-director), Amol Utrankar (co-director), Nitin Agrawal, Hira Baig, Cynthia Bau, Sang Hee (Steven) Cho, Colleen Fugate, Rujia Jiang, Nathan Joo, Bo Kim, Haley McCann, Yoonjin Min, Trent Navran, Leslie Nguyen, Arik Patino, Rohan Shah, Andrew Ta, Sallyann Zhou.
A NOTE FROM THE GATEWAY DIRECTOR
The 2012-2013 Turning Points series shares excerpts from student interviews with the School of Natural Sciences faculty to bring a slice of life experiences to view for the Rice University community and beyond. In the fall of 2011, the School of Social Sciences Gateway program initiated Gateway Study of Leadership (GSL), which brought undergraduate fellows together to organize and lead interviews with the Rice School of Social Sciences faculty to discover career journeys and inspiration behind research endeavors, plus additional focus on their thoughts regarding role of academia in society. These candid conversations revealed many thought provoking life experiences and interesting stories and some had an essence of a “turning point� regarding the decisions involved in attending college, selecting majors, pursuing advanced degrees, encountering mentors, finding inspiration for research topics, and developing a refreshing new approach to handle
criticism in order to build knowledge and propel ahead. A collection of those excerpts formed the Series I of the Turning Points booklets. In 2012-2013 academic year, the GSL fellows organized and conducted interviews with the Rice School of Natural Sciences faculty exploring their initial interest in science, career decisions and additional focus on leadership in academia. The participating faculty members shared experiences and thoughts on role of collaborative nature of research in sciences, working with mentors, developing a variety of skills along the way, discovering of opportunities and ultimately embracing leadership roles when necessary. We gathered few excerpts from these conversations to share as the GSL Turning Points Series II, in five booklets titled: Choosing Academia, Cultivating Mentors, Developing Skills, Discovering Opportunities, Embracing Leadership. Ipek Martinez
CONTENTS
1.
Kathleen Matthews, Ph.D. An Infinite World of Skills
1
2. Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. 3 Imposter Syndrome 3.
Cindy Farach-Carson, Ph.D. Life is Long
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4.
Brendan Hassett, Ph.D. Thrive Through Education
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5.
Ken Whitmire, Ph.D. Boundaries & Creativity
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6.
Janet Braam, Ph.D. Surviving Hardship
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7.
David Alexander, Ph.D. Dealing With Criticism
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8.
K. Beth Beason-Abmayr, Ph.D The Essential Balance
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9. 10.
Thomas Killian, Ph.D. Overcoming Obstacles
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Anatoly Kolomeisky, Ph.D. 21 Build a Foundation
11.
Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. Grounded from Failure
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12. David Alexander, Ph.D. 25 Communicate Well 13.
Janet Braam, Ph.D. Understanding the Whole
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14.
Haldre Rogers, Ph.D. Imposter Syndrome
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15.
Matthew Baring, Ph.D. Solving vs. Defining Problems
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16.
Huey Huang, Ph.D. Inspire Creativity
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17.
Anatoly Kolomeisky, Ph.D. TV With 1000 Channels
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18.
Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. Curiosity & Competition
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19.
Haldre Rogers, Ph.D Managerial Skills
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20.
David Alexander, Ph.D. Passion for Science
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21.
Brendan Hassett, Ph.D.. Listen Well - Listen Carefully
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22.
Janet Braam, Ph.D. Plan for the Future
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23.
Anatoly Kolomeisky, Ph.D. Artful Process
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About the Contributors Acknowledgements
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TURNING POINTS ONE
An Infinite World of Skills Kathleen Matthews, Ph.D. Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
I think it is the responsibility of academia to keep pushing the frontiers of knowledge and understanding — to remind us that there are always new horizons, that there are new things to discover, and that the landscape is infinite. There are universes and worlds out there that we don’t know about and certainly don’t understand — and we have no idea who (if anyone) is there. And there are universes and worlds inside us that are in every little molecule. We’re just beginning to understand that we as individual humans are a community of organisms — that the bacteria that live on the little finger are different than the bacteria on the forefinger and different yet than the ones in the gut and different from those in the mouth or ears. And we have not appreciated that those bacteria that inhabit our skin 1
are actually forming a protective layer that’s very important or that those in the gut are important in our immune function. We’re learning that the microbiome that exists in this office is probably different than the office next door. And because of the ways that air circulates in patterns and carries microorganisms with it suggests that the fact that we recirculate air in hospitals is probably not healthy. There’s just a whole world out there where we think we know, where we have a certain audacity as humans and think, “Oh, we know it.” And we don’t. I think that it may not be infinite, but it’s going to be pretty close to infinite. The more we learn, the better decisions we can make about what we do. I think that learning deeply about how things work is science. Engineering has to do with how we make things better, social sciences is how we function together as people to make our systems work, and humanities has to do with why what we think and do matters in deeply fundamental ways, music is sort of transcendent, and architecture is in its own way a blend of transcendence and engineering. And business has 2
to do with how we share materials and what we substitute for exchanging materials (money), and what’s worth what and how we think about these processes. I see the university and find that all these disciplines represented here are ways of advancing our understanding and ensuring that the knowledge that we have is passed on and expanded. That’s what the academy is about.
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TURNING POINTS TWO
Imposter Syndrome Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
I have generally been successful at academia. I did well as an undergraduate. I then got into grad school and did well there. After that I became a postdoc and did all the right things. And now I am a professor. Yet, I still have strong feelings of doubt. I often ask myself things like “do I really belong here?” or “am I doing well enough?” or “am I smart enough?” This is something called the “imposter syndrome” – when people feel like they’re a fraud, that they are somehow pulling a fast one over on everyone that’s around them, that they’re somehow faking their way through life. I have these feelings more than I care to admit, and I know a lot of successful people do also. But I try not to let it control me. I try to use these feelings as motivation to work harder.
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I think I most often have feelings of being a fraud when I get stuck on a problem and then a colleague walks in and solves it in seconds. What I try to remind myself is that it is easy to get stuck looking at a problem in a certain way. By attacking the problem from a different direction the solution becomes obvious to my colleague. It’s not that I was lacking the brain power to solve the problem myself, it’s more that I got too close to the problem and could no longer step back to see the big picture.
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TURNING POINTS THREE
Life is Long Cindy Farach-Carson, Ph.D. Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
People always say life is short, but I’ll tell you life is long. When you go to work every day, you have to go to work a lot of days, a whole lot of days. It feels so long. You got to go to work on days when you don’t feel great, you got to go to work on days when you’d rather do something else. So you better like what you do. If you don’t like what you do, look for other things to do. Definitely choose something you like, but also try to teach yourself to take criticism well and to improve yourself. Don’t get defensive. Abandon all defensiveness. Because it’s your worst enemy. People will tell you, even now, I did a science café last night out in the community with my son. It was terrifically fun. Afterwards, I tried to ask some folks “how can we do it better?” Don’t tell me I did perfect. I didn’t do perfect. Tell me how we can 7
do it better, how can we connect better, because it’s important that we do. Every time you send a grant in or every time you send in a manuscript or every time you do any of those things, you’re going to get criticism. Don’t get mad, just let it go and learn from it. It helps a lot. So I would tell students, because students get defensive. You’re in a stage in your life when you’re trying to do this, but you don’t like to get criticized, you don’t like it. It’s not a human quality to like to be criticized. So I would say kind of work through that and realize that most of the time, criticism is offered as an opportunity to help you grow and get better.
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TURNING POINTS FOUR
Thrive Through Education Brendan Hassett. Ph.D. Professor, Mathematics, Rice University
I don’t think my parents really had a clear-cut direction in mind for me. The one thing that was clear is that I would be in an area that would build on having high-level education. My father is a surgeon and my mother has degrees in education. So I think professional football player wasn’t one of the things that was on their radar. But I think they wouldn’t have been surprised if had been a doctor or a lawyer or an academic. Teaching is something that both my parents did. My father has led a training program, a surgical training program. My mother taught in middle school for a long time. This process of teaching people at various levels has been a big part of what my parents did as they were working and somehow that was in the back of my mind, but I was never pressured to become a teacher.
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The expectation was that education would be what I would rely on to support myself going forward. They didn’t say you should build a business or something. Education was really was the path to success and financial security from the point of view of my family.
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TURNING POINTS FIVE
Boundaries & Creativity Ken Whitmire, Ph.D. Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
It’s not quite so clear for someone coming in as a beginning student at a university where to start when it came to chemistry. You’ve got to develop a sense of, how much information do I need to give in order to get you to a place where you’re safe in the laboratory and that you also know enough to ask the right questions? A good example of that are high school science fairs, and I don’t like high school science fairs. A lot of time, what happens is that someone has found what is called a “canned” experiment that they reproduce, and that’s not really what research is about. I think part of the issue with education is not just having it open ended, but to put constraints on people that they have to solve a problem. So as an artist, for example, if someone is teaching an art class, they give you an assignment and they say, “This is what you have to do.” But 11
they don’t just say, “Go out and create art.” They say, “What I want you to do is you’re going to make a picture that is this size, and what you’re going to use are pencils only, and you’re going to incorporate the following things into the picture.” It’s part of the training, not part of the creative process. I think you become most creative when you are trying to address a particular problem or make a particular statement. Having some boundaries is good in the initial training period. Once you get some training and you are quote, “the artist,” then you have more freedom in how you choose the things you do.
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TURNING POINTS SIX
Surviving Hardship Janet Braam, Ph.D. Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
My thesis project was technically very challenging. I was trying to answer a fundamental question about how influenza virus works using an approach that had never been tried before. Because of technical difficulties I had to do virtually the same experiment over and over again for about a year, trying to get it to work. During this time, I had to keep making a decision. Do I keep trying or do I give up? Am I being stubborn or am I being persistent? In the end, the experiment was very successful, so one could conclude that I was being persistent. Science can be very difficult. At one point as a graduate student, I recognized that my experimental results could be due to an artifact. That is, the results I was getting could be due to a technical issue and, if 13
so, I was being misled. I went into panic mode and went immediately to the lab to do an experiment that would reveal whether I was being misled. I proved to myself that my experiment was not working the way I thought it had been, which meant that a large portion of my data was wrong. This finding was heartbreaking. But luckily I figured it out before we published it. But those were very dark days. You find yourself wondering whether you can really get yourself out of this hole, are you really going to be able to move foreword? To be successful, you have to be resilient. Everyone has hard times. You have to just keep going. There’s also a lot of criticism in science. Scientists are really good at arguing. So you have to be able to take criticism and try very hard to not take it personally. It’s also true with trying to get research grant funding. Everyone gets rejected much more than they get funded. My thesis advisor used to say that you really have to appreciate when things go well and get a lot of joy from it, because that is what can keep you going even through the next wave of hardship. 14
TURNING POINTS SEVEN
Dealing With Criticism David Alexander, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
I’ve always been very comfortable dealing with criticism. As long as people aren’t criticizing me for petty reasons, I love arguing with them. Scientists are often wrong, but if we aren’t even willing to be wrong, then we can never be right. Criticisms are crucial, as long as they are backed up with rationales. They develop ideas; we cannot take them personally. Scientists often give talks in front of an audience, and sometimes we get criticized publically. We must defend ourselves in a professional manner. If we deal with them positively, we can learn a lot from them. However, sometimes it’s difficult to deal with non-scientists, and we may come across as arrogant, which some scientists are. However, I do believe that most scientists are open to active, intellectual discussions. Perhaps no one is wrong; we just all 15
have different ideas.
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TURNING POINTS EIGHT
The Essential Balance K. Beth Beason-Abmayr, Ph.D. Lecturer, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
I think that my day is unique because even though my title is a lecturer, I do not lecture for any standard classes. All of my courses are lab courses. I teach seven lab courses a semester, four or five days a week, so my afternoons are very busy. My afternoons in the lab start around one or two and they go until the students are done which is typically around five to six pm, but sometimes seven pm in the advanced labs. The mornings I spend setting up lab, grading, answering emails, meeting with students, revising course web sites, writing recommendation letters--all those things that I can’t do in the afternoons since I’m in the lab with the students for the entire time. When I first came here, I was teaching just two different labs a semester, two to three days a week, and I didn’t have near as many other responsibilities. 17
I’m much busier now and I have a lot more students each semester so I have to squeeze more work into my day. My day usually doesn’t end when the students leave—I spend most evenings and many weekends grading and planning. Sometimes it’s really a challenge. While I’m teaching labs, I’m frequently here until 8-9 pm during the week and I often have to come in on weekends for ½ days or longer. My schedule is more flexible towards the end of each semester and during the summer. I just have to make sure that I take time for me and for my family.
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TURNING POINTS NINE
Overcoming Obstacles Thomas Killian, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
When there are low moments, if you’re always trying to answer some important questions, you have a goal ahead of you that keeps you going. “I want to do this. I want to get these atoms than anyone’s ever made them before.” Or “I’m looking for this phase transition to a new state of matter.” So you’ve always got goals you’re going for. And the good thing is that when you reach those goals, and you have to make new ones, well you’ve just had a good success to inspire you to reach for something new. . So in the low points, when things aren’t working so well, you still have those goals ahead of you, the things you haven’t done yet. And that keeps you going.
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TURNING POINTS TEN
Build a Foundation Anatoly Kolomeisky, Ph.D. Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
Undergrads at Rice are very bright and they think that they know so much already so that they can already go to research. However, in my opinion, they still do not know much and they miss the golden opportunity to learn new things. So my advice: learn new things. Your brain works now like a sponge. Learn as much as you can from everyone. You will have time to do research and to have impact. Don’t try to jump ahead. This is like building a house. Build the foundation, build the first floor and only then you can start building the house. Don’t jump ahead as many people do. I understand that they are young and excited and they want to do research, but unfortunately if you want to do really good science and be a really good scientist (or to be good member of society), you have to learn so much and you have to work so hard. It’s really hard to imagine, but it’s 21
a very hard work - learning. Maybe, I’m a little bit conservative on this subject. I’m saying no, don’t. Do as much classes as you can and then after four years you will be fine. You will have a bright future.
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TURNING POINTS ELEVEN
Grounded from Failure Matthew Bennett. Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
I don’t think the struggles with self-confidence and bumpy roads ever go away in life, but I don’t know if I would want them to either. This is because they keep me grounded and help me to work hard. If I felt that I was always the best at my job, what motivation would I ever have to improve myself or take chances? Not fun. I think we each have our own path in life. I don’t regret the years I spent fumbling about trying to find myself – the time spent dropping out of school and then working in factories. I actually am glad I did it because I don’t think I would be who I am right now without those experiences. There are some people that didn’t have those bumpy roads and just went straight through and became professors at a much 23
earlier age than I did. I don’t think it really matters, though. By the time you get to this point, it’s all so far in the past that no one really cares anymore. What most scientists care about is what are you doing now, what are you thinking now – how you got there is irrelevant.
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TURNING POINTS TWELVE
Communicate Well David Alexander, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
The most important skill to develop is being able to communicate well. Students should not focus too much on creating an activity portfolio as if applying for college, nor should they be too focused and close-minded either. If we communicate well in our fields and pursue dreams based on passions and not money, we can be great leaders. Society is changing, so we must be flexible as well. Most people competing for a given position are similarly intelligent, so communication skills usually help people stand out as leaders.
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TURNING POINTS THIRTEEN
Understanding the Whole Janet Braam, Ph.D. Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
When I was in high school, I had a really wonderful instructor/teacher who taught a psychology class, and I became fascinated with psychology. As is often the case, a great teacher with enthusiasm and knowledge can introduce a student into a subject area and enable her to fall in love with it. I loved psychology, the mystery of why people behave the way they do. So I went to college thinking I would be a psychology major. But then as I started taking psychology classes, I felt that I couldn’t really understand human behavior because it’s just too complicated. Maybe first, I needed to understand what drives animal behavior. So then I decided I would study animal behavior, which was also extremely fascinating. But then I realized that I couldn’t really explain animal behavior unless I 27
understood physiology and cell biology. And the process of reductionism continued until I reached genes. Finally, I decided to study genetics and molecular biology. I’m clearly a reductionist somebody who is most comfortable breaking things apart into little pieces to try to understand the whole.
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TURNING POINTS FOURTEEN
Imposter Syndrome Haldre Rogers, Ph.D. Faculty Fellow, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Rice University
One thing I’ve seen with grad students, including myself, is this idea of the “imposter syndrome”. You feel like you really don’t belong, that you’re not smart enough, that it was a mistake you were admitted, and that someone is going to “figure it out”. It’s a real syndrome, but the actuality of it is that you are supposed to be there and it takes a lot of confidence. You have to remind yourself that you can do it and you are smart enough. There are a lot of stages in academia. Finishing your PhD is a big challenge. Then going into your post-doc and into faculty positions, there are all sorts of places where you can question yourself. The more you can believe in yourself the easier will be.
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TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN
Solving vs. Defining Problems Matthew Baring, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
There’s one particular professor that I had as an undergraduate, a physics professor who was a mentor. There were teachers before that in high school. They were mentors. They illustrated by the things that they could do, but they also mentored in a way by letting me do the things that I could do. That, particularly at the high school level, is very important. It was like, “Hey, there are a lot of canned problems out there”, and then you can go beyond the canned problems, and that’s why I think I resonated with research. In research you define the problem. I mean, it is no longer something that’s defined for you, and that has a closed format and a set answer. You create, and that was something I resonated with. And I liked it.
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TURNING POINTS SIXTEEN
Inspire Creativity Huey Huang, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
I don’t think you can foster curiosity in a person – my assumption is that the person comes with curiosity – if the person has no curiosity, can you change? Can you put curiosity in that person’s mind? I don’t know. I always feel like I want to know more, and I assume a student is the same- I assume they are just as curious as I am. So I realize that I teach my students differently from what I learn from my advisor- that’s partly because I am doing experimental bio physics and when I was a student I was doing theoretical particle physics- it’s very difficult field- that theoretical physics is something you can do on your own. You teach your self with books and papers. But doing what I am doing now, experimental biophysics, you need equipment and students do experiments- when they come to my lab, they don’t know what they want to do, and I have to 33
suggest projects for them to investigate. So it’s very different kind of thing but I assume students have curiosity just like I do.
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TURNING POINTS SEVENTEEN
TV With 1000 Channels Anatoly Kolomeisky, Ph.D. Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
If you are given a TV with a thousand channels, you cannot of course watch all of them. Just because you have a TV with a thousand channels does not mean that it is better. The difficulty is that now there are too many research journals and there is a tendency to have open access journals. The problem is that if you have too many journals nobody will read them. I prefer a limited number of good-quality journals, which people read and it will have an impact. It is difficult to pick the right journal with the right impact. But, I do work with journals. It is this kind of dissemination of information because of too many channels of dissemination. People are not picking the right channels of dissemination. So if you have to publish a paper, you have to go to conference, you have to give a talk to explain to people, you have to talk to people who come to you. You have to do a lot 35
of things to explain science and research to common people.
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TURNING POINTS EIGHTEEN
Curiosity & Competition Matthew Bennett, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
There are a lot of factors that go into being a scientist. Some of them I am proud to say are my driving factors, like scientific curiosity. I am always very curious about how things work, how to build new tools for biology that are useful to people. I find that extremely fun, and I love just doing the science. There’s also, and I hate to say it, a kind of egotistical aspect to science. I like being an expert sometimes – I like knowing things and discovering things before other people. And, there’s a competitive aspect to science that I find fun. There are students, and you probably know some of them, that thrive at being the best in the class. It’s not that they want to see other people do poorly, but they strive to be the best. It’s kind of this game that you play with yourself – can 37
I keep on getting better at something and achieving more and doing well. While it’s stressful for many, I find that aspect of science a lot of fun and it has helped me to do well at school, work days on end performing experiments, and write grants late at night when I feel tired.
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TURNING POINTS NINETEEN
Managerial Skills Haldre Rogers, Ph.D. Faculty Fellow, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Rice University
One of my most difficult challenges during my PhD was learning how to manage people. My PhD research started as a small project. But in my third year, my advisors and I ended up getting two large research grants, so in the last three years of my PhD I was managing a large, year-round crew that lived in the Mariana islands- five to eleven people depending on the season, three hundred sixty five days a year. That was a lot of responsibility. It was hard to figure out how to motivate people, how to get them to do the things they needed to do from afar, keep good morale, keep track of the data‌ it was just a really big challenge. Managing people proved to be far more difficult than doing good science. And as a grad student, you don’t get any preparation for that. You get trained to be a scientist, but not a manager. 39
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TURNING POINTS TWENTY
Passion for Science David Alexander, Ph.D. Professor, Physics & Astronomy, Rice University
Don’t compare yourself to people you consider to be at the top because that only causes disappointments. Every field looks for different skills and abilities. There are many ways to solve complex problems. There was only one Einstein. There was also only one Isaac Newton. We can’t all be inventors or geniuses; most of us are “mechanics” who take their big ideas and fill in the gaps and build on these ideas. Students should pursue a PhD as long as they love their fields because it is a truly rewarding experience. Only about 1% of the population has a PhD degree right now. In any field, the PhD students sometimes feel like the stupidest people on the planet. They think, “Oh if I can understand this, so can everyone else.” However, the highs you get when you write your paper about a new discovery is definitely worth the effort and time. 41
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TURNING POINTS TWENTY ONE
Listen Well - Listen Carefully Brendan Hassett, Ph.D. Professor, Mathematics, Rice University
I spend a lot time listening; people talk about their problems, talk about what they perceive the problems of the department are. I think listening to all the different constituencies is probably the most important thing I can do. It’s possible, before you have a position of responsibility, to think, well, ‘I would fix everything’, ‘I know what to do’, ‘I have a plan that would solve everyone’s problems and make the world happy’, and usually that is based on an incomplete understanding of what the problems and challenges are. Building a clear model of what has to be done and what people perceive needs to be done is a big part of my job. I think listening well and carefully is probably the most important thing I’ve had.
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TURNING POINTS TWENTY TWO
Plan for the Future Janet Braam, Ph.D. Professor, Biochemistry & Cell Biology, Rice University
I’ve developed a very clear strategy that works for me when I hit hardship. If I’ve just gotten bad news about something – experiments aren’t working, a departmental project fails to move forward, a grant proposal denied, or a paper gets rejected again – I now know what to do. Take a step back, clear the slate, consider all options, and make a new plan. Sometimes the best decision might be to make some minor adjustments; sometimes the decision might be to stop a project and just start fresh. But I make a plan, and then I just start taking the steps to move forward. As soon as I have a plan, I feel much better. I have direction. I may not be in the best situation at present, but at least I know how I’m going to change the situation and so I have hope.
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TURNING POINTS TWENTY THREE
Artful Process Anatoly Kolomeisky, Ph.D. Professor, Chemistry, Rice University
I like to do research. It’s like doing art or writing books. It’s the same inspiration that drives you. You can solve problems and you can push forward. I am more interested in basic and fundamental science, more about understanding the mechanisms of nature. I feel happy when I can make it step by step. It’s like a game. It’s like solving the puzzle. Of course, it’s much more serious but it is a similar thing. It challenges your brain and it shows things in which you are good at. The most I like is that it is a kind of a job that you don’t come to only from 9am till 5pm. You can come on Saturday or you can go home if something doesn’t work. I’m talking about research of course. The teaching I have to do is of course on specific schedule, but the research is more like art or book writing.
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Dr. David Alexander is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University and the director of the Rice Space Institute. His primary research interests involve solar activity, sunspots, flares and coronal mass ejections. Dr. Alexander earned his B.S. in 1984 in Mathematics, a B.Sc. in Natural Philosophy and Astronomy in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Relativistic Cosmology in 1988 all from the University of Glasgow. Dr. Matthew Baring is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. His primary research interests involve theoretical high energy astrophysics, gamma-ray bursts, soft gamma repeaters, pulsars, supernova remnants, active galactic nuclei, cosmic rays, shock acceleration theory, QED radiation processes, plasma physics mechanisms, and hadronic interactions. Dr. Baring earned his B.Sc. (Honours) from the University of Melbourne in 1983, and received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Astrophysics in 1989 from the University of Cambridge. Dr. K. Beth Beason-Abmayr is Lecturer and Laboratory Coordinator in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. Dr. Beason-Abmayr earned her B.S. in Microbiology from Auburn University in 1990 and her Ph.D. in Physiology & Biophysics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1996. Dr. Matthew Bennett is Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. His research involves synthetic biology and the dynamics of
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gene regulation - from small-scale interactions such as transcription and translation, to the large-scale dynamics of gene regulatory networks. Dr. Bennett received a B.S. in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2000 and a Ph.D. in Physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2006. Dr. Janet Braam is Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University. Her primary research interests involve environmental stress responses in plants, the role of the circadian clock and epigenetic regulation in plant defense, autophagy regulation, and chloroplast biogenesis and maintenance. After receiving her B.S. from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale in Zoology in 1980, Dr. Braam received her Ph.D. from the SloanKettering Division of the Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Molecular Biology and Virology in 1985 and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Cindy Farach-Carson is Ralph and Dorothy Looney Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University and Vice Provost for Translational Bioscience. Her primary research interests involve the role of extracellular matrix in the progression of cancer following metastasis from primary sites, such as prostate or breast, to bone. Dr. Farach-Carson received her B.S. in Biology at University of South Carolina in 1978 and her Ph.D. Biochemistry from the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University in 1982. Dr. Brendan Hassett is Chair and Professor of Mathematics at Rice University. His primary research interest involves mathematical research in the field of
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algebraic geometry. He earned a B.A. in mathematics from Yale University followed by his M.A. and Ph.D from Harvard in 1994 and 1996, respectively. Dr. Huey Huang is the Sam and Helen Worden Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. Dr. Huang’s primary research interests involve membrane biophysics. Dr. Huey Huang received his B.S. from National Taiwan University in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1967. Dr. Thomas Killian is Chair and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University. His research is primarily focused on atomic physics, plasma physics, and biophysics. Dr. Thomas Killian received his Artium Baccalaureus (A.B.) degree in physics from Harvard College in 1991 and went on to Cambridge University where he received his Master of Philosophy in Physical Chemistry in 1993 as a Marshall Scholar. He completed his Ph.D in Physics in 1999 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Anatoly Kolomeisky is a Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University. His primary research interests involve theoretical investigation and complex chemical and biophysical processes using the methods of statistical mechanics. Dr. Kolomeisky earned a M.S in Chemistry from Moscow State University in 1991 and earned another M.S in Chemistry from Cornell University in 1996. He then went on to earn a Ph.D in Chemistry from Cornell in 1998. Dr. Kathleen Matthews is the Stewart Memorial Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and the former Dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences
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between 1998 and 2008. Her primary research interests involve the examination of protein-DNA interactions involved in regulating gene expression. Dr. Matthews received her B.S. in Chemistry in 1966 at the University of Texas and earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1970 from the University of California – Berkeley. Dr. Haldre Rogers is a Huxley Faculty Fellow in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice University. Her primary research interests involve the impact of biodiversity loss on ecosystem services, with a focus on seed dispersal and pest control by birds. Dr. Rogers earned her B.A. in Biology from Colgate University in 2000, and her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Washington in 2011. Dr. Ken Whitmire is Professor of Chemistry and Associate Dean for academic affairs for the Wiess School of Natural Sciences at Rice University. His research interests involve synthetic, structural and mechanistic inorganic and organometallic chemistry. Dr. Whitmire earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Roanoke College in 1977, M.S. and PhD in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 1982, and served as NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Cambridge University in England between 1981-82.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to all Rice University School of Natural Sciences faculty who made this project possible by sharing their career experiences and educational life stories with the Gateway students through one-on-one interviews. Much appreciation goes to School of Natural Sciences Dean Daniel Carson and his staff, especially Ms. Pamela Jones for the continual support, and School of Social Sciences Dean Lyn Ragsdale for her counsel and encouragement, and Alex Wyatt for embracing the overall Turning Points project and developing the web presence at http://turningpoints.rice.edu. Our heartfelt gratitude to the Gateway Associates and supporters of the Gateway programs for making projects like this possible. Many thanks also to the current and past Turning Points team and Gateway Study of Leadership fellows for the tremendous amount of time and effort in bringing this series to life.
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