Research lives and cultures

35- Dr Nika Shakiba- Leading with empathy

January 06, 2023 Sandrine Soubes
Research lives and cultures
35- Dr Nika Shakiba- Leading with empathy
Show Notes Transcript

Dr. Nika Shakiba is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering (SBME) at The University of British Columbia (Canada). Her research into the social lives of stem cells aims to answer fundamental biological questions for the development of novel therapies. Her commitment to public engagement has been an important thread in her leadership development.

Dr. Nika Shakiba started her research career because of her excitement for discovery and being a scientific explorer.  What truly motivates her at the current stage of her career is her mentoring role with students and junior researchers. Whether it is through the impact she may be making on her peers or on early career researchers, her values, motivation, and identity have become intertwined with her role as a mentor. “Paying forward” is the term she uses when describing her current role as a mentor.

 As a Postdoc, she made a commitment to herself that she would have a short Postdoc period and would transition to another role within a 2 year period. She shared this goal with her PI and engaged in “next step” thinking from the start of her Postdoc. Even though she started her research group in the middle of the pandemic, her proactivity in building her visibility has been part of easing the recruitment of her team.

 Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

·      How your outreach and public engagement activities may become a core commitment in your research life?

·      What is your own way of getting direct and immediate positive feedback in your research life?

·      Why saying aloud your goals and sharing with others your aspiration is part of creating support and personal commitment to action?

 
Do you want to know more about Dr Nika Shakiba:

https://shakiba.bme.ubc.ca/

 https://advicetoascientist.com/


I work as a coach, trainer and facilitator. If you want to hear more about my work:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/

If you are interested in speaking on the podcast, or if you know someone who would be an awesome contributor, do reach out to me: sandrine@tesselledevelopment.com
 

 

Warning- getting a perfect transcript is  hard. This transcript may have mistakes. Be kind to us by accepting these potential errors. I hope that the transcript is helpful to some of you! Apologies in advances for any mistakes in the transcript.
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Sandrine Soubes: Okay, let's make a start

[music]

Sandrine: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, dear listeners. I am Sandrine Soubes, your host. You're on the podcast, Research Lives and Cultures. Today, I have the pleasure to have with me, Nika Shakiba. She comes from a long, long way away from me, who is in the UK. She's based in the School of Biomedical Engineering in the faculty of applied sciences at the University of British Columbia. Did I get this right? [chuckles]

Nika Shakiba: Yes. Well, the School of Biomedical Engineering is co-owned by the applied sciences and faculty of medicine, so we're quite interdisciplinary.

Sandrine: Okay, that's a good starting point because many of our researchers are often challenged by the idea of interdisciplinarity. Nika, tell me a little bit about the early years of your life in research.

Nika: I think my research life probably started back in high school. [chuckles] I had promised my parents I'm not going to be an engineer because both of my parents are engineers. They're both electrical engineers. I told them, "I'm going to do something different." I think as we started to approach university, I realized I just love physics and math too much. I couldn't not do engineering.

When I came across Peter Zandstra's group, who at the time was in Toronto, I realized that engineers can do biology. We can do basic research. I did my PhD in the stem cell bioengineering world. It was focused on a very fundamental biological question and that set the stage, I think, for my independent research lab. We program DNA and we upload it into stem cells and we want to understand the social lives of these stem cells.

Sandrine: What do you think is really the driver in your research life?

Nika: I suppose it's somewhat cliché, but I think I joined research and science for the feeling of discovery. You're on the frontier of the unknown. That's such a cool feeling. You're basically an explorer in whatever field that you've decided is your passion. I came for that sense of discovery, but I think I really stayed for the mentorship side. I think that's where I derive a lot of my value as a researcher is this impact that I can potentially have on peers, on the next generation of researchers, whether they be in academia or other realms. I think that's been a big part of my identity and my motivation.

Sandrine: Was this much influenced with your own experience as a PhD student and postdoc? Often, we learn to be in the research environment based on the experiences that we have. We may have worked with amazing people and we want to emulate the way that they mentored us. Sometimes we may have been managed by people who were not so great and we're trying to go very far away from their own practices. In your case, what do you think has been the fuel of the way that you want to be as a mentor to others?

Nika: Oh, absolutely. I think the mentors that have contributed to my development, both professionally and personally, so even in the early days, looking at my own parents and their influence as engineers all the way through to my PhD and my postdoc, there's been some very key players that have helped direct me left or right or helped me pick up the pieces when I couldn't make decisions or when challenges have happened.

That is certainly something I hope to emulate because I've experienced firsthand how much impact you can have on others as a mentor. Even peers, peer-to-peer mentorship has been hugely influential for me. I think just as you said, emulating that, wanting to pass that forward, pay that forward, I think that's ingrained in the academic culture. I'm proud to be a part of that.

Sandrine: The last thing that you said about the peer-to-peer mentoring is really interesting because I just launched a program with a new research leader with a university. I've done lots of interviews of research fellows. There is often this thing of you're asked to demonstrate your independence as a research leader. There is, for many, a sense of isolation that can be built, although people are asked to work collaboratively. Can you tell us about your own approach of building this peer-to-peer mentorship?

Nika: For me, the best mentorship has happened organically. I think it's a matter of taking every opportunity to interact with people. I'm not a very extroverted person. I'm actually more introverted than extroverted, so it takes a certain amount of energy and conscientious investment to build that network. I think my approach has been to be very direct about it, to really put a time investment in it.

I tried to immerse myself in all the opportunities where people like me and people not like me who are my peers can come together to do great things in our community. One example of that has been through all the outreach initiatives. I became very involved with science communication to youth and to the public and to running a lot of these events where we try to get young people excited about science, about stem cells.

Through those initiatives, I became very much connected with other people who are maybe a little bit younger than me or at the same stage as me, or maybe a little bit ahead of me. That became a huge part of my peer-to-peer network and we still stay connected. It's really cool to see people going to different directions after that experience, whether it be academia or not.

Sandrine: It's funny because I used to run a lot of workshops to motivate and to support postdocs to get involved in outreach and public engagement. Some of them do sense where it's like, "Where do I put my energy? Doing the outreach is not what's going to get me an academic position." When you look at the complexities of what is required to transition in research life, what is your own way of deciding the opportunities to take?

Nika: That's a great question. It's complicated. I don't know that I have the right answers, but I can tell you my approach. I definitely was not strategic about this, but it just happened to work out. My general heuristic for deciding what to spend my energy on was just, "What am I passionate about?" For me, science communication and outreach was a way to recharge my batteries in a way.

I think a lot of the time spent in the lab and doing research can be very grueling. There's lots of ups and downs. There's certainly lots of failure. Things don't go your way. There's a lot of uncertainty. Science communication and outreach opportunities became this very tangible strategy for me to remind myself why I'm excited about science because you have to communicate that passion.

If you're talking to young kids, you really got to communicate what's exciting about what you're doing, what's exciting about the scientific endeavor, and just having to put that into words and to communicate that to other people. It was a really nice mental exercise for me to just touch base with the roots of my motivation over and over again. It actually became a very good way for me to bolster my trajectory and to keep me going on that trajectory.

I didn't realize it. As I was doing this and channeling my energy into these initiatives, it became part of my brand. It wasn't intentional. Actually, it was a really great, happy accident because when it came time for me to search for academic positions, that was something that I was already known for. I had already built up a network in Canada and beyond that recognized that I was this person who would champion science in the community and in society to some extent. It became helpful, I think.

Sandrine: It's interesting also this idea of, "Where do we find the source of energy?" I always use the term, "What gives you joy?" I can very much relate to you because when I started doing outreach, for me, it was doing my postdoc and, yes, you may get lots of failed experiments. When you run a session with a group of young people and you get them really intrigued, excited, or whatever about scientific ideas, it gives you a buzz that refuel the batteries to go and face the failed experiments.

Nika: Exactly.

Sandrine: Would you say that it's helped you to shape the way that you also communicate to the research community in the sense of when you write a grant, when you write a fellowship, you need to communicate in a way that your peers will understand what you're trying to do and the people reviewing your grants are not necessarily those who are absolutely from the same discipline? Do you feel that it's helped your way of communicating?

Nika: 100%. I don't hesitate to say how impactful it has been. I think through these experiences of having to communicate my science from different angles to different populations, some of which may have a scientific background more than others, it's been a nice exercise in scientific storytelling as I call it, and as I try to encourage my own students to immerse themselves in.

I think the storytelling aspect of science is such an important part of grant writing, of presenting at conferences, but also science communication to a broader audience. I've learned to use all of these opportunities to try telling the story of my science in a different way. I play with it a lot. I use them as fun exercises to try new ways of telling the story and see what sticks. It's a work in progress and an evolving storytelling plan.

It's definitely helped me and it's just becoming comfortable to articulate these things and becoming comfortable standing in front of strangers and talking or writing about my science. These are kind of soft skills that we don't develop until we actually immerse ourselves in the opportunities to do so. It's been absolutely a runway to get me to a place where I could write grants and do oral presentations with more confidence.

Sandrine: Could you give us an example of maybe how the secondary impact of this public engagement and outreach in the way it shaped the way that you were seen externally, the world visibility of your research?

Nika: Yes, there was this nice opportunity to do a panel where we were discussing stem cell research in balancing the hype and the hope around stem cells. As part of that panel, I gave a lecture on stem cells 101. What are stem cells and how far have we come in understanding and utilizing them clinically? That session was actually recorded. They videotaped us and posted this online as part of the RCIScience website.

I didn't realize it, but it had been seen more broadly. I was later approached by a talent agent, so to speak, who had seen this video of me and thought I was such a great speaker and then invited me for an opportunity that was based in the US, for example. I definitely think we put our energy out there, right? We put our face out there through these things and that it's a genuine passion that you are expressing that it will resonate with other people.

Then it will have impacts on opportunities that are very tangible as well as your brand in general that you can't anticipate until later, right? I don't think it can be understated that these opportunities, if you like them, if you enjoy them, if you find them as ways to develop your skills and to build your network, if all of those things are true, then I don't say no to those opportunities. I tend to say yes to all of those opportunities. It can be a problem on its own.

Sandrine: In a way, it's an investment that you make and you don't really know whether there will be a reward. As long as you do it with the congruence of doing something for your visibility that is within your own value, you're contributing in a way that makes sense to you.

Nika: Yes, and there's immediate gains. It's very fulfilling, I think, to be communicating to other people about science and to see their eyes light up, or for their innate curiosity to be awakened. That is really rewarding for me and so it's an immediate positive feedback, often way more immediate than the research and the science that we do where we put those publications out there and then there's no promise that they will ever be truly impactful in the world.

We hope that they are, but it could take your lifetime or more for them to be, whereas these opportunities are immediate positive feedback. I try not to think about them as investments. They are, but I don't try to think about beyond that immediate impact, what kind of greater return on investment will I have, and when the return on investment happens, because it will, when it happens and it's a happy surprise, and it's a bonus.

Sandrine: I like to move on now to maybe asking you a few questions about the setting up of your research group. Can you explain a little bit how you went for working as a postdoc or as a fellow to starting to establishing your own team?

Nika: I started my postdoc back in 2018. I had set myself a very explicit timeline. For personal reasons, I had decided that I don't want to spend more than two years doing my postdoc. I was living away from my husband at the time and that was definitely one of the factors that I considered when setting this timeline and these goals for myself. I was on the academic job market looking only for positions in Canada right out of the gate as soon as I had started my postdoc.

I was very explicit about that plan, that ambitious goal with my postdoc supervisors. They were quite supportive and it couldn't have happened without their help, but I was looking actively for positions since the start of my postdoc. By 2020, I had job offers. It was in a nice position to then think carefully about where I would want my professional and personal life to be based. Ultimately, I decided that that would be at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

I've never been a West Coaster. I've lived entirely on the more eastern side of North America my whole life. It was definitely a climate difference. It was a cultural difference of the West Coast lifestyle, suddenly being immersed in nature and mountains, but it's been a really great change. Now, my research program started in July of 2020. We're coming up to just about two years since our inception and it's been fun. It's been a roller-coaster ride. There's definitely ups and downs, but it's been a really great experience overall.

Sandrine: I'm really impressed and how intentionally where from the start of your postdoc because I've worked with postdocs for many, many years. I used to run the postdoc induction in my previous institution. Often, people start on the project as a postdoc and they feel, "Well, I've got two or three years of funding. I'll just focus on the research and I think about what I want to do later on." You had a very different attitude from the start, but also you communicated your intention to your supervisor in a very deliberate way from the start. I think that's quite unusual from day one saying, "Okay, I'm not going to hang around as a postdoc for a very long time." It is actually pretty bold.

Nika: It is. I think in hindsight, yes, it's quite bold, but I think saying that goal out loud is what I needed to make it a reality and to hold myself accountable to it. To be fair, I had taken the complete opposite approach in my PhD. I did a seven-year PhD and I had definitely taken my time to just focus on the science. I really sidestepped the question of career. I think I wanted to take a very different approach with my postdoc to use it as a runway that is very directed on the path that I want to go.

I would put all my efforts into making this goal that I had set out loud happen but realizing full well that it may not happen. That's okay. There are many other options out there beyond academia that I realized I could take up and that would be fulfilling. That would utilize my skills well. That was a conversation that I had in my mind going into my postdoc to try to keep myself grounded but also directed and intentional.

Sandrine: What has it been like to set up your research group? You set it up in the year of the pandemic, which is not a small challenge within your group, and what's been most exciting and also really challenging in that transition from working for somebody else to actually setting the agenda.

Nika: That process, it's been interesting. It's never a boring day. Overall, it's been great. It started back in July 2020, as you said, mid-pandemic. The early days were quite challenging. I was very lucky to have found my first two graduate students before any of this had happened, before we had started setting up our lab. We had already been in discussions because they had seen my talks or they had heard about me from others or they had seen my website.

I had definitely spent time and money to get that website up because I realized how important that is for an independent researcher's brand to have that online presence. I had invested on that and I think that worked. I was able to find my first two graduate students relatively quickly and they were already in place before July 2020. They came in rearing to go in September, which is the start of the academic year.

It was certainly challenging because they showed up and it's COVID. Lots of things are shut down. They both moved cities and came to Vancouver. It was also a new city to me and it was weird being in this what felt like a ghost town. A lot of the stores were closed or the restaurants were closed. Campus seemed rather empty. There was restricted access to our research building.

Lucky enough, there's only three of us, so we were able to social distance and follow all of the health rules at the time relatively easily. It was weird going from being in Boston with this very dynamic and energetic, scientific environment to a building that was empty because of the pandemic and having to keep my first two graduate students motivated and telling them that this is not how it always is. Science is--

Sandrine: What a challenge, yes? Gosh.

Nika: Absolutely. For them to keep them in that headspace and keep them energized to want to do the science that they signed up to do. That was definitely one of the challenges. The two of them, Omar and Kieran, were quite instrumental in laying the foundations of our team and of our science. We've been able to grow. The next year, we brought on two more graduate students, Vivian and Ali. Then this year, we're bringing on three.

We're growing. It's fun to see that. We also have been really lucky to have very energetic and ambitious undergraduate students join our team, which, again, is led by my graduate students who have been eager to be mentors even so early in their careers. We've had a number of really talented undergrad students that have come through like Karen and Janella and Ali, and now Ipek.

We're excited to be growing and continuing to become more diverse. I think the other thing that I would say is that we're quite interdisciplinary. As a biomedical engineering lab, who's based in a department or a school that's owned by the faculties of medicine and applied science, that interdisciplinarity is woven into the design of the program and of our identities.

Half of my lab come from traditional life sciences, training, and background. The other half comes from engineering backgrounds. It's been fun and also challenging to see my trainees have to pick up skills that are outside of their core expertise. It's also really cool to see what happens when people who are not traditionally biological or biomedical researchers bring their ideas in a fresh perspective to the problems.

Sandrine: Lots of really interesting points in what you're saying. I'm really impressed by the fact that you had basically parts of your team already settled before the start. How did you manage that?

Nika: I think a lot of these things that have fallen into place for me have just been serendipitous. I honestly didn't have some grand plan for that, just like I didn't have a grand plan for my science communication and outreach and how it would fit into my academic trajectory. It just happened. My understanding of it is that they attended one of my talks that I happened to be at their university and give a talk. I was interviewing there. They saw that talk for one of them and they just reached out to me basically immediately after and said, "I really loved your talk. I'd love to join your lab."

I responded, saying, "I don't have a lab yet. I'm just interviewing. If you're interested, follow up in six months," so he did. Then the second student, I think, had heard about me from another member of the biomedical engineering network and had seen my website. It just happens, I think. For me, it's just a matter of putting my energy into these things that I'm passionate about, which is telling my scientific story and whatever venue I can. I think that enthusiasm and that energy comes across and it resonates with people as I said. These are examples of how that takes shape in your academic career.

Sandrine: One of the things that you've done also is to have this external visibility through your website. I remember in my previous institution, we had done a lot of work on getting postdocs to have their own web page, where they could tell their narrative ahead of moving on to another institution or ahead of receiving a fellowship. In a way here, it's showing that the energy that you put in creating that external visibility can play a role in the way that you are showcasing your enthusiasm and showcasing what you're about to people beyond those that you just meet in person.

Nika: It's a very accessible medium for you to put down who you are as much as you can and capture your scientific niche to capture who you are beyond that, your multidimensional identity, which for me also featured the outreach and the science communication side of me. I think that also shone through. I had been very explicit about including those goals in my website. I had a page of my website dedicated to advice for scientists, which was another initiative that had started with my postdoc supervisor.

I think that also resonated with people because I would get emails from students who were interested in joining our lab who would say, "I saw advice for scientists. This is one of the reasons why I'm reaching out to you because it's clear that you care about being a mentor and not just a scientist," which I think is a really important distinction between being an academic and being a researcher in other domains.

Sandrine: What do you think you did really well during these first years of setting up your team? Because you describe setting up a research group in the middle of a pandemic and there's been lots of reports and surveys about the mental health situation of research staff or PhD students and so on. When you look at this data, it doesn't make for easy reading really. What do you think is your way of creating positive and supportive research culture within your own team?

Nika: I reflect on this a lot. I really put a lot of my brain energy and time on this question of how to foster a positive environment that allows all of my trainees with their interdisciplinary and unique backgrounds to thrive and to reach their potential. I think my realization is certainly that I'm not perfect, that I'm definitely making mistakes. I think the one thing that I'm doing well is that I'm trying to improve and I'm always trying to evolve.

I think one of the ingredients that I've been very intentional about incorporating into our team is that we are a team, and that what we do is decided together, and that we will build in time into our research lives to reflect on what's going well and on what we would like to change, and that we can only do that through safe environment where people can make mistakes and own up to those mistakes, or call other people out for their mistakes in a constructive and healthy way.

My trainees have no qualms telling me when they don't like something, right? Maybe I've made a decision or we've done something recently that they don't like and they want to change that. I'm all ears for it. It's not always easy to hear that kind of feedback, but I think that's a key ingredient to building a positive research culture that I'm striving to do. I can't say that I have all the answers, but that's been my approach so far.

The other aspect of that that you touched on, which is the mental health side, I've been very deliberate about that. One of the things that we've done to capture our goals for our research culture is to put together our lab manual. As part of that lab manual, which is a living document that we've all contributed to as a team, we've written down our lab's mission statement, our vision statement, our values, and also how we want to handle mistakes.

I think just putting it down has been really great. As part of that document, I've also dedicated a section to mental health. I think part of it is to make a safe space where people feel that if they want to share or if they want to lean out for support that they can do so. I think we collectively, in the world, need to normalize those discussions about mental health, especially in academic settings because it's no secret that graduate students are at an increased risk relative to the general population for anxiety and depression.

I was very explicit and transparent, sharing with my students my own challenges dealing with anxiety as a graduate student, which was quite debilitating for a number of years. Only recently, I've started to get a handle on it, but I think it's been helpful to be able to talk about it to other graduate students and my peers as it was happening. I hope that I can foster an environment where my own trainings and then those around us can engage in those discussions in a healthy way.

Sandrine: I've been doing quite a lot of coaching with some research fellows and new academics. One of the themes that keeps coming back is the issue of, "How do I deal with a PhD student who has lost motivation or isn't really doing well?" It's like poor performance or he's really not engaged. What's interesting about the discussions that I've had about this recently is that, often, it's people who really are trying to create a really positive culture or really trying to change practices maybe that they've expanded themselves.

Sometimes they face a situation where there is somebody not turning up at meeting, not doing something that they say that they were doing. Then they are faced with, "Well, I am a manager as well as a research leader. How do I handle this really hot conversation?" I would be interested to hear your take on that because being supportive doesn't mean not saying that somebody isn't doing a great job.

Nika: I've had these conversations too sometimes with my trainees. I think my approach, I don't know how effective it is. I guess we'll have to wait and see. My approach so far has been to try to lead with empathy. We're all well-intentioned where we try to set up these positive research cultures but inevitably cannot control everything, right? The members of our team just like us will wake up some days and not have good days or will have external things happening that are not related to the research environment perhaps that are influencing their mood, their motivation, and all of these things that then reflect in their research progress, or sometimes it's within the research environment as much as we try to develop a positive culture.

It doesn't always happen because there are so many other variables that can affect that beyond our well-intentioned strategies to mitigate. I think my approach has been to lead with empathy and to try to take a step back when I talk to any student that seems to be having an off day or an off week or doesn't seem so motivated. At every meeting, I ask my students, "How is everything else? Is everything great? How are your courses? How is everything else outside of the lab?" It's not really a space for me to probe. I'm very clear to them about that.

They don't have to share anything that they don't feel comfortable sharing, but it also gives them an opportunity to talk about things if they're having struggles that they think I can help with. Sometimes they do tell me about other challenges that they're dealing with. It's an opportunity for me to direct them in the right direction in terms of resources of support and that sort of thing that's available at the university and more broadly in the community. Other times, it's nice to commiserate because we all have bad days. I tell them too. I woke up today and I just did not have the motivation. I'm just staring at my emails all day. That's normal. That's a part of human existence. We're not always 100% motivated.

Sandrine: In a way, it's almost creating a moment of pause so that the meeting with the PhD student or the postdoc isn't just about the experiment, not just about the science, but actually just asking how people are. It's something that is so subtle and simple, but in the busyness and in the whirlwind of all the stuff we've got to do, we may forget.

Nika: Yes, absolutely. It's a real part of it. The humans behind the science are just as important if not more important than the science itself, right? It doesn't happen without them. Making sure that that person can perform to the best of their potential is critical. That's kind of the strategy. I think empathy is really key. Sometimes you have to push more, right? Part of your job, it's not just to nurture and support, right?

Part of it is to really challenge your students. When I think that someone is not on their game and they can be and I see that they're motivated, but they're just not directing that energy effectively, I'm also very open about that. I tell them, "These are the things that you're doing well, but these are things that you can certainly improve on," right? I challenge them to reflect and to be iterative in their own approach as much as they are with me, right? They do the same for me.

Sandrine: I like this idea of being iterative. It's a good word. We try things in the research context, but also iterative in term of approach of doing things of interacting. It's a good way of thinking about it. If you think about the status quo, if you want, of your career and where you are now, what have been the things that have helped you to really progress towards your leadership? What's been the things that may have hindered your progression, although you probably feel at this point that you're progressing at a pace that is working for you?

Nika: I think the challenge is often one that's internal. It's really easy to look around at the broad scientific community around the world and to see stellar scientists who are making leaps scientifically or in other ways like teaching or outreach and other dimensions of what it is to be a scientist and to constantly compare and say, "What I've done is not good enough. I have to keep pushing." I think that is always there, that sort of internal turmoil that there's more to do.

Science never sleeps, so it's quite easy for it to take over your brain, your time. It can really bleed into other aspects of your life. That's been a big challenge, I think, just trying to set those healthy boundaries in work-life. I think that's a struggle that a lot of early career researchers face because we tend to feel that we have to say yes to everything, that we have to be people-pleasing, that we have to take on all of these extra tasks so that we can establish ourselves and be known as leaders.

I think that's enriched in women. That's definitely something that I've heard a lot from my own mentors. That's been, I suppose, a hindrance and a sort of internal battle that always happens. Another one is certainly imposter syndrome that has not gone away from me. It's been around for a while and I don't think it will go away anytime soon. Just learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, I think that's part of the approach that I've decided to take for now.

Sandrine: I completely relate to it. [laughs] Building this resilience, what do you think has been key for you in learning to live with being uncomfort in some ways?

Nika: I'm not always good at it. I have my days where it's all consuming. It really sets the mood of the day that I'm just going to be always reflecting on these things. I could be doing more. I could be doing better. I think, in general, the approach has been to bet-hedge, I think, to not place all of my value in this one dimension of my life, which is my scientific career, but to continue to invest in the other aspects of who I am both personally and professionally.

I think when you bet-hedge in that way, then it's more likely that things will go your way or that you'll have positive advancements in at least one of those dimensions, and then it starts that motivation cycle. I've been learning more. I've been trying to learn more about how to stay motivated. My understanding is that it's very much a cycle. There's an action that kind of leads to some sort of positive feedback and that motivates you again. I find that this kind of cross-fertilizes in the different dimensions of my life.

It can be quite small, something as small as I. I taught my cat a new trick. I feel so motivated, right? It just motivates me to get up and have another positive impact in another dimension of my life or to just spend time outside. I think spending time in nature has been a hugely important part of my life in the last two years. Having moved cities and actually countries in the pandemic, having been away from my partner during much of that time, being around the mountains and the forest and the ocean has been really helpful to recharge my perspective.

Sandrine: One of the things that we often discuss in the workshops that I have with early-carrier researchers is this idea of confidence. Often, I say, "Well, let's just forget confidence. It may come, it may not come. Stop thinking about it." That's something I'd say. What's your own way of thinking about that concept of confidence?

Because we often talk about imposter syndrome and so on where there is always this sense of, "I'm not good enough." I haven't published enough and I'm not enough," and always comparing yourself to others. This doesn't necessarily help our confidence. What is the way that you're trying to manage the way you think about this thing, your own confidence, or the way maybe you stopped thinking about it or stopped thinking about it in a different way?

Nika: I don't think I have a good handle on confidence. I think what I do is to try to emulate what I think confident people look like around me. I think one of the things that has helped is that, as part of my mentor network, I have mid-career researchers that are a few steps ahead of me in their career. One in particular that comes to mind is just so bold with his ideas and not afraid to throw them out there. Sometimes they seem so wacky, but he's not afraid to throw them out there.

Good things happen because it ends up rallying and motivating people around him to also want to work towards those goals. I think I've tried to emulate some level of that to the best of my abilities. It's okay to come up with these big, bold ideas. Some of them may be ridiculous and ludicrous and never amount to anything, but it's okay to throw them out there because sometimes they will lead to big things. That can be a game-changer for you as a professional.

Sandrine: It's a really important thing often for early-career academic where you may have a fellowship on the projects two or three years. It's kind of a quite small scope and, in a way, building the umbrella of the research that you're going to get known for is the next step. This idea of being really bold with your ideas is part of the process of building the research vision that maybe you have or you don't have in your first academic role. Maybe you've created a narrative for the job interview, but actually believing in that narrative and believing in that vision is something else.

Nika: Yes, that's half the battle, right? I think what's funny now that I'm thinking more about it is that that part of the confidence has come from my team. I think I've kind of taken this approach where we're less hierarchical. I let see myself less as this person who's the all-knowing, omniscient being of our lab. I've encouraged my trainees to step into more of leadership roles scientifically.

They have been very active in coming up with ideas for projects in reaching out to collaborators. A number of them have created new collaborations that are born out of side projects that they've taken on and now have become prominent features in our scientific umbrella. I think that has helped to share that burden of confidence and to allow my team to also shine and to have a say in how we are establishing ourselves scientifically.

Of course, that means that there's a lot of balls in the air that we're juggling. I think part of the challenge of being their leader is to make sure that we're investing our time in keeping the right balls up in the air, and that they're not diluting their efforts too much either. I think that has been one way to build my confidence, seeing them reach out to some leading figures in the field and build these collaborations with them. It's helped me also get my name out there and to grow scientifically my brand.

Sandrine: It's really a powerful message for new research leader, this idea of using the team to work as a team, not just to having individual relationship with each PhD student and postdoc. An additional layer of challenge for new research leader is that it's about the interaction that happens between your team members. You may have an excellent relationship with each of them individually, but the dynamics of what goes on in between all of them is absolutely key. If you are going to give advice to the new research leaders building their teams, what do you think you've done well yourself to actually support or disconnection that happens outside of your own involvement?

Nika: That's a hard question because, again, that's one of the elements of this job of being an academic group leader that we're not necessarily trained to do. We're not experts in interdisciplinary relations between humans, and so having to navigate conflict that emerges because it inevitably will, right? These are individuals with different personalities, different goals, different levels of skills in terms of interacting with other people.

I don't know what the right answer is here, but I think the approach for me has been when these situations arise to try to have conversations with those involved and to remind them that this is a learning opportunity that you will be faced with these situations and maybe even worst ones when you leave this training environment that is our lab, and that you have to build the skill set to be able to cope and to be able to manage and to continue your professional goals and your role outside of what might be happening interpersonally.

It's definitely been a learning experience. I'm constantly learning myself on how to deal with these. I think the other thing that I've been doing is leaning on mentors, right? If situations arise that I don't know what to do with because that will happen, I knock on door of someone I trust, someone who may have been in this position before. Sure enough, they have, right?

They tell me, "Oh yes, this happens. It's a normal part of being a human, being in a team." They often have advice on how to navigate it, what they did, and what they didn't do, and what worked and didn't work for them. It's always helpful. I think it's also important to create space to allow for these tensions or potential issues to bubble up more quickly earlier than later before it's turned into a large thing.

I try to again, like I said, make that space when I have one-on-one meetings with my students. Sometimes I'll ask them to go for a walk, take them outside of the lab environment to a more neutral space, and ask them, "What's been happening? How's the lab culture been? How's the environment? What can we do differently? What can we do better?" and try to problem-solve together when there is a concern.

Sandrine: I really like this idea of paired work where you go and have maybe difficult conversation outside of the constraint of an office or of laboratory. It's really good advice. What's been the most exciting thing in the work that you've done?

Nika: I think there's a lot of fun stuff happening. As I mentioned briefly at the start of this, my lab is really interested in understanding the social lives of stem cells, how stem cells relate with one another and when those interactions are cooperative versus competitive, where they actively bully and eliminate each other from the cultures in which we grow them, or embryonic development.

Most exciting things, I think, has been seeing how each student's interpretation of that or application of that broader research question has led them in different directions. Some of my students are looking at this question in mouse embryonic stem cell cultures, taking really cutting-edge synthetic biology tools to try to understand what's going on under the hood molecularly inside these cells.

Then I have other cohort of my students who are doing this in human embryonic stem cells and using really cool early embryo models to try to understand when this happens in development and how and asking bigger questions like, "Why would evolution have allowed for our stem cells to be battling and killing each other?" It just seems so counterintuitive. Seeing that take shape in different forms, in different systems, in different applications has been really fun.

One of the things that we took on together actually with my first two graduate students as we started during the pandemic as we were twiddling our thumbs waiting for equipment and reagents to arrive, we decided that it would be a cool opportunity to pick up something computational. One of my students had never done programming. None of us. None of the three of us had ever used Python.

We thought it would be a good idea to learn Python together. We established a collaboration with Dr. Maria Abou Chakra in Dr. Gary Bader's lab. She's a game theory expert. She'd been using game theory to model different social dilemmas like climate change or mafia behaviors of birds. We reached out to her and said, "Hey, do you think it would be possible or feasible to apply game theory to model stem cell conflicts and battles?"

She was like, "Yes, that actually would be really cool." We started learning from her. She would put on lectures for us around game theory. We've put together code of the four of us learning Python and coding to model game theory of cells. It's been really fun. That's been one of the unexpected and exciting things that is another take on the stem cell battles that we study.

Sandrine: That's a really, really nice project. Also, I like the fact of learning together. That can be one of the challenge for new research leaders in term of being seen as the expert and always having the students expect you to give solutions to the problems that they may have in their experimental work. Here, starting from scratch together on something and learning something that you've never done before is a really beautiful way of actually building the research culture of learning together and creating something that didn't exist before in term of maybe some of the experimental work that you've done. It's a really, really nice example. Is there something that you can learn from the behaviors of your cells to the running of your lab?

Nika: Oh, well, that's a great question. I think what we're appreciating more and more is that they're a product of their context. They don't always battle. It depends on their inner state, their gene expression, for example, but it also depends on their environmental context, whether they're in the right conditions to be battling with each other. I think that's truly reflected in humans, right?

There's always things going on under the hood that may set us up for positive or negative experiences. We're a product of our context as well, depending on what our external stressors are and our ability to deal with those stressors, or sometimes it's just situations that are well beyond your control. You just have to do your best to navigate. That could lead to positive or negative things, whether it's through interactions with others around you or other things.

Sandrine: Lessons from a stem cell. [chuckles] If you had to do things differently, if you had to navigate your research career differently, is there something that you would do the same differently? If you were to start all over again, what will change?

Nika: I think I would have been a lot more intentional about making an informed decision. I think I got lucky a lot in terms of interacting with the right people, the right mentors, the right opportunities that oftentimes mentors open the door for me to, but this all happened serendipitously. I didn't really know that my PhD supervisor, for example, would be so great and so supportive and would be very invested in me and help me to reach where I am.

I was quite young when I made that decision to take on that PhD in that lab. I think I probably would have been more diligent in doing my homework and checking people out that I'm committing to work with or decisions that I made early on to do that. It just happened because it happened luckily, but it could have happened differently. I definitely saw that around me.

There were certainly other graduate students in other labs and other environments that did not have the positive experience I had. Oftentimes, that influenced them and scared them away from science or academia. I think I would have been less trusting. Everything would just work out and more active in trying to figure out where's the right environment for me, what are the right research questions that I can spend my life pursuing because there are so many questions out there, right?

Sandrine: Yes, and many, many more questions to keep you busy. [laughs] I'm going to finish and ask you a question that matters to me greatly. You've talked a lot about some of these things, but what gives you joy in research?

Nika: Yes, I think there's many things that give me joy. There's nothing like that feeling of having discovered something and no one else has seen it yet for that brief moment in time. This is a sort of reflection that one of my friends recently told me that they love about science. I realize that's so true that, for a brief moment, you are the only person in the world who has that piece of information about the world and how the universe works. That's so cool and it's really hard to find in any other profession beyond science.

I think the other thing that I've realized more and more that gives me joy is the people, the people that I'm working with, the people that have influenced me, the people that I have a chance to influence and to help them find their trajectory and achieve their goals. There's something so fulfilling in that. Like I said before, scientific discoveries can take a lifetime or even longer to have an impact if they ever even do, but the impact that we have on the people around us is so immediate.

It's really an opportunity to get that positive push, right? It's a rush. It's a positive feeling, I think, when you see someone achieving their goals. Yes, I really love to see that in the younger generations. Part of my take on undergrads, for example, I really see them as kind of my academic grandkids where my graduate students take the lead and the day-to-day supervision and in helping them navigate and troubleshoot their projects. I'm more of this grandparent who really gets to-

[laughter]

Nika: -have the fun where I have the high-level discussions about what their goals are and the things that they like and don't like about science. That has also been a different kind of joy, right?

Sandrine: Thank you, Nika. It's been such a pleasure and really amazing conversation with you. I'm really, really grateful for your time.

Nika: Thank you so much, Sandrine, for having me. This has been a pleasure.

Sandrine: Your experiences and I think the ethos that you have in the way that you're engaging your team is really beautiful and amazing.

Nika: We try, right? We always iterate and try to stay with that ethos and do our best. That's all we can do.

Sandrine: That's wonderful. Thank you. A pleasure meeting you.

Nika: You as well.

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