Dr Natasha Chang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University. She is one of these academics who has had the challenge of setting up her research group during the Covid period. She reflects on the last few years since becoming a PI.
Things to reflect on prompted by the discussion with Natasha:
Find blog and episodes:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/podcast
Dr Natasha Chang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University. She is one of these academics who has had the challenge of setting up her research group during the Covid period. She reflects on the last few years since becoming a PI.
Things to reflect on prompted by the discussion with Natasha:
Find blog and episodes:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/podcast
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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Dr Sandrine Soubes: Okay, let's make a start.
[music]
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, dear listeners. I have the pleasure to have with me on the podcast, Research Lives and Culture, Natasha Chang.
Welcome on the podcast, Natasha.
Natasha Chang: Thank you, Sandra. Nice to meet you.
Dr Sandrine: Natasha comes all the way from across the pond, like we say in the UK. Natasha is based in Canada at the University of McGill, and you are currently assistant professor.
Natasha: That's right, yes.
Dr Sandrine: You are in the Department of Biochemistry, but you work on stem cell research?
Natasha: Yes, muscle stem cells.
Dr Sandrine: Natasha, can you get us started in term of telling us where you are at in your career, and a brief history of your career so far?
Natasha: I was born and raised in Hong Kong. That's actually quite far from where I am now. When I was 18, I moved to Montreal to pursue my Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry at McGill University. It was actually during my bachelor's that every summer, I would spend it in a research lab, and that was what made me realize that I really enjoyed research and the lab culture. That's what led me to pursue my graduate studies, and I stayed at McGill to pursue my PhD under the mentorship of the late Gordon Shore, where I studied cancer cell biology, and studied a process called cellular autophagy, which is a nutrient recycling pathway.
Then for my postdoc, I decided to switch fields completely, and that's what led me to Ottawa to the lab of Michael Rudnicki, where I studied muscle stem cell biology.
Then after a very long postdoc, quite unexpectedly and pretty serendipitously, I would say, I found my way back to McGill, and that's where I have started my research lab. I started in 2019 August, so it's been almost three years. In my lab, we study muscle stem cell biology, muscle stem cell function, and also dysfunction in the context of muscle diseases. It's been three years of learning how to navigate through a pandemic and establish a lab.
Dr Sandrine: It's what feels a pretty quick transition to a role of principal investigator in running your own research team. One of the thing that I often discuss with post-doctoral researcher and early career academics, is this idea of the way we develop a research niche, because obviously when we start a PhD or when we have a postoc, at least in the sciences, often we start from a topic that belongs to somebody else, the PhD supervisor or the post documenter. Moving into building your own research area, and building your research team, it's a slow and probably complex process.
Could you take us through the step that took you to doing the work that you do now from your PhD, and how was your interests defined and refined and changed over the years?
Natasha: I would say that one of the things that I did during my career trajectory that really made an impact on establishing this niche, is changing fields. As I mentioned, during my PhD, I studied cellular autophagy, and mainly in the context of cancer. Then for my postdoctoral fellowship, did muscle stem cell biology. I think this change in fields has really helped me to diversify my knowledge and my skillsets.
What I've done now, as an independent PI, is to merge my two areas of expertise. Actually a big focus of my lab is understanding how autophagy is important for muscle stem cell function. I don't think I would've been able to do this so comfortably if I didn't have those two different backgrounds as a trainee. I think that has really helped.
I would also say that having a very transparent conversation with your postdoctoral mentor is really going to help this process because that's what I did at the end of my postdoc, was to have a conversation with my mentor at the time. Together, we came to an understanding of what I can take from my postdoctoral fellowship, what aspects of it, and what I will be working on so that it's clear that there is no overlap or any type of competition, because you definitely don't want to compete with your postdoctoral mentor.
I think those two things together have really helped me to establish the niche that I'm in now.
Dr Sandrine: Often when we choose a PhD, when we start, we don't necessarily have really an understanding of what we like in science. We may have a very, maybe using the word naive isn't the right one, we have an idealistic view of what we may want to be doing, and maybe the reality is not always what we were hoping for. The choice of the postdoc is really critical in term of that next step in term of building the research niche.
What was your approach when you actually chose your postdoc?
Natasha: What you said is very, very true. I definitely wasn't thinking of my eventual research niche when I was deciding which postdoc lab. To be completely honest, the reasons for me to choose my postdoc lab were quite personal. My partner at the time found the job in Ottawa, and I decided at the end of my PhD that I wanted to move to Ottawa to continue our relationship. That was step one.
Then step two was really finding the best lab that I could in that location. I was conscious of the fact that I wanted to switch fields, and so I actually applied to three different labs, all in completely different areas. One was neurobiology, the other one was virology, and then the third was stem cell research. I interviewed at these three different labs, and I found the lab where I thought I could flourish in, that I could develop as a scientist and learn these different techniques that I wanted to gain.
Actually in my PhD, it was based mainly on cellular models and a lot of molecular biology. This gave me a very good foundation, but I wanted to get more experience in working with mice and mouse models of disease. That's actually what drove me to this lab. I have to say it was very challenging because I was entering as a postdoc into a lab where I did not have the knowledge or the skills, and it was a very humbling experience. Even the undergraduates in the lab had more experience than I did, and I learned from them. I was really starting from scratch, but I think it's those types of challenges that really help you to develop as a scientist.
I'm not sure if I really answered your question the way you asked it, but this is what led me to choose my postdoc lab.
Dr Sandrine: One of the things that you said that I think is interesting to me is you said in this lab that you chose, you had [unintelligible 00:07:37] you could flourish. To me, often the decisions that we made, some of it is based on the way we think about things, but also how we feel about the context, and having a sense of feeling that we can flourish.
What was it that made you feel that at the beginning?
Natasha: Michael's lab, it's a very big lab. There are around 20 people in it, and I would say half the lab is made of postdoctoral fellows. What I found interesting was that each of these postdocs had their own specialty. One would be very good at protein purification, the other would be very good at in vivo muscle regeneration, another would be very good at gene expression, for example.
I found that everybody had an expertise in the lab, and that really attracted me because I knew I could go in there and I knew I could get help for the different areas that I wanted to develop and the different skillsets I wanted to obtain. It was also clear to me that it was a very collaborative environment, and I found that very intellectually stimulating. It's unusual for a Canadian lab because most Canadian labs are small, and the majority of the lab is made up of students. This was an unusual lab I found, and I found it a chance, an opportunity to challenge myself.
Dr Sandrine: Sometime we do want to be challenged, and sometime we overstretch ourselves. When I completely change topic from my PhD to my postdoc, and it was too much of a stretch, if I'm honest with you.
What do you think that you did well in term of adapting to that environment and really making use of the resources that you have in that space so that you could feel that you could learn, but at the same time, not.
Being in a research group that big can be extremely scary. Maybe it's a bit of an over simplification, but it's, like you said, you have all these people who know more than you, and suddenly you may feel I don't know more than the PhD student or the master's student because I've changed topics. How did you, in a way, maintain your resilience of a sense that that was just part of the learning journey, instead of feeling, "Oh, I don't know anything."?
Natasha: Yes, I talked to people in the labs. I talked to the undergraduate students, I talked to the graduate students, and I talked to the postdocs. I talked to everybody and try to learn as much as I can. I didn't go in with the feeling that, "Oh, I'm a postdoc, I have a PhD, so I'm better than you." That was never in my attitude.
I do remember being overwhelmed over several occasions, especially during lab meetings, where people would present their work. I would watch their presentations. Because they were already established people in the lab, they wouldn't give much of an introduction when they presented. It was straight to the data, and I was completely overwhelmed. I remember thinking to myself, "I'm not going to do this. I will always give a little introduction to make my work accessible to people." When I didn't understand something, which happened often, I would go try to find out and learn myself, either read the papers or talk to the person. I think that really was a gradual process. It didn't happen overnight. It happened over the course of several months, I would say.
Then, of course, having the opportunity to attend scientific meetings, and really absorb the culture of a new field, I think it's really important.
Dr Sandrine: During the course of your postdoc, how did then you move towards having a sense that, "Now I'm ready to develop research projects that are mine."? Because sometimes you have postdocs who do one postdoc after another. Although they probably are ready to become PIs themselves, but they not necessarily have the confidence. Sometimes it's just the context where there are not many opportunities to make this transition. In your case, what was the space that you were in when you made that transition of deciding, "Well, now is the time to move and to develop my own projects."?
Natasha: It's a long process for me, but the process of applying for a independent position took over a year. I think that's just the nature of academia, it takes a while. It really happened after I published my first big story and felt, "Now I have enough to show what kind of scientist I am, and that should be enough to apply for a position." That's the transition when it happened.
Then the application process was really something that I didn't expect would take so long and so much effort. It almost felt like a full-time job applying for a faculty position. The approach I took was just to apply to whatever positions were available. I didn't let location this time impact my decision, I really applied globally and internationally worldwide. It is interesting. It's really all about what opportunities are available at the time. That's why I also said that serendipitously, I ended up back at McGill, because that was not part of my plan. I did not know when I was doing my PhD that I might end up back here one day as a faculty member.
That was completely unexpected, but what happened was, there was an opportunity. They were looking for somebody, and I was actually late to the application. I had missed the deadline because I didn't know that there was one, but I reconnected with the professors in my department and I said, "I'm in the process of finishing my postdoctoral fellowship, and I'm looking for a position." They told me, "Send me your CV, we'll see what we can do." This happened within a matter of three days. I had to pull together a new CV and put together an application. It is really sometimes little lucky things like this, especially in my case, that helped me get the position that I'm in now.
Dr Sandrine: At that stage, what was the process of deciding what you were going to work on, because going from, "This is the end of my postdoc, I need to apply for jobs," but when you apply for jobs, you're asked for your research vision, or you were asked actually who is going to form what you want to do, and what is it that you actually want to do. What was it like building this?
Natasha: Right. It had to also be strategic. It had to be based on what I had done, my accomplishments in my postdoctoral fellowship. One of the proteins that I studied during my postdoc was an arginine methyltransferase. We were trying to understand how it's involved in asymmetric muscle stem cell division. Then there was a paper that was published a couple of years before saying that this arginine methyltransferase is actually also important in a completely different cell type, but it's important for transcriptional regulation of cellular autophagy.
That paper made a huge impact on me, and then that's how I decided to springboard from what I did in my postdoc to the new research. Knowing that this is an important player in autophagy, I said, 'Well, in muscle stem cells, could this be also regulating autophagy, and is this also important for muscle stem cell activation and asymmetric cell division." That was the scientific link that brought me to that. Again, I had a very clear discussion with my mentor at the time and said, "This is what I want to work on," and he was in complete 100% supportive of that. We actually sat down and even brainstorm some ideas and some experiments on how to go about investigating this. That is the journey of how this came into place.
Then projects that have developed along the way, I have just been through discussions with people, and figuring out, "Oh, okay, I can look at this and this mainly through talking to colleagues in my department," for example, and finding out what they work on, and how we can merge our expertise.
Dr Sandrine: One of the great challenge as an early career academic, and as a researcher, is this idea of the way we connect to others or potential collaborators, and much of this has got to do with the visibility that we create about our work, or the way that we talk about our work to others so that they build an interest and excitement about working with us. Depending on our personality, this reaching out, or this, people will use the term of blowing your own trumpet, to some, it comes really easily, and others it's more challenging.
What's been your own approach in having a visibility about what you do, your interests, your research competencies, so that other people have a desire to work with you, or so that if they're developing a project, they think of you as a potential contributor or collaborator?
Natasha: This is something that I definitely struggle with. I guess the way I approach it is, whenever there's an opportunity to meet with someone, I try to take it. I never say no to meeting someone, because you never know what that interaction can lead to. I ask people to connect me as well to people. For example, if I need experience with human samples, because my lab is focused on a mouse, I reach out to people that I know through my training, through my career and ask, "Hi, listen, I'm interested in getting some patient samples, do you know who I could ask?" That has helped me a lot.
In the field, people are very generally willing to help out and to connect you when they can, and so I've had people connect me through emails or at conferences this way, and really, I find here mentorship is important, finding people that you can trust, people that you can ask for help. Especially when it involves finding those collaborations, I find having the right mentors and people that are willing to help you to make those connections are essential.
Dr Sandrine: What do you think that you've done to really enhance your visibility beyond your institution or your research community? Often people talk about social media or the way they approach their external visibility, and some people are very reluctant to do it. Others will do policy work and all sorts of things to expand this visibility. What's been your own approach up until now?
Natasha: I would say doing things like this podcast is one way I would say to expand visibility, having a Twitter account as well to put yourself out there and let people know what kind of work it is that you do, what your values are, I would say. When people ask me to contribute to those mentorship activities like, for example, I took part in a conference last year, and the students approached me and said, "We're doing a mentorship activity, would you be willing to participate as a mentor?" I always say yes, because that allows me to reach out to trainees that are not in my immediate network. If I have something to offer, I'm happy to pay it forward.
Dr Sandrine: You mentioned Twitter and I mentioned Twitter, and often if you attend a workshop on developing your visibility and your network, you're given all of these ideas of all the things that you could be doing. The reality of actually the time that we have to dedicate to lots of different activities, we have to make choices, and there are things that we do that have big impact, and others we may do and actually feels that it doesn't really change anything.
What do you think that you've done yourself that's really what made the difference in terms of my visibility, in terms of the way that I am connected to others?
Natasha: One thing that has made an impact was during the pandemic, we couldn't go to conferences. We couldn't make those networks that we normally do. Someone in the field started a virtual slack group. It was called Muscle Science Talks. This was a way to bring all of us together. He also started a seminar series. Every week, we would do seminars. He reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to be part of this, and as an early young career investigator, I thought this is an amazing opportunity. I was very thankful for that.
Joining that I think really did make an impact on my visibility, especially as a junior scientist, because this was at a time where no one would have known who I was, because I wasn't able to travel and meet people. I would say that has probably had a bigger impact than, for example, Twitter, which it's the fashion now to have an account, and I use it mainly more for information to know what's hot in the field more than getting myself out there. I would say that having had that experience, taking part in this International Muscle Science Talks group, being able to contribute to it as an organizer, I think that has had a great impact on visibility.
Dr Sandrine: How do you find talking about your own stuff in a way where you really showcase how good you are? Because again, we may want to talk about the science, but actually talking about the science in a way that people really get excited about our stuff, or really get that feel really good at what we're doing, it's something that feels a bit weird to think about. What's the way that you think that you do this well? It's a hard question. [laughs]
Natasha: That's a tough question because I'm not sure I do it well. I think that's my honest answer. This is something I'm always working on, and they call it the elevator pitch. How are you going to convince people in a few minutes that what you do is exciting? I think this is something I need to work on, to be honest. It depends on who I'm talking to. If I'm talking to a scientist or if I'm talking to my neighbor, I'm going to change the way I say things. I think because you have to make an effort to make your science accessible and easily understood by people. I'm always trying to figure out what's the clearest way to express my ideas. I think this translates to also how I prepare a talk, for example, is really how to send a clear message and how to express a story.
Dr Sandrine: During your postdoctoral time, you probably were exposed to lots of opportunities. Again, time is the essence in any professional life. There are lots of things we will want to do, and we can't do them all.
What were the things that you think you did during your postdoc that really put you on the path to really having a sense, I can do this. I can become a PI?
Some postdocs, they're good in the lab, and they're good at doing the experiments, but at the end of the day, they don't necessarily think about the next research ideas or the next step. They're perfectly good scientists, but they don't necessarily progress. What do you think that you did yourself, as part of your professional development or opportunities, that really you felt that was key in shifting me to that next stage in my career?
Natasha: It's something that I wasn't conscious. I think I realized that I enjoyed putting things together. We talked about the paper, and when I put that paper together, I was the one doing most of that work. It wasn't my supervisor. I realized that I enjoyed that process, taking my research results. Like you said, some postdocs are very good at doing the experiments, but what about the next step? I really enjoyed that next step of putting that whole story together. The same is true for presenting it, because when you give your job talk, you need to craft a presentation based on that story. I think this was not conscious at the time, but reflecting back upon it now, I see that I do enjoy that process. I think that is part of it.
The other part of knowing that I wanted to do this actually came from participating in a postdoc mentoring group. This was actually a female postdoc mentoring group that was available to me at the institution that I was at. I went to this group, and the person, the mentor that was leading this group, I remember having a coffee with her, and I remember revealing to her that I wasn't sure I wanted to be a PI, that I didn't think that I could do it.
The reasons were, I had two little kids at the time, and I thought there is no way that I would survive this life. Having that coffee with her, she told me about her experiences. She's also a mother, and she told me, you make it work. That's how I did it. She was sharing with me her experience. I think that really changed my mindset for me, because I think I was at one of those crossroads where maybe a lot of women come to where they think that I have to choose either family or career. I think I was at that crossroad, but she made me second-guess myself and try. I'm very thankful for that coffee because that has made a big impact on my decision to even apply for faculty positions.
Dr Sandrine: How are you making it work now, navigating the research environment, but also navigating being a parent and having a fulfilled life?
Natasha: You make it work because you have to. As a parent, you have to support your children and keep them alive. I feel like my children ground me. They force me to have a good work-life balance, really. The way I approach it is I do my best. I do my best in the lab with my students, and I do my best at home with my kids. These two things are able to coexist for me.
I think the pandemic also put into perspective for me to prioritize what's important in my life and to slow down. I think before the pandemic happened, I was probably trying to handle too much on my plate, and probably close to maybe burning out as a PI. Then the pandemic happened and we all had to freeze and stay at home for a few months. I think that really put perspective for me, and to prioritize my health, my kids, what's important, but also the education of my trainees. That has helped in terms of making everything work together.
Everyone has their own strategies. If you talk to any parents, some will work late in the evening, some will work early in the morning. For me, it was the early in the morning that I would wake up and try to write my grants when there was no distractions. You make it work for you. I don't see it as a challenge so much. It's more of just a way of living, but also something that it's how I function. I find it quite a natural process. It's not good to compare or to complain about it because this is the life that I've chosen, and it's what makes me happy. I can't imagine not working, and I can't imagine not being a parent. It works.
Dr Sandrine: How do you find being a non-Canadian native working in the country? You've lived in Canada for a long time now. I'm French and I did my PhD in an American institution, and then I moved to the UK, working in another institution. When you're a foreigner moving into a different research context in a different culture, sometimes it takes time and there are things that you struggle with, or the way the perception that people have of you as a foreigner is not necessarily what you want. What has it been like for you?
Natasha: I think being in Montreal is quite good for that. It's a very international city, and I'm actually very happy to be back here and raising my kids here because it's very international.
In terms of the Canadian scientific culture, though, I'm quite lucky that I was trained. All my scientific training has been done in Canada, so for me, I don't really have anything to compare it to. I have considered, when I was looking for my position, whether I would want to move back to Hong Kong, for example. Actually, I decided not to do that because I think the change in research culture would've been a big shock. I'm happy to actually be in this culture where I was trained. I think to change it is probably quite challenging, but that's not something that I have faced.
Dr. Sandrine: You said you've been a PI for about three years now. What has been the most challenging for you in this transition from going from being a postdoc where you do your own experiment with just your own stuff, and then suddenly you let go of the experiments for others to do, and all your amazing ideas that you've spent years crafting, you hand them over for other people to accomplish them, and it's not necessarily an easy step. What's been exciting? What's been challenging in that transitional?
Natasha: I would say that when I started my lab, I inherited an empty room. There were no chairs, there was no equipment. That was the first challenge, was having to set up the lab. Then the second challenge is to recruit people. I would say that that is incredibly challenging, knowing what are the right people that you want in your research group. Then having recruited some students early on and then training them and then watching them independently perform experiments, is probably the most exciting moment for me, is when I saw that they were independently doing experiments. Even though I can't be on the bench seeing them do it, is probably the most thrilling thing.
Dr. Sandrine: What's been really challenging in term of that transition, because you mentioned actually getting the lab setup, recruiting the right people. What are the challenges during this first few years as a PI?
Natasha: I would say it is the enormous amount of responsibility that you have as a PI. Not only are you responsible for ordering all the reagents, you're also responsible for making sure that your students have their salary. Then you have to, of course, recruit the right people. You have to make sure your equipment works. You have to make sure that the computers work. I find that the list of responsibilities is quite overwhelming. I think that is probably the biggest challenge, is that you, as a postdoc, and all my friends had acquired their own position told me, "Enjoy your time as a postdoc, because when you're a new PI, everything changes." I did not listen to them.
Now I understand why they say that, because as a postdoc, you only focus on your experiments, your science and what you have to do. I find that as a PI, you still need to focus on the science, but now you focus on the science of all your trainees, plus everything else that goes into running a lab. It has made me see things very differently in terms of the mentors that I trained under and what they had to do to keep a lab running. I have a lot of respect for that.
Dr. Sandrine: What do you think that you are doing now to try to set up a good research culture within your own team? What are the practices that you have, or the habits that you have to create the atmosphere that you want for your team?
Natasha: I would say that I really focus on communication and transparency within the group. We have our weekly meetings, and I try, in the meetings, to always include them in any important discussion. When there's an important decision that we need to make, for example, regarding the lab space, or when I want to recruit someone, I include them in that discussion. In terms of recruiting people to the lab, I always ask for their opinion. I want them to meet the person that I'm interested in recruiting. We interview them together, and they give me feedback.
For me, it's very important that the people in my lab get along, and part of facilitating that is to have this open channel of communication. Of course, we use tools that help that. We have our lab slack group, and I find that that has been very helpful to make information accessible to everyone in the lab. It's not just if I had a conversation with one student, I can then put that so that everyone has access. For example, if I'm recommending a paper that I think someone should read, I can then send it to the whole group and everybody has access to the same information. If I have a workshop that I think would be useful to some, I would put it so that it's open for everyone. I think transparency and communication has been helpful in really promoting a more inclusive and positive research culture.
I also encourage them, of course, to work together. When I have an invitation to write either a review article or a protocols paper, I try to get the students to work together and promote that inter-lab collaboration.
Dr. Sandrine: How do you set the scene to make this successful, because sometime, with the best intention, you may say to two of your team members, okay, there is this review that we can write together, you two are going to work together, but how do you set the scene so that it actually works?
Natasha: How I did it last time was I had a meeting with everyone, and I stated my expectations. I said this is what we need to do, and this is the role of each individual author, should you decide to accept this responsibility. For example, as a group, we came to the agreement that there would be two co-first authors on this particular manuscript. I explained what is the job of the first author, to make it very clear that these are the expectations, these are your responsibilities, and you have to be willing to take this on, because it's an enormous amount of time.
I think just being clear on what I expect has helped to set that stage, and through the discussion, it was volunteer-based, whoever wanted to take on the responsibility took it on. So far, that has worked out for us. Some people don't want that responsibility, and that is fine too. They just contribute what they can.
Dr. Sandrine: In term of talking about inclusion, also accepting that people want to live their life differently and not necessarily take some responsibility. I suppose what is hard is also not to pass judgment in term of the ambition, motivation that others have. I suppose as a PI, sometime you may see a postdoc who is extremely talented, but do not necessarily want that next step or that next responsibility. In a way, figuring out is it because they lack confidence or is it because their ambition is very different.
When you're facing situation like that, how do you approach it?
Natasha: I think I spend a lot of time observing the people in my lab to understand what their ambitions are. I would never try to enforce my ambitions on somebody else, but I would ask, is this something that you're interested in doing, is this something that you feel would help you. I also ask, "What do you need to support your development?" I try to provide that as much as possible. Really, I try to provide the opportunities that I can provide to help them succeed. To me, it's clear that every trainee has their own way of learning, has their own goals, and some of them don't know, and that's okay as well.
I actually just recruited a postdoc to my lab, so I'm very thankful to have a postdoc. Her next step, it's still too early to say, but I will try to give her as much opportunity as possible because she's very talented. It's all about I think just finding opportunities and supporting them in giving them these opportunities.
Dr. Sandrine: What do you think's been your biggest mistake since starting as a PI? You probably have had many, but thinking about can the team dynamics or the way that you relate to senior management in your department or your approach to what you've applied for for funding, what's the biggest mistake that you've made?
Natasha: That's a difficult question. I would say that in the beginning, I felt very rushed to do things. I felt enormous pressure to show that you hired the right person and that I'm ready to go. I think it takes time to settle into this new position. I think I should have given myself more time and not rushed into decisions. That has played into many different things, such as grant writing, for example. I think in the beginning, I tried to write many grants, because that was the expectation, that you need to support your lab financially, but that ended up in me not writing the best grants that I could because I was trying to do too many. If I had to go back and redo that, I would have just focused on one important grant, for example, and just focused on that and written a good one. Then the others will fall into place in the subsequent years.
I think I rushed that, and then that made life very difficult because then I was writing grants, instead of setting up my lab, and then I was getting rejections. The first two years were a very difficult time because of trying to get the grants and constantly getting rejections. Rushing into being a scientist right away, I think is probably the biggest mistake I made.
Dr. Sandrine: If you were going to give one piece of wisdom to a new PI just starting, what would you say to them?
Natasha: I would say don't stress. I would say, things have a way of falling into place, and you will get there, but don't rush the process. Try to enjoy all the new challenges, because there's no other way than to get through them. You have to. You have to figure out your way through the administrative tasks that you have to do, just try to enjoy the process. I would say also, don't be afraid to reach out to people. People are very willing to help. Everybody remembers when they were at your stage, and don't be afraid to ask for help, because everybody seems busy, but everybody wants to help, and that's something that I have felt. The department that I'm in is extremely supportive, and I'm very grateful for that. Even colleagues from my postdoc lab that have gone on to independent positions, I reached out to them as well, and they're very willing to help, because everybody knows how hard it is in the beginning.
Dr. Sandrine: You mentioned this idea of, in some ways resilience. When you're starting, there is so much that you have to face. What do you think is your recipe for your own resilience? You mentioned having to slow down and having kids is part of grounding you, and I'm sure it's part of your own resilience, but what really sustain your resilience in the research environment?
Natasha: I would say having a very supportive network helped maintain my resilience. You realize very quickly who you connect with easily, and I would say, really foster those connections. During the pandemic, I checked in on my colleagues, they checked in on me, just to make sure everyone is doing okay, but also, formally, we have a mentorship program in my department, and I have selected mentors from different career stages. I find that that has been really helpful, because when I come across a challenge or a question, I'm able to address it to specific mentors. Finding a network of people that you can trust for you to be vulnerable, and ask those questions, I think is really important.
Dr. Sandrine: That's really lovely, Natasha.
I've got a final question that I like to ask everyone, is, what gives you joy in research?
Natasha: At the moment, what gives me joy is seeing my trainees succeed. When they get an exciting result, or when they get an award, I find that really rewarding, and what's even sometimes better than that is when I get a thank you. When I get just a small message saying things, I just feel really appreciated. I think for me at the moment, that is what is bringing me joy.
Dr. Sandrine: That's wonderful. Thank you so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate your time. Thank you.
Natasha: Thank You, Sandrine.
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