66- Prof. Kristen Brennand- Transitioning out of the sprint

Kristen Brennand is Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics at Yale University School of Medicine. She first set up her own research group in 2012 at Mount Sinai, after a Postdoc at the Salk Institute and a PhD at Harvard University. She reflects on balance in research careers.

From the outside, Kristen’s research career looks like the perfect trajectory without a single faux pas, even though we fully know these do not exist. The metaphor of styles of running emerges in our conversation; running a sprint versus running a marathon is a valuable anchor in getting us to explore how we want to navigate the research environment. Building endurance in research careers becomes even more tangible during the transition from being a Postdoc to research group leader

From an early drive about working with the best people, in the best places, doing the best science, her energy has shifted towards being motivated in supporting her research team; connecting people and seeing the synergy that emerges from bringing together people with different expertise. The motivation is still about doing faster, bigger and bolder research but through the full synergy with her teams.

Kristen shares that it was only several years after she became a PI, when she was feeling she was losing the battle to have some balance between home/ work that she started to believe things could be different. A conversation with her husband got her started in experimenting with working less hours than she had before. This was a personal challenge that shifted her perspective. The pace of working, the goals she was setting for herself, the amount of time spent at work- a lot of this could change if she started to experiment with a different approach.

We are set to believe that we need to follow the paths that others have led before us. Our belief of what it takes to become an independent and successful researcher is based on how others have done it before. Their beliefs shape their mentoring approach. Learning to mentor differently is part of what is needed in research environments. We may want to navigate the research environment in our own way, not the way our mentors have done it.

Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:

• How the “too many good advice of others” may not be what we need
• How believing that we have choices in our way of working can create our new reality 
• What resilience could look like for you when your research does its usual up and down looping

Transcript

Sandrine Soubes: 0:00

All right, let's get started. Good morning, dear listener. Good evening or good afternoon, wherever you are. It's a great pleasure to have with me a new guest on the podcast and I've got Christine Brenner. Welcome on the podcast. How are you

Kristen Brennand: 0:28

thank you. I'm great. I'm really excited to be here.

Sandrine Soubes: 0:32

So I'm interviewing across the ocean. Obviously, I mean, the UK and you're in the US and based on the bio that you have online you have a very impressive professional title because not only are you professor of genetics, but you're also professor of of psychiatry. And at the moment, you're working at the University of Yale in the medical school. It would be really fascinating to start hearing how your research career started.

Kristen Brennand: 1:02

Yeah. So I did my undergraduate research or undergraduate studies at University of Calgary. I was really fortunate there to be able to work in a laboratory each summer the first summer with actually a microbiology lab under Dr. Michael Hines. And then the next year, I actually was incredibly fortunate to be accepted into a program run by the National Research Council of Canada. And so I had the opportunity to, to spend each summer in Ottawa Canada and work for some NRC labs. And then I, I came back in my senior year, my, my fourth year at U of C to work at a stem cell lab of Sam Weiss. And, and that was really when I decided to pursue graduate studies. I, I actually applied to Harvard on a lark just, just to see and was. Surprised and excited to get in there. And so that, you know, I had always planned to stay in Canada. But yeah, I ended up going to, to Cambridge, to Boston to do my PhD. I did it with Dr. Douglas Melton who was one of the first to be doing stem cell research at the time. It was a really fantastic developmental biology lab. Just beginning to foray into human embryonic stem cell research at a time when George Bush was president, and this was still very controversial. And when I finished my PhD, I decided I wanted to stop trying to make pancreatic beta cells and start trying to make Neurons from our stem cells to get on the right side of neural default. And so I went west to San Diego to do my postdoc with Rusty Gage at the Salk Institute. Where I started, the goal was really to apply stem cells to study a brain disease. And, and I felt because I was going to such a good neuroscience lab, I wanted to do something, something harder than neurodegeneration because I felt like any, any stem cell biologist could tell a dead neuron from a live neuron. And that was really how I ended up in, in psychiatry. I wanted highly heritable non neurodegenerative diseases and started looking at schizophrenia. Autism and bipolar disorder. And so, by the end of my postdoc I think, again, I was just really fortunate to be in the right place at the right time. IPS cells were gaining traction and the first genome wide association studies for psychiatric disorders were being completed. And so I came to a psychiatric genetics group at Mount Sinai in New York to start my lab. Where this was, I was surrounded by geneticists every day who wanted to understand the genetic studies that they were, they were doing. And I got to work with the best of them. I spent almost 10 years at Mount Sinai in New York. And loved every minute of it but yeah, then it came time to make another change. And I, I moved on to to Yale in 2020. And I've been there since.

Sandrine Soubes: 4:00

So from the outside, It's a really stellar research career, or what people may say, very straightforward in terms of moving from one step to the next in terms of progressing in your career. But obviously the reality of it is that it's always much more complicated. So I'm really interested in unpinning some of the layers of maybe some of these experiences that you've had along the way. So Maybe the first question that I have is really about what drives you as a researcher.

Kristen Brennand: 4:29

It's such an interesting question because when I reflect back on it, the answers change with time, right? And they change with, I guess, age and maturity. At the beginning of the career, coming out of undergrad, I was really excited about learning things that no one knew the answer to, right? Like, I was excited about being at the best places and doing the best science and being at the edge. And I think that was really what drove me in graduate school. And as a postdoc being surrounded by the most motivated people doing the most risky, the biggest science. But I think these days I mean, I love doing science. I love learning new things, but I'm much more driven by the trainees. I love watching them get to where they're going. I actually really love connecting people. Introducing two people that I think will. Benefit from the interactions. Helping science move forward, not necessarily by what I do, but by making sure each of us are better than some of the parts that we are interacting and new, more cohesive or synergistic ways to do something more efficiently and faster and bigger and bolder.

Sandrine Soubes: 5:48

What you're describing is certainly something that, as I interview a lot of academics, I can really see this evolution of people thinking about their own topic. And, and later on, as they build their research groups, actually the excitement of seeing, early career scientists really build their own space. I'm interested to hear from you in terms of the research niche that you build, because over the last few years, I've had lots of conversations with research fellows, are they writing their first fellowship application? And this, these questions of research niche is something that, that keeps coming. Because as a, you know, as a PhD student and as a postdoc, you work on something, you know, something else is designed as such, even though you bring your own thing, still, these are the, you know, the, the research ideas, the research interest of whoever you're working with. As you're building your research independent, then it's really your own stuff. And how have you found and how have you developed that own space and what was really significant in creating the research niche that you feel you have now.

Kristen Brennand: 6:53

Yeah, that is such a, an interesting question to think back on. And I think sometimes yeah. Some of this is, you know, accidental and some of it is, is purposeful. And I think for each person that, that the truth in hindsight might, might be a little bit different. For myself, I knew I was always interested in stem cell biology. I knew, you know, this was so long ago now, but the idea, you know, at first it was regenerative biology before we had our programming, but that we use it for translational. insights and therapies. And so I think I really spent graduate school grounding and development of biology and learning about stem cells. And then the postdoc was about neuroscience for me. And so already that was bridging two fields, stem cells to neuroscience. And at that point, I could have stayed, you know, a stem cell lab and really been in the neuroscience space. But you're always impacted by the community that you go to. And I think some people, it can be a great comfort to stay in your niche. And I for whatever reason have been terrible about that. And so by landing in a genetics community, it forced me and challenged me to change my science again. And when I talk with trainees about this niche, what I'm always trying to point out is just by leaving their postdoc lab, just by the nature of putting themselves somewhere new, their science is going to change. That you don't always have to fight so hard to separate yourself from your postdoc advisor, because. You will evolve based on the people that you are around. And so, you know, in some ways, what's more important is to think about who you want to be around, right? What kind of environment do you want to be in? Because that will shape your research, I think. You know, carving yourself up is one way to separate from your postdoc mentor and carve out this space. But I think for me, it's been really natural to keep adding fields. Do something that none of your mentors are doing. And then there's no competition, right? Take stem cells. To neuro, take the neuro to genetics and you're naturally, you know, like the first year or two, you might not be so dissimilar from your previous venture, but very quickly there will be large gaps because you'll be pulled in these new directions by your new community.

Sandrine Soubes: 9:17

So the, this idea of community feels important to you in term of whoever surrounds you is part of shaping your thinking and it's, it's part of building, the curiosity that is needed in, in developing research niche.

Kristen Brennand: 9:34

I mean, there are labs that are so complete on their own that they don't need others. And I'm not one of those, I guess. I don't like doing science in a bubble or in a silo. I'm always trying to get outside of my own comfortable space and, and, you know, to be fair, I don't have to do all the work to do it. All of my students and many of my postdocs are co mentored with somebody else. And so that is always a push and a pull into a second direction. Right. And so when When all of your work and I truly mean this. I haven't had a grant that was just in my name since 10 years ago. I haven't had a paper that wasn't co corresponded. You know, all of my, my, my proposals, all of my papers, they're all collaborative in nature. They all reflect the contributions of two or three teams. And so, yeah, I think it, it just expands what is possible. It lets me me. Jump into new field without feeling ready because somebody else is there to help. It lets us do riskier science I think I've always kind of thought of stem cells as this tool this bridge that can connect labs and questions and problems And that's really where we still are.

Sandrine Soubes: 10:57

So I've worked as a researcher developer for 15 years now. So I've run lots of workshop with, PhD student, postdocs and so on. And one of the, thing that we always discuss is, what's needed for your professional development, what's needed beyond just being at the bench doing what you're meant to be doing. So I'm interesting to hear from you. In terms of the way that you develop professionally, because we can't do everything and we have to be focused and the opportunities that we take or we don't. what do you feel was the most significant in the way that you develop your career as a postdoc or as a PhD student that put you in a really good position to then transition to become an independent researcher?

Kristen Brennand: 11:42

Yeah and I don't want to say that this was all by design. I, I, in many ways, I got really lucky. I, I followed things that looked shiny. But in hindsight, I have been incredibly fortunate to work with some really amazing mentors. Not just Brilliant mentors, but caring and compassionate mentors. Both Doug and Rusty cared about their trainees when they were in the lab, but advocated and sponsored for them on their way out too, and are still people. That I, I value having, you know, communications and collaborations with, I think having a mentor who sees you as more than a project and that's like a philosophy that I've, I've tried to carry forward in my lab people over projects helping support people to get where they're going, because the truth is. We don't all know where we're going from the beginning. And so my job is so much more than just, you know, my, my trainees can design their own experiments for the most part, they don't need my help at the bench by petting. They need help figuring out what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, what their goals are, when their goals should change, you know, some goals you should hold onto tightly and, and some. You should let go of because there isn't I'm always stressing. There's an opportunity cost for keeping all doors open to and so figuring out where you want to go and no longer putting efforts in directions. You don't want to go is, you know, such a big part of training. Whether somebody wants to go to academics or biotech or policy or teaching or consulting, there are so many jobs that you can do with a biology PhD. And I think, having a mentor who cares about you and your goals and not just how your progress reflects on them. And I've been, I've been so fortunate in that respect.

Sandrine Soubes: 13:42

So in the choices that you made yourself, sometimes we go for an interview or we apply for a position and we don't actually know who we're going to work with. We know on paper, you know, the papers they've published and so on. But when you went for opportunities, what was your Decision making process in term. Okay. That's a PI. I really want to work with. What was your own way of, of making these decisions?

Kristen Brennand: 14:08

I mean, When I interviewed for postdoc positions, I don't think I was this mindful as a graduate student, but I asked everybody that I met in the lab two questions and in this order. The first question was what's the best thing about this lab? And then after they'd given an answer, I'd ask what the worst thing is about this lab. And you would kind of laugh, but they're scientists and it's a fair follow up and And I still, to this day, have all of my trainees ask both questions when they're interviewing. And when I have, you know, trainees applying for my lab, I have them ask both questions of everybody in the lab. Because I stand by this idea that there's no such thing as a perfect lab. What you're looking for is a lab where you value, The good in the lab and you can manage the weakness of the lab and so if you know, you talk to 10 people in that lab and they say 10 different good things, that's fine. If they say the same thing 10 times, it's important that you value check. Well, I appreciate that because if the best thing in the lab is something that isn't that important to you, that the cafeteria is really good in the building or that everybody cuts out early on Fridays if it snows to go snowboarding, but you don't like to ski, like then you're not appreciating. What is the strength of the lab? You know, and I, I always will give the example of Rusty's lab because I, I chose it and I would recommend it to almost everybody. Like I had a great experience there. The best thing with the lab, everybody said was that Rusty really cared. He really supported their trainees. And I was like, I, I like that. That sounds fantastic. And then the second question, the follow up, what's the worst thing about this lab? You get ten different answers, not a big deal. Made everybody name something, but if you get the same answer ten times. Once again, it's so important that you reflect on that. How will you feel a year from now saying that same worst thing, right? There was a time when my lab was at Mount Sinai, where we just did not have enough space. And I knew the worst thing about the lab was that we didn't have enough physical space. And I knew that it caused conflicts every once in a while, because people were sharing benches and, you know, somebody would stay late. Or some experiment and just leave a mess and be like, oh, I'll clean it up in the morning. But because they stayed late, they slept in and they didn't come in until like 11 or 12. And somebody else is the early bird who shows up to go use that bench and it's a mess. And they're furious when they come in because they have to clean somebody else's bench before they can start. And they, you know, post a slack post with the pictures and be super mad. And in the end, this would recur because Because we didn't have space, and so, you had to be the kind of person who could just roll with that. We knew people were people, people made mistakes, you couldn't hold a grudge, you know, people would apologize and clean it up but it was a pressure point. And I knew that. And I, unfortunately, I couldn't solve it. Like I said, there's no perfect lab. And so some people could look at that and be like, I can tolerate that. And some people were like, I can't deal with conflict at all. I can't come. And that's the kind of thing where, you know, I tell my trainees, you have to assume you're going to have the average experience. Yes, you're exceptional. Yes, you work really hard. But look around the lab. Everybody in the lab is exceptional. They all work really hard. You can't think that you're going to out tough and outwork problems that other people are, you know, you will experience this too. And so, I think it's so important to know what the best and the worst is. And that doesn't mean you can't join, but you have to be mindful enough to know if you yourself will appreciate the good and be able to manage the bad.

Sandrine Soubes: 17:48

I mean, in a way, I think it's about, self awareness and being honest with ourselves. it's about, I suppose, not pretending that we are a certain way, but accepting, okay, that's the way I am. And that's the environment that I need is the way I am going to fit with that specific environment. Because often we have almost like an ideal version of ourselves you know, that's the person that we want to be, but. Actually, it's not very helpful. It's like, what's my reality and is my reality going to fit in that context?

Kristen Brennand: 18:19

It's so true. And I see this in so many different ways, right? Like everybody wants to think they're the most independent. They don't need mentoring, but in truth, we all do. I needed more mentoring as a junior faculty. I got more mentoring as a junior faculty than I got as a grad student. It was different mentoring. But I think knowing what you need, you know, there are students who, who hide when things are hard in the lab. And that's like, I find that one of the hardest traits to mentor because. That's when they most need help, but they need help, and their instinct is to hide, which makes it even harder for them to ask for help and you to give it, and this self awareness, like it's the perfect word that you used, it's sometimes our instincts are counter to what we actually need, they're counterproductive, and, and knowing, you know, sometimes you've got to be in the wrong lab to realize what you need, unfortunately, and that's kind of how it goes, And what you need will change over time. Like, just because you need more help and guidance now doesn't mean you will in two years. It really is evolving the set of needs that we each have.

Sandrine Soubes: 19:24

So Kristen, when you're reflecting on, the transition, when you first became a PI, what did you find the most challenging in that period of transition? Thinking, okay, the postdoc is behind me. Now, here I am this independent person. And I'm putting independent in inverted commas because obviously throughout our career, we do need mentor and we never work in isolation, but there is this idea of independent. So what's been, challenging in that transition?

Kristen Brennand: 19:54

I love this question because, we talk about this a lot in the lab about the different challenges and the different career phases. And I think, you know, and no, no, nothing that I could say would be absolutely true for everybody. But I would say in general, the greatest challenge that grad students face tend to be imposter syndrome, right? They all are just waiting to be kicked out because somebody realized they shouldn't have gotten in. They all think they're the only one who's messed up an experiment ever. And instead of like, recognizing that most experiments fail. And I think that's the big transition from grad school to postdoc, is the grad students come to realize most experiments fail, and they actually have to plan and accommodate for this failure rate. That it's not them failing, like, to be productive, you have to assume a certain failure, right? And the postdocs, I feel like for them, the greatest challenge is uncertainty. They don't know when their postdocs will end. They don't know what kind of job they'll get, where it will be. They can't plan their lives because they're in this period of limbo that can last for an indefinite period of time. And then as the, you know, this faculty member for the first time, you know, like you have confidence in yourself, you have stability. At least a five year to seven year runway, depending on your tenure clock. And the challenges change. And I think for me, it was twofold. One, this sense of responsibility, other people's lives, and you know, that not just their job, but because of their job. You know, their living situation, their relationships, their stability depended on me and that, that was a lot of pressure. And so the sense of responsibility was challenging and I think more unexpected was like Endurance, I think in me, which is to say as a grad student and as a postdoc, you are sprinting, you're going as hard as you can trying to make the cut, I guess. I'm not sure. At least that was my experience. And at some point, you have to You know, and I'm a runner, so I apologize for the analogy, but you have to stop sprinting and transition into marathon mode. This has to be a pace that you can hold not for another year, but for a career, and making that transition was really challenging. And it took me a few years to realize, and I think that if I hadn't made that transition, I wouldn't have been able to stay in the job. It was too exhausting and too stressful and I had to refocus and start thinking longer term to be able to, to enjoy the job that I had spent a career training for.

Sandrine Soubes: 22:35

The two parts of your response is interesting. The first one in term of up until you're a PI, you're mostly focused on the science and you're focused on yourself. And then as, as a new PI, suddenly, like you described, whether people can get a mortgage or not, whether they can stay with their boyfriend, girlfriend or whatever, whether you, get the next funding or not. And then this thing, I really love this, this idea of transitioning to a marathon sort of approach of, can I keep going? So. What did you need to start doing or start telling yourself to be able to shift to that new mode of, I'm responsible, not just about the science, but my responsibility goes beyond in term of to carry opportunities of others what, what did you start doing?

Kristen Brennand: 23:23

Yeah, it was hard. I don't think there was a, a single solution here. I think it was a lot of reflecting and growing and letting go all at the same time. so easy to carry the weight of each training in the lab, and I think at some point, you realize they're all going to be fine. Like, even if lab closed tomorrow, they're amazing. Somebody else would be lucky to get them. And I think, you know, it's this whole thing of like, letting go. Like I, for me, I just, and maybe that's not, maybe that's not the way anybody else handled it. There are lots of cool jobs. There are lots of cool paths. You know, even if I couldn't keep my job, right, because you, you, you do still have this self doubt about can I get grants and then five years later, can I renew them? I don't think I have a good answer here about how I manage. I think, and I do, I feel like there's this survivorship bias. I would ask people, you know, I'd ask my chair, like how, you know, They got the confidence that they would just renew the grants and that it could stop stressing over stuff. And they're like, well, because it always works out. And you're like, well, that's because you still have the job. How many people did it not just always work out for? And so there is a survivorship bias. Like, oh, I got through the last one. I got through the one before that. I got through the one before that. And yeah, I was fortunate and lucky. And I think with time, you just. I guess you just can't hold it so close to your heart. I don't know. Maybe you just, it will all work out, even if not in the way that I thought, thought it had to.

Sandrine Soubes: 25:09

but also decided that in a way, whatever the next step, you have all the skills and the experiences that you have. And if there is a, this grant is unsuccessful and that lab is unsuccessful, there are Other jobs out there for professionals. And I suppose that's an important thing for postdocs because also many of them will not get academic positions. So having a healthy attitude of saying, okay, well, you may not know what next, carrier step is, but you are highly. capable professionals. So

Kristen Brennand: 25:41

Yes, that's exactly it. I actually was having, you know, not too long ago, I had this conversation with a postdoc in the lab who was, you know, they're very driven to go into academics, and I think they have as good a chance as the best of them. But their skill set would be fantastic for biotech too. And we were talking about that and they were like, well, you know, like, I just don't want to take a bad biotech job where I'm doing something that's not interesting. And I was like, well, why would you take that? Like, I'll do my best to pay you as much as I can here. I want to keep you here as happy for as long as, as I can. The only biotech job you would take is exactly the science that you think is interesting, but paying you double what I am. That's the only reason you would, you would jump is that you've got to do the science that you wanted at a better pay sooner than you could in academics. And she was like, Oh, like, why would you take a crappy job? And I think that realization that like, Oh, like, You're right. I, you know, like, yeah, I'm afraid of a bad job in biotech, but if I only take jobs that are interesting, it's going to be fine. And I think, you know, my students, they got into Yale. They're going to be fine. My postdocs are, they're fantastic. Like, they're going to be fine. They're all going to have really interesting jobs. And will they all have the job they thought they wanted when they joined the lab? No, but life happens. In a four year training time span. People meet their partners or leave their partners, they decide that it's more important to live in this city or that city, they, they recognize that this strength is actually their passion or that this weakness is something that They don't want to get better at it, they just want a job that doesn't involve it and that clarity will help people change their goals, and, and they'll, like, they all have incredible jobs.

Sandrine Soubes: 27:38

It's almost like having a, a positive outcome in mind instead of all the negative that can happen. Say, okay. I don't know what's next, but it's fine because there will be something that is new and that is different and instead of worrying. And I think there is people really kind of cling on to fear. so often instead of, I don't know, instead of feeling excited about not knowing. And, that's what is so strange because when you do research, you do not know what, the outcome of your experiments, you're pushing the boundaries of the unknown. And at the same time, there is this dichotomy with this idea of, I don't know what's next in my career because funding is uncertain because we don't know whether this big paper that we wanted to publish is going to be accepted. So the people live in this unknown and at the same time they thrive on the unknown in their research.

Kristen Brennand: 28:37

Yeah, but I think, I think that's a really interesting point, but I also don't think that we all bring home the same traits that we bring to the lab bench, right? Like, when I was doing my post doc, and we were trying to make stem cell models of, you know, from people with schizophrenia. time I gave lab meetings, like, what's your backup plan? Like, it's really risky. I was like, yeah, but if it doesn't work, I'll go to biotech. It'll be fine. And like, literally I bet five years of my life on no backup plan. And I'm like, I've never put a quarter in a slot in Vegas. I don't gamble. I don't like risk. Where did this come from? Why was I so willing to bet my career when I won't bet a quarter in a slot? And so I think being okay with uncertainty at the lab bench is very different from being okay with uncertainty in your life. You know, we don't, we aren't necessarily the same people. We don't have the same traits at the bench at home.

Sandrine Soubes: 29:34

So what gave you the confidence to be daring? And I'm talking about daring because I run this program called Daring to Dare. So what gave you the confidence to be daring within your research? Work.

Kristen Brennand: 29:46

I honestly have no idea. I don't know if I didn't value myself, but I think it was more that I enjoyed the learning and I truly believed The skill set was going to be useful that like, I mean, I was right there, like Shinya Yamanaka, you know, first reported IPS cells in 2006. Like that was the last year of my grad school training. Like this was going to be transformative. I knew it was going to be transformative. I didn't recognize how long it would take to get to clinical trial. I thought it was going to be faster than it even has been. But like, I just knew that if I latched onto this, This science, it was going to be okay. I didn't know where the jobs were going to be or what they were going to look like. But I knew I had to be with that science in that moment.

Sandrine Soubes: 30:39

So there is almost like a, an inner belief that's the work that needs to happen. And I want to make happen. But this inner belief, not everybody's got that sort of sense of inner belief. In your case, where do you feel that it came from?

Kristen Brennand: 30:55

I don't know if there's an inner belief. Because I wasn't saying that I was good enough. I was saying the science is good enough. So maybe there's a more external belief. I believe in stem cells. But I hold on to that. This field is going places. I just gotta cling tight. it's so funny to look back how many people are on the right science at the wrong time in history, right? you know, I think one of the great examples of that is green energy, right? We've seen investments in green energy go up and down, and they were right about green energy in the 70s. But OPEC dropped oil prices and, you know, The research stalls, and so I think I picked right, but I was lucky that I picked right. There are lots of scientists who also bet right on their fields. And through no fault of their own the fields move in different directions.

Sandrine Soubes: 31:43

sort of links to values and having a sense that I know this work matters and I want to contribute and the outcome of it, it may work, it may not work, it may get funded or not, but actually it's about caring about the work to be done. And maybe that's the only thing that we can control is, you know, on the values that we have. It's like, okay, if I care about this and I'm prepared to put, my time, my life, the hours on this world, because it matters to me, even if it doesn't matter to others. But actually for me, that that's, that's my thing. I

Kristen Brennand: 32:19

I think, I think so. Like, I think it's, we can't be experts in everything. So what do you want to

Sandrine Soubes: 32:28

that's a hard one. So I'll be interesting to, to hear a little bit about your own approach to building your research group, because again, that transition from working as a postdoc to having people work for you. In the UK, there's been a lot of policy work on, challenging the research culture and now there is, a lot of new policies around working on that. But when, when you're reflecting on, the first few years and more recently in the, dynamics that you have in your group, what do you think that you've done in creating a positive research environment? where different type of people can thrive. Because again, when we're thinking about, the diversity agenda, in the world of research, there is a mechanism of, reproduction of, you know, who we see as doing research, who we recruit and so on.

Kristen Brennand: 33:18

So I remember when I first started the lab, going to the chair of the department being like, Gosh, like, it's really easy, to mentor, you know, the highly motivated students but I'm, I'm really struggling with mentoring everybody else, and, and the chair at the time just laughed at me and was like, that's the whole game, Tristan, like there's no challenge in, in mentoring, you know, those ones, it's everybody else, and I think with time I've come to realize it's one of the big problems, I think, in, in academics is that we all want to Mentor the people who remind us of ourselves, because those are the easiest ones to mentor, but that is why science stays so homogeneous. The ones that remind us of ourselves also tend to look like ourselves, have experiences and backgrounds that resemble our own. And so I think it's so important to learn how to mentor people who don't remind you of yourself, right? Because. In a diverse lab, most of them shouldn't. One of the hardest lessons I had to learn is actually really simple. I hate deadlines. I find them stressful. I try to get stuff done a few weeks before them, so I'm never up against them. There are people who need them. They might hate them too, but they need them. And so, you know, I have to figure out in the lab who needs deadlines and who don't. Because In real life, almost all deadlines are fake. They're either self imposed or externally imposed by somebody who self imposed them. And so we'll sit and be like, so I, you know, when should you give me an update on it? What will our deadline be? And some of the students are like, oh, I'll get to it as soon as I can. You know, you should have it in a few days or a week. And some will be like, I need a deadline. And so we'll sit and we'll look at the calendar and be like, what, how long do you think it will take? And we'll sit and we'll agree on a deadline and I'll remind them, it's a fake deadline. If you need an extension, just ask. And then they'll show up the day of the deadline having pulled an all nighter and be super exhausted like, I got this to you. And at first I felt awful, like I had failed them. And then I realized this is what they needed, right? Like some people just need deadlines and it is not about how I feel about deadlines. Like the fact that I feel awful is not relevant here. They got what they needed to push past and do what they wanted to do. They needed me. To impose a deadline, even if I felt sick about doing so. And that's just like a tiny example, but I think it's, it's really true. Some people need different things than other people. And a big part of being a mentor is that process of discovery. What does one person respond well to? What does somebody else respond to? And then in turn teaching them how to mentor, which I find hilariously fun. Because now it's them rediscovering all the things that, like, I've discovered and then being like, wait, you were doing this to me? Like Yeah, like this is this is mentorship like this is hard. This is figuring it out. And so I think part of the answer is being comfortable having different types of people with different needs in the lab. Because if you if you can't do that, if you can't, it's one thing just to accept people from all backgrounds, but they can't succeed in your lab. You've done harm, right? You shouldn't accept diverse people if you can't help them be successful. It makes it worse. To have them come in and then have them leave science or leave your lab feeling demoralized and more insecure and less confident. So one, being able to mentor all types of people and then two, welcoming all types of people and maintaining an environment that welcomes them all. And that's something that my lab has really pushed me to do even better. You know, we collectively wrote a code of conduct. So that we could hold people accountable if there's a problem, not because there have been a problem, but because they wanted a way to be in front of it. And so, all new lab members read and sign our code of conduct. But more than that, all new lab members meet all lab members. before as part of the interview process. So even if you're interviewing to be a postdoc, you meet the lab tech. Everybody has to agree on a new lab member coming in before I make an offer. I'll explain to the lab, the skillset, the project that I'm hiring for, my rationale for bringing them into interview. But then, you know, in fairness, all new people who join the lab need And mentoring bandwidth. And so the lab has to agree that this new interviewee is worth space and mentoring bandwidth, right? And so they, you know, almost always they agree with me, but sometimes they're a harder critic. Then I am and if they see something that makes them think you won't collaborate or that you might risk the environment that they're so proud of working in that they created they will, you know, somebody, a postdoc candidate who treats the technicians poorly in the interview. We had one, you know, at one point who told the technicians that they didn't even know why they're meeting with them. And we didn't hire that person, like they were meeting with them for a reason. The postdocs interact with the technicians, right? And the technicians have sometimes more sensibility than the postdocs do. They've been in the lab longer, they know a lot more things. And so, somebody who could dismiss them and their experience wasn't the right person for our team.

Sandrine Soubes: 38:48

So, I mean, using, a collaborative process in terms of recruiting team members is a really good example. Are there other? things that you do in terms of some of the practices or there is a term that I like using, which is rituals. So rituals that you may have, in your research group that, that are really important in terms of contributing to a positive research culture.

Kristen Brennand: 39:11

So, I think there's, I know, I think my overarching goal, and this is less about, Maybe diversity more about having a supportive environment, which in turn, I think, let more people be successful. But we fluctuate, you know, there's a lot of different types of mentoring happening in the lab. I meet with all the grad students individually each week and the postdocs individually every second week. And then the week that I'm not meeting with the postdocs, we use that time for small team meetings. So we're trying to cross the groups that regularly work together. I'll have all the people working on CRISPR, for example, come together, whether they're using CRISPR screens for Alzheimer's or autism. We'll have all the people working on MPRAs come together, whether they're looking at neurodegeneration or psych. And we're intersecting technology, so we're intersecting problems, and mostly I have the trainees lead these meetings. They're helping each other. They're trying to realize they can solve each other's problems. I have our lab meeting structure will fluctuate from full hour long presentations to short data blitzes to 24 hour, we do five minute data blitzes where everybody just describes what they're doing and why, and we record that for new lab members, like, I think. And then we can follow those up with, like, we had a give and take meeting where, oh, based on the blitz, I could use this from somebody else, and I can offer this to somebody else. And so I'm always trying to help people realize. New ways that they could support somebody else's project or benefit from somebody else's project. I don't want there to be Competition. I really want the projects to be building on each other. And so we spend a lot of time trying to learn how to mentor how to collaborate and how to Yeah, build upon each other's work. And I think while that is not specifically a diversity initiative It's about building good scientists who have good faith I think a lot of the diversity issues, and I'm very engaged in them, are actually the larger level, the departmental and institutional level, because I think, in truth, each lab is too small, right? It's a numbers game, and you can only hire from the pool that applied to you each year, and a lot of the really important DEI work has to be about enriching the pool and expanding the pool. And so it really has to happen at levels where the pools are bigger.

Sandrine Soubes: 41:29

One of the things you said about this enabling collaboration across the team, I think is particularly important for new PIs because you know, you can't do everything. And it's not just you being in the center. I often use the, idea of the, spoke model. It's like you're in the center and you have this relationship with all of your team members. And in a way, if it's just that it's. People become completely overburdened and bringing the collaboration between your team member is a critical one in terms of, the economy of scale of what needs to happen for your group. I was thinking. One of the things that would be really helpful to hear from you is support network that you've had yourself to be able to build your resilience as a, new PI, depending on the context of your department, institute, and so on, you know, you may have lots of really good peers, really good colleagues to support you, or really good mentors. But what do you feel the most significant in contributing to your own resilience as an academic in terms of the context that you're in?

Kristen Brennand: 42:34

Yeah, I think in truth here, this is about I think resilience comes from outside of the science, right? Like, we talk a lot about work life balance. When I had no balance, I could work a lot more, but I was much less resilient. Your science is going to go up and down, up and down throughout your whole career. What I'm always trying to remind my trainees that when science is doing good, and it's so easy to let everything else fall away, right? Focus on your science. But if you do that, if you stop doing the things, the hobbies that bring you joy, the relationships that give you stability, when science inevitably comes down, your whole self esteem comes down with it. And so it is so important to have an identity outside of your science to give you that resilience to weather the storm. And so I think, yeah, having family, friends, hobbies, passions. The things that make you a whole person. I think that's where the resilience comes from

Sandrine Soubes: 43:36

And do you feel that's something that you've been able to achieve?

Kristen Brennand: 43:41

and took time. It's not easy. we talk about this in the lab a lot, too, that everybody keeps waiting for work life balance to be given to them. But it's not this gift that I can confer. It's. This thing that they each have to individually claim and it will look different for each of them and it will look different over time for each of them. It's not a happy solution that is claimed It's a, you know, it's actually about a series of sacrifices, right? Like you don't get to be CEO of the biotech company and also a stay at home parent, right? Like the ideal outcome is not the balance, but the balance is Where you are meeting the goals that you have for yourself. You've adjusted the goals that you have for yourself. You're doing as well as you can across all the fronts. Maybe not the same day, but maybe the same week or the same month, right? There are weeks that you're going to be more work focused. And there's going to be weeks that you're going to be more life focused. And being okay with this struggle, right? It's not a gift. It is a struggle. But it's a worthwhile struggle. I think it's so important that, you know, I have students in the lab who are artists and dancers and musicians and athletes they're doing so many different things. And I think it's, it's so important because that is where their resilience will come from.

Sandrine Soubes: 45:06

As a PI, you need to have people daily deliver, on their experiment and so on. So again, sort of going back to this idea of a positive research culture, you may, positively want people to have that balance and have that resilience, but the reality of the pressures that are put on you in terms of delivering the objectives of the grant and so on, often can kind of entangle things when it comes to enabling people to have that balance. So, Even with the best intention that you have of creating a positive research culture, how have you approached maybe some of the frustration when you see people, you know, not deliver? And maybe, you're a very lucky PI and you haven't experienced that, but I'm sure, most, most PIs have. So what is your approach?

Kristen Brennand: 45:57

Trainees see the pressures on me, right? My job is to shield them. I'm this umbrella, right? And so there are pressures on me, but. If I do my job right, they shouldn't know. I should be able to see six months ahead and make sure we're working on things that we need for grants. And if, if I screw up and don't have it, it's not their fault. It's not, I don't get to ask them to work a weekend because I planned poorly. And I, I mean, I stress this all the time. The only secret I know to work life balance is to be highly organized. That comes with the level of the trainees. Find out your scent. When's your vacation? Don't screw up and say it sells now. They have to be harvested the day before your vacation. That's just not gonna go. I think respecting your trainees means not asking them to do things last minute for a grant or Need to ask them, helping them deprioritize and taking other tasks off their to-do list, like they can't do everything. If you need them to get f done, you have to explicitly say, I know you're gonna lose pro progress on, you know, why Z over the next couple of weeks, like to make room for this. We will remove it. Like I can't just say do this extra thing. And comes with the idea of opportunity cost, right? Like, there's an opportunity cost for experiments, for careers of every level, even for real life families. And so, being mindful about what is the most important thing at this moment, I think is, is the only way to, to respect each other's times.

Sandrine Soubes: 47:33

one of the workshop that I run with researchers is we talk about visibility of our research visibility of, of ourselves as researchers. When you're reflecting back on, what you did, as, as a PhD student, postdoc and UPIs, what were the way that you made yourself visible in, you know, within your research community in a way that sort of aligned with your character, with your values? Because not everybody wants to be visible in the same way, but what did you do so that people knew the expertise that you had, knew the interest that you had in a way that worked for you?

Kristen Brennand: 48:11

That's an interesting question. I mean, I think I always saw myself as a bridge. That like my science was about connecting people. And I think being the bridge means being very comfortable being the non expert in the room. The number of times I've been surrounded by people and having no idea, you know, like a feeling so uncertain about. What they were trying to do, but knowing that I could connect them, like I know my role and, and being comfortable in that uncomfortable situation where, you know, like. I'm here to do this role and I don't have to understand or be the expert in epigenetics or in your synaptic biology, but I have this tool to test your questions in human cells and I will catch up but I think that's not the same question about visibility. I think it's about knowing your value, knowing your role,

Sandrine Soubes: 49:12

Not knowing your strengths, you know, that your strengths is connecting and seeing how what you can bring, bring something to somebody else.

Kristen Brennand: 49:21

Yeah, I think, I think that's how I always saw myself as this connection.

Sandrine Soubes: 49:27

So going back to this idea of visibility, I mean, again, you know, some people, you know, we'll, go to as many conferences as possible. I mean, we all have different ways of building visibility and some people really try to avoid it. What's been your own approach

Kristen Brennand: 49:43

when you first start the lab, I got a lot of advice, but I had to travel a lot to get visibility out as a separate PI. I see what you're saying. So I, I'm a hoop jumper. I joke about this a lot. They're like, you tell me I have to do something for my career. I'm just going to do it. I won't even ask why they told me to travel. I traveled. I traveled a ton, to be honest up until the pandemic, and I've been a lot more picky about my travel since then. I saw the cost it had, like, I was flying twice a month on the train and once more, again, each month. was disruptive. It was hard on my life. I had, you know, a two or three year old at the time. Hard on my lab. I do, I travel less now. I love to offer to send my trainees in my place they don't always accept, but sometimes I can send them instead. But I'm fortunate now to, so I think, have a bit more visibility that I don't have to accept at all. I, I think I was, you know, like, I really followed the classical advice at every junction of my career. I moved across the country at every stage because they told me that's what was best. I traveled when they told me to, I did, I did everything that everybody advised. And I think I'm careful now when I give advice to recognize that there's a cost to a lot of this classical advice. It's disruptive. On your life. It assumes a huge amount of privilege that you can prioritize work over everything else. To move your life four or five times comes at huge costs. The travel comes at a huge cost. And I think it is one way to be visible, maybe the fastest way, but I don't think it has to be done. And if somebody needs to prioritize not traveling, I think they can work with their mentors and their chairs to find. Other ways to do it. You know, you can write up, you know, some reviews. Like I think it really is about balance and compromise and sacrifice. And, and yeah, that there, I'm not going to pretend that travel doesn't have a cost.

Sandrine Soubes: 51:53

You used the term opportunity course, and I think it's a really, helpful concept to, have, and what is interesting in the academic context is that we are very used to mentoring. So we get lots of advice. for people who are, ahead of us. But at the same time, the advice that they give come from their own experiences and their own privilege. And not everybody is in the same context. So we all receive. this advice that we feel we have to follow, but it doesn't necessarily work for us, or it doesn't necessarily work in the new context that we are in. So that's why, in a way, for me, often I say, well, have you discussed with a coach about this? Because at least it allows you to reflect on the opportunity cost without the noise of other people telling you what you should be doing, but you reflecting on. Is this actually going to work for me or not? Or is this going to impact my wellbeing if I travel all over the country or if I'm not, in the lab anymore supporting my trainees. So,, if you were, giving advice in inverted comma to a new, PI, what would be the advice that enable the person to make their own choices?

Kristen Brennand: 53:06

I mean, I have this conversation a lot, which is, you know, everybody has this list of things that they thought were essential to get tenure. But if you do everybody's list, now you're doing 10 lists of things. To get tenure. And so it's not sustainable that you cannot do all of the things that everybody's recommending, even though they're each, you know, certain that they were required. and I think, you know, I made this switch about two or three years into having my own lab, where again, I was transitioning out of the sprint. I, I remember coming home and apologizing to my husband, being like, we made a big mistake. Like I moved us across the country for this job. And it's too much. I can't keep doing this. I can't keep working this hard. I'm so sorry. We're here. It's my fault. We shouldn't have done this. And he was like, I hear you. And to his credit, he was like, I just, before you quit this job that, you know, you spent all these years training for, why don't you try one thing? And I was like, what, what's this one thing? He's like, work one hour less a day. Just try that. And you know, like. He was right. I liked the job more. We're working one hour less a day. And I think the point that that I'm trying to make is he told me he had full confidence that if I worked as hard as I possibly could, I would get tenure. But that wasn't the interesting experiment. So the interesting experiment was whether I could Have the work life balance I aspire to and get ten year and he was very happy if the answer that's from no But he wanted me to be doing that experiment and so, you know, I think I you know, I followed all the rule We you know, we didn't have our daughter till I was 35. I put off everything for my career And so the advice that, you know, especially with women, we talk a lot about when to start a family, how, how to manage this. And, and my advice is always like, you have got to put your life in front. You will make your career work in whatever shape you want your career to be. But you, you can't keep following this old advice, right? Like, women's biology is different than the biology of our, our, you know, the senior men who came before us. You've got to do what's most important to you and fit your career around it. But yeah, it's, it's, it's hard. And it's about recognizing there has got like, yes, everybody at the top did it this way. But there has got to be another way. Otherwise, the top will never look any different.

Sandrine Soubes: 55:49

I mean, in a way, that's what I'm hanging on from what you just said is like, it can be done differently and what is different going to look for me. And also, in your case, it's nice that, a husband, a partner or friends can say, well, can it be different? If you work an hour less a day, what kind of difference is it going to make? So in a way, accepting how our own family members challenge us, because in a way it's almost like the narrative of what it takes to be successful. All this narrative that we've accumulated in being, in the research world, but is there another narrative that brings us some freedom of Finding your own path in a way that works for us, instead of trying to follow the track of somebody who is so different from us. So in a way, the family and the friends, or you know, really good colleagues are really important in a way, you're almost creating freedom of going about things very differently.

Kristen Brennand: 56:45

No, I, I agree. And it's about figuring out all the different ways that it can be done. And I think that's maybe what, you know, the generation of women and minorities that went ahead of us, it was them putting, you know, themselves into this mold and showing it could be done. They could do it the old way. And I think our generation is now showing or trying to show that it doesn't have to look the way it looked before.

Sandrine Soubes: 57:12

Thank you. It's been a really lovely conversation. I'm just going to finish with a question I ask everyone. What gives you joy in research

Kristen Brennand: 57:21

Oh man. Yeah. I mean, I think it really is. You know, the people, right? Like, it's the trainees succeeding, it's the collaborations growing, new science. I really love working with people who are fun to work with.

Sandrine Soubes: 57:41

that's really nice. Thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing many of the insight that you've gained along the way. Thank you.

Kristen Brennand: 57:50

It was, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for the invite.