19- Dr Curtis Asante- Following your instinct

Dr Curtis Asante is Associate Director of Members' Programmes at the Microbiology Society.  He spent some time in the US as a Postdoc, before embarking in his post-research journey; this has taking him from working as an editor in a prestigious scientific journal to being a project manager for a research network (UKRMP),  a research funder (Research Cancer UK) and a learned society (Microbiology Society).

When he started his career with a PhD in neuropharmacology, Curtis may not have predicted that he would live such a diverse professional life.

As a black scientist, Curtis has become involved in work to foster diversity in organisations. The impact of doing Equality and Diversity work has reshaped his professional identity as a change maker. His leadership has been built in part through taking the opportunity of becoming the co-chair of the Race Equality and Equity network at Cancer Research UK.

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Transcript

Warning- getting a perfect transcript is really hard. This transcript may have mistakes. Be kind to us by accepting these potential errors. We hope that the transcript can be helpful to some of you! Apologies in advances for any mistakes in the transcript.

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Dr. Sandrine Soubes: Good morning, everyone, good afternoon, good evening wherever you're based. I'm Dr. Sandrine Soubes and your podcast host. Today, I've got the pleasure of having with me Curtis Asante. Do you say Asante or Asante?

Curtis Asante: Asante.

Sandrine: It's difficult, these names. Asante.

We're going to have a discussion for the benefit of researchers all over the world, hopefully. You did a PhD in UCL and let's have a conversation about why you started to get into science and to do a PhD in the first place. How did it all start for you?

Curtis: Yes, that's a really interesting question. I think for the longest time, I always wanted to be a medical doctor actually, all the way through secondary school and before then. Then there was a change, I think, when I had to move on to my A-Levels and decide about-- I guess it's around that time, certainly in the UK anyway, a lot of people start thinking about their careers. I think in other countries that might be seen as being too soon. Certainly in the UK, with specialize quite quickly. I was thinking about, "What next?" For some reason- I'm not really quite sure why- I decided that medicine wasn't really the right career option for me.

I was really more interested in, I guess, the mechanics of how things work. I did lots of research about what subjects I could study and I ended up choosing pharmacology at the University of Bath. At the time, it was relatively unusual to do the four-year programs with the placement years; now it's very common. That's why I chose Bath. I ended up doing that placement year at Merck.

During my undergrad-- I did an undergrad; four years. You do two years at university, and then you go for a placement year in your third year. You come back and do the final year. Those two years of studying pharmacology I was like, "Well, it's an okay subject, but I'm done with studying, I just want to get a job," as I had graduated, but the placement year is what changed that.

I went on my placement year, got to use lots of really cool equipment, worked with some really cool scientists, a really diverse group of scientists actually. I think in academia, we're just very used to older academics who are lecturing you all the time. I worked at Merck, a pharmaceutical company. It was a revelation for me. I just realized I really was excited by science research, trial, and error, what in my eyes, were proper science. One of my mentors and peers told me that if I wanted to do science properly, that I would need to do a PhD. If I wanted freedom to explore and to have more career opportunities, I should do a PhD. When I came back into my final year at university, I really pursued looking for a PhD opportunity. Then I ended up at UCL and then a neuroscience program, so four years. I got to do rotations in different labs. Then I ended up in the lab of Tony Dickenson, studying pain processing in the spinal cord, a great PhD.

Sandrine: Can I ask you, Curtis, how did you actually decide who to work with and the type of program to join? Because there are obviously PhD programs all over the place. The choice that we make at that point sometimes is very strategic, sometimes it's just a topic, sometimes it's just that we've met an academic that we really connect, and sometimes it's just random and we just take whatever we think is fun.

Curtis: Yes, that's a really good question. One of the rotations was proper hardcore pharmacology; the pharmacology that I studied during my undergraduate degree with John Garthwaite.

Then the other one was more around learning and memory, but it was actually quite similar to the kind of things that I studied on my placement. All of them, I think there was some familiarity in there, in terms of the reasons why I picked them. The lab that I ended up in, it wasn't pharmacology, but it was in neuropharmacology. It was a good subject, but if we're talking about cutting edge, it wasn't really the most cutting-edge research. I chose that lab because it was a really natural environment. My PhD supervisor seemed like a nice guy and that he would be really involved in my research. There were lots of really good post-docs in that lab who I knew would be able to help me. It just felt like a really nice environment. I would learn a lot, but I wouldn't necessarily have a difficult time there.

I know that for so many people, they choose their PhDs for very different reasons. They might choose their PhDs because this is what is going to get them, that Nature paper; I didn't do that. Sometimes you think-- at the time-- "Would I still be in research if I had chosen another lab?" I have to say that it's that experience in that particular lab gave me so many more transferable skills. I think if I can trace back why I am where I am now, I think it is being in that lab and having someone who champions you and who shows you how to communicate science properly and really integrate with your wider research community. All of those things I think have benefited me in ways in which I didn't appreciate at the time. It's a personal choice.

Sandrine: Yes. That's a really interesting point because often, there could be the attraction of going into a lab that's very prestigious where people are publishing in high impact journals, but then you feel miserable because the atmosphere is not necessarily something that matches the way you want to live your life, your professional life. Having a congruence between what you feel that you need and the environment is a really critical thing. I'm really interested in this because obviously, I've spent more than a decade working as a researcher developer, trying to encourage PhD students to take opportunities and not everybody does it. Sometimes people feel inhibited maybe by their supervisor because people are more encouraged to just focus on the research, which is fair enough, but at the same time doesn't necessarily give a very realistic experience of the PhD. In your case, what was this experience like of these few years as a PhD student?

Curtis: Yes, we had project students, these were people, they were either in their final year of their undergraduate degree, or they were intercalated medical students and they would come to the lab and do projects. We had to supervise them, that was something that my supervisor was very insistent on. Nobody could escape that responsibility of mentoring a project student and devising a project for them, guiding them, mentoring them. We actually had to mark papers as well. That was also something that our supervisor passed on to us.

Thinking back, I was like, "Oh, it seems quite normal," but I do realize that a lot of other students were not necessarily in this situation. We went to a lot of conferences. This, for me, was probably the best, big experience because our supervisor was really intent on making sure that we left the lab as much as possible. We had to do a lot of lab work, that's true, but there were lots of seminars and international conferences and so on, that he wanted us to go to because he thought it would be a good experience for us.

Even though I had quite a generous conference fund as part of my PhD, we all had to apply for conference grants that were available. That experience of writing an application for a conference grant, it sounds very straightforward, but we all had to do it because if there's money available and there's an opportunity to get more funds into the lab pot, then we will had to do that. Those kinds of things were really important.

Then I guess on the less academic side, I really got involved in the social communities which was great. I ended up organizing the Christmas party every year, which was a massive affair and it was a lot of fun. Sometimes it was quite stressful sorting venues and making sure that we had the right deals and dealing with the budgets and all of those things. I did that for probably three out of the four years that I was in that lab. It was a lot of fun. I felt like I had a really well-rounded experience.

Sandrine: If you reflect on the PhD experience, what do you think was the one key experience that you had, which in a way shaped maybe the type of work that you're doing now, the type of work that later on in your career that you really intend to do?

Curtis: The one experience that really sticks out in my head, it was neuroscience, it was the Society for Neuroscience. Anyone who knows this conference, regardless of what field you're in, I think every field has a really big conference that has about 30,000 people. The Society for Neuroscience was the conference for neuroscientists. First time I was going to this conference, I think I was quite far along, I was coming towards the end of my PhD. I think I had maybe a year to go. There was still some holes in my thesis that I wanted to resolve. This was really the first time that I was going into a conference without my lab. Actually, I think I was one of two people, I think, that went from my lab at the time. Not many of us went to this conference because people in the lab preferred to go to the pain-specific conferences. It was really the first time that I was on my own presenting my work on my own and getting grilled by academics from all over the world.

For me to stand there and to hold my own. You know what academics are like, there are some people who are there who they want to find out how you did things because it will help them. There are some people who are there who just have no idea what you're doing but it looks interesting so they want to find out more. Then there's also another group who just want to test you and see if you are who you say you are, "You go to UCL, you're doing your PhD with this person," let's see how much they really know, that kind of thing. I felt really proud of myself because I was able to answer all the questions, engage in really good conversation. I connected with some people who wanted to follow up with me afterwards. I think that was the first time I felt like, "Oh, I can actually do this, I have a future in this."

Sandrine: It's almost like a sense of belonging. It's like, "Okay, I do belong to the research community. I'm part of this," it takes years to build the confidence that you understand what you're trying to do, and that you know your stuff. It's a nice feeling.

Curtis: Definitely.

Sandrine: At the end of your PhD, you did the two postdoctoral research positions. Can you take us through those and describe how did you go about finding them and the experience that you had through them?

Curtis: Yes, I guess just to clarify, I had two positions, but with the same lab. My lab moved partway through my postdoc. That's why it shows it as two positions. I knew that getting to the end of my PhD, that I wanted to do more. I really wanted to stay in academic research and that was important to me. I looked for postdoc positions, but I knew that I wanted to leave the lab that I was in. I knew that I wanted to maybe do a postdoc in another country. I started looking and looking at things which were different, but not too different to what I was doing. I found a lab in New York; John Martin, his lab was kind of split. Half of it is about neurodevelopment, the spinal cord, how that relates to voluntary movement. The other part of it is about rehabilitation, so when those connections are damaged, how do we rehabilitate those systems to then repair injury. I ended up doing a postdoc in his lab on the neurodevelopmental side.

It was using some of the techniques I'd learnt from my PhD, but then I had an opportunity to learn new techniques. I chose New York just because I'd never been there. I'm a city person, I was born in London. Every time I've left London, I've come back to London. New York just seemed like one of those places that I thought would be a really good place to go. The lab was a really good lab as well, in terms of neurophysiology, and that was really good. That's how I found myself there. I was there for three years. Halfway through, the lab moved. We were based at Columbia initially and then we moved to The City College of New York because my supervisor got a chair position there. He took the rest of the lab. I was still in New York, and it wasn't that big of a move geographically, but it was a big move in terms of institutions but the research continued while I was there and I had a great time.

I think a lot of people go and do postdocs in the States and they do work very, very hard and you do hear some horror stories. I did work hard, long hours, weekends, but when you're in New York, it doesn't matter much because it really is a 24-hour city, so there's always something going on. It was quite easy to make friends and so on. It was a big step for me because I'd never lived outside of the UK before but I didn't have barriers like a language to worry about and all of those things. It was just more about finding my network and finding my identity in New York.

Sandrine: Can I ask you what was your approach to actually get this postdoc? Was it an advertised position or did you just contact the academic that you decided you wanted to work with and sought funding with him?

Curtis: This one, in particular, was an advertised position. I think I saw it in New Scientist actually. Yes, they were advertising for a postdoc, I applied in the formal way. It was a very straightforward application process. Then the supervisor got back in touch with me to ask me if I was still interested and if I'd be interested in coming out to visit the lab, which was great because when they're really serious, they pay your expenses to go and visit. I had a few days in New York to go and visit the lab and really get a feel for the lab, I had to do a presentation, which was quite scary, and get grilled by the lab. It was all of those experiences that I think most PhD postdocs have to go through today.

The next day I went to have another meeting with the supervisor and he just asked me if I was really serious about the position; I was, and then we just went from there. The process of actually moving to New York took quite a few months actually, there's so much paperwork, I didn't realize how much paperwork was involved. Then, as soon as I finished my PhD, I think I moved out to New York not that long after. That was really the deciding factor, I had to pass my PhD to commence the postdoc.

Sandrine: Again, if you're thinking about the expense from your postdoc, what is the one thing that you feel that you took away from it? Living in New York sounds amazing. I remember two amazing weeks working in New York but I've not actually ever lived there properly. If you're thinking about that very special period of your postdoc, what is really the thing that was, I don't know, the most exciting or something that you feel has really shaped, "The way I am as a professional now"?

Curtis: That's a really hard question. This one is harder because actually, I have to say that it was in my postdoc that I realized that I didn't want to be an academic anymore. I think that's the only way I can really answer that question. I don't think there was a single defining moment, or maybe there were several. I think I saw how hard people worked and I kind of knew that I--

If I backtrack, I went out to New York with the intention of becoming an independent scientist. That's why I did a postdoc. I know it's not why lots of people do postdocs. Some people are not necessarily quite sure if they want to continue and so on, but I really believed that I wanted to become an academic one day and to run my own lab. Then I also realized that my heart was not in it, I think, when I was in New York. I could do the work and I could deliver to a high standard. I don't think that my supervisor had any issues with me, I worked weekends, I worked late evenings, I did all of that. I didn't necessarily want to do that forever.

I also knew that the competition for funding was very difficult. I think I applied for a welcome grant and I didn't get it. I had to write that grant. I wrote it to the best of my ability. It wasn't even the final stages of the grant, it was just that expression of interest. I didn't get past that stage. I was just like, "Oh, I'm not really sure what more I could have done." I think, for me, and this is a very personal thing, I was starting to realize the limits of my ability in academic research.

I think I would have stayed in scientific research if there was a way for me to stay as a professional scientist, not necessarily running my own lab or being an academic in the true sense but that system doesn't really exist. There are a few people out there who do manage to get those long-term positions with their labs, as research scientists. There are some interesting models at the Crick and other institutions where you can work like that, but by and large, that is not a system that is available for most UK academics anyway.

I think I just knew that my time was limited and I was also getting to that stage where, you either decide to be serious in your research and go full steam ahead, or you will end up going from postdoc to postdoc, I knew that I definitely didn't want that. For me, if I answer that question, that was the time when I realized that I needed to transition out of academic research.

Sandrine: How did it feel like?

Curtis: Guilt, just a lot of guilt. I had invested so much time in research. Okay, I'm in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that much time, but I was young then so it felt like I had invested a lot of time. Other people had invested time in me. I was part of the academic research community and here I was saying that I wanted to leave. I just felt really guilty for a long time. I felt self-conscious and felt like I was being judged by people. I don't think this was true, but it's a feeling that I had. I think the reality is that I had an honest discussion with my supervisor and he was supportive. He wanted me to stay in the lab. He had another big NIH grant for another five years and he wanted to put me on it. I think that's when I really knew that my heart wasn't in it. I felt incredibly guilty. I felt like I was letting academic research down.

Sandrine: It is very strange. There is something really bizarre about these feelings that we experience during these times of transition. Often, the first step out of scientific research is often the hardest after people kind of figure things out. That first stage, what was it like for you going back to the UK and then needing to have a job and deciding, "Well, what kind of job do I want to apply for?" How did you go about it?

Curtis: Yes, the first step outside of the lab is definitely the most difficult. I actually tried to stay in New York. I was applying for things in New York, talking to recruiters, asking how it might be possible that I would stay. There was some interesting roles related to the kind of job that I was doing, or the research that I was doing. There was some roles that needed some people with neurophysiology expertise or they were willing to train you up to do cardiology in hospitals and those kind of things. It didn't really appeal to me. There was a point when I was just like, "If I really want to stay in the US maybe this is what I do." I didn't end up going for those roles but I did look for a lot of roles in the US.

As soon as you come out of academia you then put yourself in a different type of pool for visas, and then you are competing with a lot of other people. I think I didn't appreciate how protected I was as an academic where renewing visas was quite easy because you were in a special category. As soon as you go into the broader employment category then there are caps and there are a whole load of other things. Employers have to prove that they couldn't find anybody in the US and because I was moving outside of academia, my expertise was not at the level where I could leapfrog people.

Then I started looking for roles in the UK. I did lots of research. I spoke to some people in the US. Spoke to some peers who knew people who knew people. Someway or another, I found myself looking at science writer positions, scientific editor positions, those kinds of roles because I felt that the skills that I had gained were probably the most transferable to those kind of roles. Actually, you see lots of ex-PhDs and postdocs who move into those roles as their first role.

Then I applied for a job at Nature Communications which at the time was a very new journal, it was only two years old. They were going through an expansion phase. Their interview process is quite long. I had to do a telephone interview. Then I had to do a manuscript test. Then I had to do a final interview. It was hard. I didn't think that I had got the role actually. When I got the role, for me, it was amazing because Nature Publishing Group has got great prestige. I was like, "Oh, I get to stay in academic research. I still get to interact with academic researchers. I still get to read science every day. This is something that could set me on a different path."

Sandrine: You did this role for a couple of years. What did you like about it? Why then did you decide to move on?

Curtis: It was great. As a neuroscientist, when I moved to Nature Communications I had to handle manuscripts in all areas of biological sciences because they were still structuring the team. Now you go to Nature Communications and there is an editor for pretty much every subject. They break down biological sciences into immunology, into neuroscience, microbiology. At the time, they just had biological sciences editors. It was great learning for me to read such a breadth of academic research papers. I think I learnt lots of skills in terms of trying to assess papers and really distill important information. I got to communicate with researchers on a daily basis. I got to have some really good strategic discussions with my team. It was a really good role. For people who are really into science but don't necessarily want to be in the lab, I think that this is a really good role. I have to say though, it is the role that nearly broke me.

Sandrine: Why is that?

Curtis: It was really difficult. At the time, Nature Communications was-- it is a very different journal now. They have really good structure, lots of editors, different layers of management. It's big but I think it works in the editors favor overall. At the time, Nature Communications was taking in a lot of papers, it was a bit of an experiment for Nature Publishing Group who were looking to see how they could enter this open access space. They weren't necessarily investing heavily in the journal but the journal was producing a lot. My manuscript load was really ridiculous. My boss was not necessarily well supported in supporting the editors. Everybody was overworked. Everybody was working very long days. I think I was working harder as an editor than I was as a postdoc in terms of number of hours.

Sandrine: How many papers did you have to process a day? Give us an idea.

Curtis: I would have about 20 papers sometimes that came into my inbox every day. That was not unusual. My paper load, I think at its highest, it was 150+ papers, all at different stages of review. Some of them were coming back from reviewers and some of them were to go out. This is really highly unusual and yet I don't think you will ever see that these days because the journal is much better managed and they have a lot more editors. At the time, there was just nowhere else for the papers to go. We were outsourcing the papers to internal freelancers from other journals. These people from these other journals were already getting paid more than the editors at Nature Communications. Then we were paying them on top to freelance for us. It wasn't the best-managed journal. I think they learned a lot of lessons and I think they've improved it. I do think it's in a completely better place.

I think for me, as an editor, it was very difficult especially for my first job outside of the lab. I didn't know how to deal with the pressure. I didn't know how to tell people that I was struggling or to make a stand and say, "This is not acceptable," and all of those things that you learn as you get older and as you get more experience. I didn't know how to do any of those things. I just carried on, like a hamster on a wheel. I think I burned out. I really think I burned out. On the plus side, I progressed very quickly. I became a senior editor within three years which is quite unusual at Nature Publishing Group for somebody coming out their lab to be a senior editor so quickly. It was just purely because of the number of papers I had meant that I had so much more experience.

Sandrine: You probably knew more science than you had ever known before for, having to read so much and being exposed to such a diversity of science. Sounds pretty incredible.

Curtis: It's not necessarily that I understood more science but I understood how to understand science that I was not familiar with. I understood how to pick out the most pertinent points and process them in my mind and make those quick conclusions just by looking at some texts that I'd not seen before. That really is a skill that I think was-- that's lasted with me throughout my whole career; I learnt that. I also learned how to-- I had some really difficult author interactions.

Can you imagine, I was a postdoc, I'd only done one postdoc fresh out of the lab, and there I am telling an esteemed professor that his paper was not acceptable based on the reviewer's comments for Nature Communications. That was really difficult because I got into some very difficult conversations with people rejecting manuscripts. People appealing their decisions, copying in my boss because they didn't think that I knew what I was doing because I had Assistant Editor on my signature. [chuckles] Or people would look up my expertise and say, "Oh, I can see you don't have expertise in this area so you need to rethink your decision."

That was really my first-- throughout my whole academic career as a PhD student as a postdoc [unintelligible 00:27:03], having difficult scientific conversations where you're supposed to be defending your research. I had never faced that kind of difficulty before. That was hard for me. It was tough.

I learnt so much though. I learnt how to be resilient. Even though at the end of it I was burnt out and I moved on, again it's what I was saying before. Lots of the things I didn't really appreciate until many years later and I can trace them back to that point. I think the difficult thing was that when I did move on, loads of my peers became chief editors of journals, and there I was making sideways move after sideways move, and it's hard not to compare yourself to other people. Like, "Oh, I'm not progressing in the same way." I think it was the right decision for me to move on at that time.

Sandrine: You had, after that [unintelligible 00:27:50] at King's College on the UK RMP program. Then you went to work for the Cancer Research UK. I'm really interested because, then, when you were at RCUK, you then worked as a co-chair of the Race Equality and Equity Network. Tell us a little bit about this.

Curtis: I was employed as a research program manager for infrastructure. Cancer Research UK has a network of centers and institutes and they need program managers who manage that portfolio of centers and institutes. We do things like monitoring and evaluating annually to see what their outputs are. Understand how they're using the funding that we give them. It's millions of pounds worth of funding. We run committees for the institutes and for the centers to have internal discussions with our external stakeholders about progress and areas of priority.

Then we do lots of internal work with internal teams across the organization to help our external stakeholders, those centers and institutes deliver against their objectives which are in line with Cancer Research UK's aims and objectives. It's lots of stakeholder management, some monitoring, evaluating, and strategic thinking, project management, those kinds of responsibilities all looped into one role.

My time at CRUK was great. I think I learned loads. There was a real opportunity for me to get involved in other things. I was always looking, "How do I get involved in other things?" For CRUK, they started developing these staff networks. I went along to some of the talks that they did for the Race Equality Network. Then I put myself forward for a vacant co-chair position and I got it. That was a really interesting role for me. One that I didn't know at the time was going to be as rewarding as it ended up being.

I ended up interacting with senior management on a level that I had not done before. I became a reverse mentor to our exec director, which was a great experience. I ended up having conversations with the chief executive, devising programs for our directorate and the wider organization. Having really good, meaty, sometimes difficult discussions about, "What does representation mean? What does race equality and equity-- What does that actually mean at the organization? What are some of the things that we can show people that we're doing? How do we make sure that we're more inclusive as an organization?" It was actually a lot of work. [chuckles] It was more work than I was expecting it to be, but it was really rewarding.

I always put those two positions together now because even though I spent most of my time doing my day job, I invested a lot of mental energy and effort into that, race, equality, and equity network co-chair role. It got to a point where if that became my identity-- The two roles actually became my identity and I was known in my directorate, and I think throughout the organization as being very much equally involved in both. I'm really proud that I got to implement quite a lot of changes. There were a lot of changes during my time there, not all down to me, but I think I did contribute a lot to those changes.

Sandrine: Lots of organizations are trying to have conversations around race, equality, diversity and so on. What do you feel really makes a difference when organizations are trying to create shift in the way they're approaching relationships with different members of staff? Or the way, maybe a funder is looking at these issues in terms of they're devising programs and encouraging research from diverse backgrounds? What do you feel needs to take place to create this shift? Because you could have a lot of good conversations or you could have a lot of good intentions, but the shift doesn't necessarily happen in terms of the actual practices.

Curtis: Yes, completely. I think for a lot of people, ethnic minorities, minorities, women, all the marginalized communities that you can think of are just tired of having conversations and they want change. I think people really need to stand by their commitments. Don't just make commitments, but hold yourself accountable. Other people should hold organizations accountable for the changes that they say they're going to make. Don't release blank statements or statements that are just very general. Actually, have something that you're actually going to take action on.

I also think that just generally as a research community, we do need to start thinking about, "What does good look like?" "Yes, I'm black, but if you look at my CV, I did my PhD at a Russell Group university, I'm in UCL. I did a postdoc at Columbia. I had a job at Nature Publishing Group. I've ticked a lot of boxes, but are all of those boxes necessary to be ticked?" There are lots of other people who don't tick those boxes but can do just as good a job that I can, but we're not including them because our idea of diversity is very narrow. While I am black, I'm a black version of what is acceptable for white people essentially. I think that kind of thinking, we need to move away from.

When we talk about diversity, we're really talking seriously about diversity. There are lots of people who PhD may not be their first option out of university. They may have gone and worked somewhere for a really long time, decided they wanted to get back in and do a PhD, but if they try and get a postdoc, is a supervisor going to think that they're too old or they've gone past their peak just because of the number of years they've spent away from the lab?

It's all of those kind of things I think we need to move away from because there are lots of industries that do that very, very effectively and they look at the capability of the person. I don't think that we do that enough. Certainly for me, the first thing is, enough talking and just more action because I think we have gone past that point of talking about what might be possible and what are all the things that we can do. Let's just do them. Let's be bold. We need people who are in positions of power to be able to make those decisions and to step out and not follow. Everybody is waiting to see what everybody else is doing before they make a move. That I think also needs to change.

Sandrine: Do you think that there are some worries of, in a way, people may not make bold decisions because they're scared are they doing the wrong thing? If we expect everybody to have the same CV, then you're just going to carry on recruiting the same people. Challenging what does it mean to be the best. When you're trying to challenge these practices, people are very, very resistant.

Curtis: Yes, but unfortunately, I think academia, it's standardly resistant to change. I've spent a long time working with academic stakeholders. Academics are great people. Yes, they are, but as a community, they are very resistant to change. I understand it. I do understand that there is a fear that you can erode excellence, but my point is, is that it's not inclusive enough of what else is excellent.

If you have a very narrow view of what good looks like, you are excluding a whole load of people that can really further research just because they think differently. Maybe it doesn't show on paper, but I do think that we need to do more thinking about criteria for researchers in general, that's PhD, right up to early career researches. We're doing some of those things.

I think funders are doing some of those things. They're incorporating different kinds of frameworks where you mark people against different attributes and so on, but I don't think that we have moved beyond that thinking of, "Well, this person has five Nature papers. This other person has worked with really good researchers and has patented some kind of amazing discovery." You'll always go for the person with the five Nature papers because that is still what good looks like.

I think until we start moving away from academia, we'll always be seen as being behind. Yes, we come up with lots of innovative ideas and we further research and benefit humanity, but as a community, I think the academic researchers will always be seen as an old-fashioned type of institution. I think it is time that we move beyond that.

Sandrine: The time is really running. I'll be interested to hear about the role that you have now at the Microbiology Society.

Curtis: Yes, sure. I am an associate director of members programs, which means that I work underneath the director for strategy overall, but my remit is really about journal development, policy engagement, and conferences and events, and trying to make those workstreams a lot more cohesive, and thinking of ways in which we can benefit our members. I'm thinking about this in a context of building new research communities for microbiology, but then also about increasing the impact and the influence of ongoing work and research activities that our researchers are undertaking.

We're not a funding organization, although we do fund small grants and various other activities. As a society, our main role is to bring the community together and respond to our members' needs and requirements, and make sure that microbiology is high on the agenda nationally, but then also making sure that the needs of our research community, of our membership communities are addressed.

Sandrine: Can you tell us about an exciting project that you have currently? I'm sure that you have a portfolio with a great diversity of projects, but what is the one project that at the moment you're finding really exciting and that's really keeping you going?

Curtis: This is a nice one. One of the things that we have just recently finished is the Sustainable Future project. This was a project that was started long before I arrived. It's really looking at microbiology as a whole. We focus on different areas, so soil health, we're looking at the circular economy and antimicrobial resistance, and really trying to understand what the key priority areas are for those different subcategories of microbiology research. We brought lots of researchers together, did some really good workshops. The output is a really nice body of work in the form of some reports on a sustainable future.

I think going forward, what I'm really excited about from this project is just some of those recommendations were about building new communities, for example, in soil health and providing platforms for researchers to come together. These are all things that have been identified that are not currently out there and they're saying that these are recommendations that we should carry out, not necessarily just us as a society, but the society, other funders, the government, and so on.

Now, going forward, we're going to see, as a society, how can we help to deliver on some of those recommendations? For me, I'm really excited because we've engaged people who are not members of the society. We're showing lots of people as a small society what we can do. We're a small office of just under 50 people, but our membership is 6,000-plus people. I'm really excited in growing that membership, bringing new people in, and making it a lot more multidisciplinary so that our membership doesn't just consist of microbiologists, but consists of lots of researchers who have commonalities in microbiology research.

Sandrine: That's fascinating. We're going to finish off because we've taken already a lot of your time. I really appreciate. What I like to ask all of my interviewees on the podcast is about the tips that they have. Their five best tips about surviving research life or navigating research careers. What are your five tips that you want to share with our listeners?

Curtis: I think the first one for me is to always follow your instincts. Your instincts may not be in line with what is expected or what you think is expected, but definitely do the thing that you think is most important to you. If you're going for a job and you're like, "Oh, people are going to look down on me because this is not what is expected of me," but you really love it, you should do it. I think I spoke before about the multiple sideways steps I took and my peers getting into really high positions, just don't compare yourself to other people, do the thing that's right for you.

The next tip would be to look at job descriptions well before you are ready to move on to your next role. That's really important in understanding what the landscape looks like in terms of availability of a job or availability of jobs that are out there. Then also understanding, I guess what's required so you can think about, "How do I get the skills that I don't have?" Or, alternatively, "How do I present myself as having these skills?" Think about how do you make the skills that you have transferable and visibly transferable so people understand.

Like I said, when I organized those Christmas parties, that is a transferable skill. It's a social thing, but going on to organize events and seminars on workshops, I can take a lot of the things that I learned from that particular skill. You need to start thinking about that as soon as possible.

The third one would be to establish and grow your networks. You will know people, or you will know people who know people who work in a thing that you are interested in, or the people who can give you advice. It's really important to start speaking openly and honestly to your peers and to your supervisor about the things that you're interested in so that they can start connecting you with people, and make it obvious. Just say, "If you know anybody, please, can you put me in touch with them?" LinkedIn is a great place for that. I find LinkedIn great for networking. Actually, it's improved considerably, but it's really important to grow those networks. It's impossible to do this on your own.

The fourth one would be to make sure that your CV and your cover letters are appropriate for your audience. I have seen a lot of CVs and cover letters that have come in. Cvs that have been five pages long or cover letters that have been three pages long; like essays. It's really not necessary to do that. I think if you have a careers advisor; use them, they can provide great advice. There's lots of free resources online. People worry so much about making their CVs and cover letters look really fancy with lots of graphics, I think that is actually appropriate for some industries, some people do like that, but understand your audience and focus more on the content. If the content is not there, there's nothing that a flashy graphic can do to save your CV. I would say take that quite seriously.

My last tip would be to make sure that you have mentors. I have found mentors really, really important. People on the same level as you, that just have a different experience set.

I have used peers who have been on accelerated development programs because even though I wasn't on the program, they were my mentors because they could tell me all the things that they had learned, give me some coaching tips, and all of those things, and that has been great.

I have a more official mentor who is somebody I met through working on the Crick funders steering committee when I was at CRUK. She's just been really great in challenging me and giving me a different perspective, giving me her experience. Getting me to think about things, do homework, write things down. "What do you like? What don't you like?" I have been introduced to other people who have been mentors for one meeting and that's been fine. My point is, is that mentors are really important. It's really important to get an outside view and outside steer someone to challenge your thinking so that when you do make those decisions about moving on to a job-- finding work outside of your comfort zone, you can make the best-informed decision.

Sandrine: Wow, what a list. Lots of really amazing advice. That's fabulous. Well, Curtis, it's been really wonderful talking to you. I've got lots of other questions I would like to ask you. You've taken plenty of your time, a fascinating career and an interesting career path that I'm sure could be of interest to many of the podcast listeners. Really appreciate your involvement in the podcast. Thank you.

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