Faculty Facilitator

Topic

Career Development

A collection of 19 issues

When to Kill a Project

Science is unpredictable. Well-researched projects with solid preliminary data can go nowhere, while a chance observation can open a novel and fruitful line of inquiry. However resources are fixed, and faculty have limited time, funding, personnel, and brain power to devote to ongoing projects. Not everything is worth pursuing.

Writing Letters of Recommendation

Letters of Recommendation (LOR) are ubiquitous in academia. They are an important component of applications for schooling, career advancement, enrichment activities, and for awards. A good LOR can make an otherwise borderline application successful, and a bad LOR can destroy the chances of an otherwise good applicant. Faculty members, particularly

Lab Hours

“When do I need to be here?” said the graduate student. “Whenever you need to be to make sufficient progress.” replied the PI. This response gives many well-meaning graduate students just enough rope to hang themselves. What if you can't make progress no matter how many hours

Leaving with an Unpublished Paper

Grad students and postdocs often leave a lab with unpublished data. Often, when the work is eventually published the author list is not what was anticipated. This can cause hurt feelings and if someone was really counting on those first author publications coming through, career progression. At the same time

The Importance of Department Seminars

Many trainees underestimate the importance of attending department seminars. It is very easy to get wrapped up in doing experiments, and there are lab meetings, meetings with faculty, and other events that all demand time. The topics presented can seem at best tangentially related to your project, research interests and

Picking a Good Project

Being the primary on a good project is essential for your career. A good project is fundable, will yield multiple publications, instigate new areas of research, and give you something interesting to talk about both personally and professionally. A good project has two key features: funding and interest. Funding Without

How to apply to graduate school in the United States

In the United States, you apply to a PhD program, not to an individual PI as is common in many other countries. Most graduate school applications are due in late fall or early winter. Applications are reviewed by a committee of faculty who then invite a subset of applicants for

Communicating Research

In order for research to be impactful, your findings and their significance must be understood. Such communications can take a variety of forms, some traditional and some more unusual. Traditional Channels Peer-reviewed publications Peer-reviewed publications are a non-negotiable component of running a successful research program. Research findings

Developing a Writing Practice

The ability to write quickly and well is essential for success in biomedical research. There is a constant need to produce protocols, grants, manuscripts, letters of recommendation, lay summaries, abstracts, and other documents, along with the high volume of professional emails requiring a response. Fortunately, writing is a skill that

How and when to contact your NIH program officer

updated March 2026 “Talk to your program officer” is an oft-repeated recommendation to scientists engaging with the NIH grants progress, however when and how to engage this person can be confusing. The NIH has an excellent guide to staff available, which I’ll explain and provide additional context. Program