Mentoring

Become more.

My primary goal in mentoring is to make you into a responsible, professional, and altruistic global citizen. That means with regard to research, I strive to give students autonomy, mastery, and purpose. I aim to give you the autonomy in shaping your research, help you master rigorous thinking that generates ground-breaking insights, and remind you of the greater purpose our efforts are serving, namely to expand the knowledge of human civilization, disseminating knowledge to the society we live in, and becoming an advocate for science and truth.

While working at my lab, you will train skills not just relevant for science, like how to conduct a project and finish it, how to communicate with your peers and mentors, work in a team, and how to stick with something through the boring parts in order to get an exciting result at the end. In doing so, I hope to help you with your career aspirations (even if they are outside of academia) and to support you as a person and keep you mentally healthy. I highly encourage you to explicitly discuss all of these items with me at any time.

 
 
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specific advice topics

A collection of advice columns

Some of these need updating - I am working on it.

Everyday research skills

How to do research

How to find a project

How to be rigorous, and experimental design

Data collection & management

Analysis and statistics

How to present your research

How to write

How to publish

Scientific conferences

specific advice for your career stage

A guide to growth

It can seem like these career stages are a logical progression of more of the same, but they actually each require substantial reframing of your role and activities. I recommend regular reflection on these larger goals and your role in science.

Undergraduate students

Stepping from schoolwork into real work. Applied and reflected understanding of how science works, and training in basic techniques.

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Graduate students

Developing your own project and bringing it to its conclusion: scientific publication. Start to lead a team, explore a topic broadly and deeply, and build a professional network.

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Post-docs

Become an independent scientist: set a career direction, build a research niche, expand your publication list, make a name for yourself.

Learn more
 

taking personal growth seriously

It is your life; I am here to advise (only)

 

Working in a lab, as an undergraduate or in graduate school, has very little in common with ‘school’, i.e. taking classes, exams, and such. Going from one to the other requires a mental shift: a realization that you can and should be in charge of your own progress. No-one can take away your responsibility to figure out what you want to do with your life. But: I as your mentor, and many other people, including other students in the lab, are both willing and able to help you answer questions about how to get there.

A key skill to learn, therefore, is to deliberately think about where you want to go (in your project; in your career), and then to equally deliberately seek out the people who may be best suited to help you learn the skills, or provide the resources, you need.   

The social group that is the lab is one key resource for students, both graduate and undergraduate - and you should make sure you get to know it well to capitalize on it. The other key resource is your advisor, me: you should be as direct and detailed as possible, and frequently ask for feedback and help whenever you encounter obstacles in your research project or career of any kind.