One year on
Last week marked the one year anniversary of the lab, and what a year it has been. I arrived at SFU to a big empty space and a big empty office, and now my lab is filled and my office is mostly the same but with a few more plants. It was astounding how many new things I had to learn, from installing equipment and infrastructure, interviewing and managing people, budgeting and purchasing, and a staggering amount of administrative processes to get the hang of. In research we often say that postdoctoral research does not prepare you for being a PI, that we spend a decade of our lives getting really good at the bench then immediately leaving the bench upon a ‘successful’ transition to independent research. This is still true, but honestly I’m not sure what training to be a PI would look like. Everything is institute-specific, student-specific, funding-specific, so it’s hard to imagine a one-size-fits-all solution. Best advice I can give is keep an open mind, be willing to learn, and try your best. Despite all this, I have to say I’m having a great time working with amazing people towards scientific goals that still excite me. Some reflections that might be useful:
A good lab manager is worth their weight in gold. Not essential, but if you can find and afford one, the amount of mentorship and administrative work you can offload to focus on other things is tremendous. Being the most senior ‘boots-on-the-ground’, they also help set the tone and culture of the new lab.
Bargain like a maniac. I’m pretty conflict-averse, but most sales reps are very happy to work with you to get a good price for things, especially big ticket items. Be logical, be firm, try to bundle purchases, and try to give concrete numbers so they have something to work with.
Ask your peers for help. The amount of institutional knowledge is huge, and having a mentor in the same institute is essential.
Get used to writing grants. It’s a lot. Ask for examples from your peers, it’s extremely helpful.
Be efficient with your resources, but recognize that sometimes going cheap will cost you more in the long run. Be as logical as possible with your finances, and try to avoid the human pitfalls when dealing with money. With that said, this is probably the most money you’ve personally have to handle (I measure my equipment costs in the number of Lexuses it can buy) so you’ll just have to get used to that.
Lead from the front. Establishing the culture you want is so difficult, and being present to show what this looks like and to see sources of issues is important.
Recognize that your postdoc productivity is probably in the upper quartile of all postdoc productivity to net you the job. Unless you’ve won the lottery, nothing will get done as fast as you’d like it and—at least the first time—to the quality that you want. Build your group expertise and knowledge base, but everything takes time.
This first year is your best chance of establishing procedures such as data handling, lab notebook, databases, etc. Put a lot of thought into this to avoid future headache.
Learn how to figure out whether your hires will be productive. Then tell me how to do it, cause I have no idea.
Have fun! It’s a pretty cool job.
Now that I’m established, the next phase is to make sure we have consistent funding to survive! The wheel turns on, check back in a year to see if I’ve gone bankrupt.