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A few thoughts about graduate school, career paths and science. U of T is a big place, and sometimes students don’t know where to find the mentoring or advice to help them navigate their careers. To be fair, it’s not that obvious how to find a lab, choose a project, grow it into a few publications and then start over in a new direction for a postdoc, find a job...well, you get the picture. I have quite a few students under my care that start off pretty naive about science, the universe and everything...And my job, as an educator and a mentor, is to try and fill the gap. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and it’s honestly very helpful to know what they are as early as possible so that you can grow into the confidence to firmly and doggedly take science by the horns (or the jugular. So here’s my attempt to guide and provide one perspective from somebody who has been there.

music i write with

Norah Jones

Frank Sinatra

Diana Krall

People places things

Gotta love lighthouses!

Visiting the Giant Lobster au coeur de l’Acadie!

Favorite person--really he’s a laugh a minute

Monday, July 12, 2010

Graduate school--expectations

Now you’ve found a supervisor and a research topic that fires your imagination. Excellent. It’s a bit of a leap of faith but that’s all right. Now what? Make no mistake, the transition from undergraduate to graduate student is a challenging one. There are few classes, tests, assignments providing you with benchmarks and therefore reassurance that all is well. Just you and your research topic. How to start?

Step 1. Read the papers--from your lab and your field. Read them (more than

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Welcome to grad school--finding the right supervisor

Congratulations! You’ve been accepted into grad school! You’ve worked hard, gotten good grades and finally, you are in. So, now what? Well, you are faced with one of the most important decisions of your graduate career. Finding a research topic. But more than that, you need to find the right mentor who will nurture, inspire, challenge and teach you to be a rigorous, critical scientist. A mentor who will make sure you set goals and help you achieve them, a mentor who sincerely wants

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Beyond the PhD: finding a post-doc

Congratulations! The PhD is in sight. You have published some papers, have worked hard, and are looking to write your thesis in the near future (when this next paper is submitted!). So, now what? Should you even do a post-doc? YES! The post-doc is probably the best scientific time you will have. You get to study whatever topic you happen to find irresistibly fascinating, in the lab of a world-expert who happens to be a great person, and in a great city/country. Who wouldn’t want

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Research--it doesn’t get any better, part2

So why is research a good career? The years of training are long. There’s the 4 year undergrad, the 5-6 year PhD, the 2-3 year post-doctoral fellowship and finally, finally, if all has gone according to plan and you’ve been lucky, you are ready to look for a job. Oh, but what a job!

What hooked me on a research career was twofold: the freedom, and the surprises. As an academic, I am paid to study something I personally find fascinating. I follow the leads I think are most promising, I

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Research--it just doesn’t get any better than this!

A long time ago, I was an undergraduate. I had good grades, and everyone I knew with good grades was desperate to get into Med School. Not me. I don’t like how hospitals smell, I don’t like to prod people’s orifices, and mostly, I don’t like the guesswork necessary in the practice of medicine. I don’t mean to belittle the profession in any way--I have great admiration for medics, but there is so much we don’t know about the inner working of the cell that a molecular understanding of

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