The very best parts of science are often the stories about the people involved. So sit back and let me tell you a brief story...
After I graduated from Rutgers, I lived in a rented apartment in Highland Park, NJ with some friends. Much of that summer I spent looking for a job. I had BS in Biotechnology and, like everyone, wanted to work with cancer. Unfortunately, the biotech bubble had burst the year before. All my older friends had awesome jobs at big companies and I was left staring at a depressingly blank page in the hiring section. Eventually, I found a position that was perfect. a PI who ran a research lab at a hospital was hiring. Technicians who previously had gone through his lab had all published papers with him and gone on to grad school. It was perfect... but he was working with HIV. I took the job.
One night a week or two after I started in the lab, I sat down and had dinner with my roommate Rob Brown. We start talking about life in general and he asks me about the new job. I start to tell him that I like it, despite the fact that it isn't what I thought I was going to be doing. "Wait, so what are you doing?"
So I start to tell him more about the job. I tell him that I'm working with HIV. "Holy ****, you're working with the ninja."
I stopped a second, "Wait, what? Why did you call it the ninja?"
Unfortunately, Rob is still right. The best drugs and years of scientific progress have only allowed us to manage this disease. We can't cure it... yet. I tell my students that this is the first infectious disease to beat 20th (and now 21st) century medicine. But, we've learned a ton of amazing things about biology along the way because of the intense efforts of the folks who work on HIV. And someday the ninja won't win.
-Zak Klase, July 2017
Deciding how to spend your funds may be the most stressful part of being junior faculty. Let me pass on the best advice I ever got.
When I started the lab at USciences I was given startup funds - with the typical arrangement that these funds would carry me to my first grant and that through funding I obtained the university would recoup their investment. As I was unpacking boxes and moving items into my shiney new lab space, my chair Peter Berget, walked in and asked me, "How are you going to spend your money?" I was ready for this! I had spreadsheets and specific numbers. Peter listened to me lay out my plan and then he said,
"No, you should hire a postdoc."
This was a little scary. Postdoctoral fellows are one of the most expensive staffing choices a lab can make. I needed that money for other things!!! But Peter explained that the startup funds I was given were not to be used as a savings account that would support a low level research program for years. It was meant as a large investment to be spent to establish myself. You had to spend money to make money AND a well trained, 'workhorse' staff member was exactly what was needed to move things forward quickly and successfully. This is what lead me to hire Luca. This approach to using the resources I was given was directly responsible for early success and the millions of dollars of grants that followed. I kept following Peter's advice.
When I was awarded tenure at USciences, I stepped back and looked at where I was and where I came from. Tenure had been my goal for nearly 15 years (starting from when I decided to get a PhD). What was next? The answer was something bigger. More focus on a different type of research. Accomplishing that would take a different environment and a different set of resources. This is why I left the safe environment of USci and came to Drexel.
You have to spend money to make money. Expand or die.
-Zak Klase