Month 1

‘So it begins’ – King Théoden, The Two Towers

Greetings reader! This is my first shot at writing a blog, so forgive me if the style or content appears somehow inexperienced. Last month, I finally reached my main career goal of becoming an independent (junior) research group leader. As is common in my field, this is as a ‘tenure track’, meaning I will be on a 4-year temporary contract before a decision on tenure is made. I am having a lot of new experiences and I was thinking if a blog would be a nice way to share them. If you think that it is, bear with me and join me on this new adventure!

Before my official starting day, I had one month ‘in between jobs’, which I spent mostly on preparing two grant proposals (a full one and a pre-proposal), for which the deadlines were the first and second day of my new job. I already submitted a third one (also pre-proposal) before my official starting day, which required some speedy paperwork and autographs on my organization’s side, and they did not let down. Day 1 and Day 2 were therefore rather packed with wrapping up these other two proposals, on top of the usual introductions, tours and paperwork that come with a new job. Day 1 also included a lunch with several of the department heads and bigshot professors, where I tried not to come across too asinine, but thankfully the atmosphere was pretty relaxed. I guess it helped that I met all of them already as part of the interview process (needless to say the atmosphere was a bit less relaxed back then, perhaps they were making up for this haha).

A big new factor was my significantly longer commute, which I am still trying to get used to a month later. While the distance isn’t that far, it is one of the busiest routes in the country and therefore both roads and trains are completely packed during the rush hours. I tried both car and a bike-train-bike combination (I acquired a shitty bike to permanently park at the train station for this purpose). It turns out I prefer the latter over endless driving in traffic jams, in spite of the many train delays and sometimes dangerous situations for cyclists (e.g. cars jumping the red light, other cyclists looking at their phone screen while approaching the intersection at full speed etc.). If everything goes well, I can do this in under an hour, but it turns out this occurs only very rarely.

My startup package only included a (senior) technician from a pool of technicians already employed at my institute, but thankfully I had two (computational) research interns lined up to start two weeks after myself, to have a bit more of a real ‘team’ from the get-go. Since they are doing their research internships outside of their own university, they need to have an internal examiner from that university as well as a local supervisor (me). One of them picked an internal examiner I am not very familiar with, which immediately triggered some sort of domino Murphy’s law situation. She wasn’t happy with the research proposal for the project and decided to discuss this with the board of examiners and not with me. Thankfully I knew several people on this board personally and I got wind of this through the intern, so I managed to rebut against her objections. After a direct call on her request, we agreed that with some minor alterations, the proposal should be good to go. Then she asked if the intern already submitted his contract with my organisation to the online student portal of their university, which I said I would double-check. It turns out that he didn’t, and neither did the other student (she said it wasn’t necessary, although I cannot access this portal so I could not check this myself). After the intern submitted his contract with my organization to the portal, it was rejected by the university for vague reasons and they suggested to use their own contract instead. It turned out I could not sign this contract myself and it had to go through the legal and HR departments of my organization, where several people happened to be on holiday. Through a Kafkaesque circus involving a lot of pleading, apologizing, getting sent back and forth and trying to figure out who is supposed to do what, we managed to get the signed contracts just in time (or actually a day too late, meaning one of the interns started one day later than scheduled). Let’s put this in the basket of useful career experience.

I got a nice new office shared with a fellow junior group leader. Our institute apparently has a substantial art collection and our office also features a massive (my guess would be 5-6 m2) painting featuring a fully nude woman. While it is a beautiful painting, it reminded me of a documentary on the child sex trafficker and rapist Jeffrey Epstein, who apparently had many paintings featuring nudity in his house in palm beach Florida. In this documentary, one of the survivors said that these paintings made her feel uncomfortable the first time she entered that house. Now that I am in a leadership position and my subordinates might have to come to my office to ask me questions, I was afraid that this huge painting might also make them feel uncomfortable. I therefore inquired if the painting could be swapped with something else in the collection. This was set in motion surprisingly quickly, perhaps too quickly, because as it was already approved, my new office mate replied in a rather irritated tone that she had not been informed about this and that she was attached to the painting. Ofcourse she is correct in that she should have been consulted and I made clear it was not of high priority for me, so alas, the painting remains in my office and I will just have to apologize to future visitors (already happened once by now).

As a new PI, it is important to put yourself on the map a little bit. I saw a linkedin post by my former employer announcing that a friend of mine was just starting his own lab in Belgium. I decided to directly message the linkedin account of that organisation, asking if it would be too forward by me to ask for a similar plug as I was in the same boat. Thankfully somebody in charge of that organizational linkedin account was very friendly and happily helped me out with this. You can decide whether this was vanity on my behalf or important self-marketing for a new PI (probably both). At least it led to a lot of ‘engagement’ on linkedin, for whatever that’s worth.

One very positive aspect of my new work place turns out to be the canteen. I did not have very high expectations, having experienced canteens in this country for most of my life, but this one is of significantly higher standard than the average. I heard it is because it is not an external caterer but an in-house team. The first two weeks, eating there felt a bit awkward being all by myself, but now that my interns have started it is a pleasant daily lab ritual to have lunch in the canteen together.

Another new experience for me is the ‘research strategy meetings’, where upcoming grant proposals are discussed. I already presented here two times now, the first time before my official starting date as the deadlines were on Day 1 and Day 2. I was looking for new grant proposal options and my eye fell on the Human Frontier Science Program ‘early career’ research proposal. I previously (unsuccessfully) applied to their postdoc fellowship. This fellowship requires a team of 2-4 junior group leaders with different expertise/background, from different countries (but has to be HFSP member country), independent status (so no postdoc or similar) and with a PhD obtained less than 10 years ago. This rather specific set of requirements basically eliminated my entire network, so I decided to ask around at my new institute, which led to some names being suggested. After making contact with a guy from the US via Linkedin, he agreed with a call to discuss this proposal opportunity. This all took a bit longer than expected, meaning I was too late to submit myself via the regular way for the aforementioned research strategy meeting. However, in the email announcing it, there was a link to a shared word document with the program of the meeting. Since it was already the next day, I boldly put my name after the last speaker in the list, meaning I would present from 5 p.m. (big mistake in my country as it turns out!). While the presentation in the meeting went fine and was actually moved to 16.45, I was told very clearly the next day by my boss to not use this approach the next time. I hope I got away on my newbie status with this one…

In the meantime, there was already a preliminary decision on the first grant proposal I submitted (before I started the job), which sadly was negative. However, it was allowed to submit a rebuttal if you thought there were factual inaccuracies in the assessment report. I decided to do so since there were some very questionable statements in this report that I felt I could protest (as did my superiors). It was made very clear by the grant provider that this rebuttal was not meant to provide additional, new information concerning the pre-proposal, or the rebuttal would be automatically rejected. Ofcourse, I made sure to not do so. I therefore was rather surprised that when I saw the reply to my rebuttal (in the final decision letters), one of the referees was quoted as:

“In the rebuttal, the candidate does not bring up new evidence but mainly restates the evidence that was already there.”

This is the boomer logic we are up against.

I also made contact with the neighbouring institute, a prestigious national institute with very strong science and several people I knew in my field from before. Somebody I overlapped with for a year or so during my PhD just started there as a junior group leader a few weeks before I did, which helped to make a connection. It was nice to visit the scientists in this group there and they were happy if I joined their biweekly group meeting. Moreover, during my visit they told me I could use some of their instruments that we lack (for now) at my own institute, albeit for a fee.

I still had to arrange my promised technician, for which I already submitted a vacancy text before my first official day. I found out it had never been circulated and I therefore submitted a slightly updated version (based on my impression of the labs during the tour I got). While initially slow, a match was made relatively quick with somebody with A) >25 years of experience at the institute B) almost the complete skillset I was looking for C) a very strong recommendation by his current boss, who was running out of funding to keep him in his own lab. He seems like a nice guy as well, which is ofcourse important too. The transfer was formalised on the last day of my first month, so we will have the team ‘complete’ for the next month.

To wrap up the first month, the final afternoon had an ‘oratio’ by one of the group leaders from my institute who recently became professor. Since I am already in a collaborative project with him, I figured it would be nice to go there. I could have expected (but didn’t) that one of my recent colleagues from my previous jobs might be there, so seeing her was a nice surprise and we could catch up on what happened there in the meantime and ofcourse my new role.

As this is my first blog it is a bit long, I will try to make the next one less verbose. Catch y’all on the flip side!