Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills
to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients.
When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find
that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research
program.
Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit.
However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.
For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians
the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor.
Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene.
Hi everyone.
This is Toyosi Onwuemene on the Clinician Researcher podcast.
So happy to be here talking to you today.
I'm super excited because we have an absolutely amazing guest with us today, Dr. David Sykes.
He's going to introduce himself in a minute, but I'm super excited about what he's going
to share with you today.
So without further ado, Dr. David Sykes, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
It's great to be here.
So if you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself briefly to our audience, tell us a little
bit in your introduction about your journey to become a clinician scientist.
No, thank you.
So I'm currently an assistant professor at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and I
run a basic science lab, mostly about four days a week, and then I still see patients
and clinics on Friday afternoons and attend on the hematology consult service for four
weeks a year.
The journey here, I think was in a sense pretty straightforward and then some hiccups along
the way, but I did my undergraduate work up in the University of Alberta up in Canada.
So chilly, chilly, and then did a full 180 and did my MD, PhD down at University of California
in San Diego and came out to Boston for residency.
Was only going to stay here for three years and now I've been here for 19 years.
So got stuck on the East Coast.
Sure.
Sounds like you've had fun along the way.
It's certainly an adventure.
And I'm one of the people where now I wonder if I should be allowed to give advice because
of course I'm self-selected for someone who's overtly optimistic even in the face of many
failures.
So any advice for me should be taken with a grain of salt for sure.
No, I definitely appreciate your insights, which I think are going to be valuable to
our audience.
Now you and I were interviewers on a recent, we did at the, the Ash R. Taft applications.
We had interview, we had interviewees who were interviewing with us and we had a chance
to look at candidates and really evaluate them from the perspective of how they present
their research, how they talk about it.
And I wanted you to talk a little bit about what that process was like from the perspective
of the interviewer.
Yeah.
And as you said, that's a bit of a unique opportunity.
Not a lot of grants have a built in in-person interview and certainly it lends, I think
a whole other level, which is very important, which is to get to meet the people and put
a face and, and a name to their grant application.
So often you're reviewing grant applications only on paper.
And I think, and I think you would agree, you know, you learn a lot in that 25 minute
interview that you'd never learned from that six page or, you know, more application.
So I think it is good.
And then I had the, you know, the strange, not the strange, but the, the added thing
where I was actually an interviewee for the R. Tafts, you know, many years previously.
So I'd sort of seen it come full circle and yeah, there's not too many grants where you
actually get to go and kind of present yourself in person.
Sure.
And, and, and thank you for, for pointing that out.
It's true.
It is quite, quite rare.
I would call you that in addition to the R. Taft, the ASHA and FTP award is another one
of those where you actually do interview in person.
And there might be a grant from the borough's welcome fund as well, where you interview
in person.
So even though they don't, they're not that common, there are enough of those opportunities
that I think it's definitely worth talking about how candidates should best prepare to
answer questions about their research.
And so that's a question I'm going to ask you, but I'm also going to make the comment
that we had an interesting experience where candidates looked great on paper.
Their grants were so awesome.
And then when we met them, there was a gap between what was on paper and what was, what
was presented in person.
So I want you to answer that question for our listeners about how can candidates prepare
to answer questions about their research?
No, and thanks for that.
I mean, obviously you're absolutely right.
We did have that feeling where you wanted people to really shine based on what we read
about them maybe or based on.
And then, yeah, maybe just something disconnects there.
I did write down a couple of notes.
And so I'll sort of turn to those because I did want to be somewhat coherent.
But one of the things I thought that was maybe the most important for someone is to have
the ability to put their research into context.
And by that, I mean, I think sometimes people assume that the interview, interviewers know
more than we do, right?
I mean, I think we are trained and I'm trained in maybe neutro-viral disorders.
And I like to think that I have a fairly broad hematologic base, but deep down, I don't know
the nitty gritty of every CAR T cell trial.
And I certainly don't know the nitty gritty of every follicular lymphoma diagnosis.
So the ability, I think, to really put it into context and frame how the candidate's
project is maybe different than what's been done before, how it builds on what's been
done before.
And then really, how is it going to answer an important question?
Because sometimes if you don't know the field well enough, you don't know what the important
questions are.
And so not assuming that everybody knows the important question and really explicitly be
able to say, this is why we're doing this.
This is why it's important.
And one of my mentors had a good phrase where he would put at the end of every grant, he'd
say, if this is successful, this is what we will have accomplished.
And I think that's a nice way to look at it.
Because if you are successful in your grant, great, and we want you to be successful, are
you going to accomplish something that's just sort of an incremental advance?
Are you really going to accomplish something that's a big advance?
But being able to tell us in a succinct fashion, yeah, putting that into context and giving
it, I think, is just such an important attribute.
Thank you for pointing that out, David.
It's what I'm hearing you say.
It's really about making sure you understand that this is really a long term strategy.
It's a long goal.
So we're not just doing a project just to say we participated in a project, but we're
doing a project that takes us somewhere that potentially leads to something, a really awesome
outcome at the end of the road.
And for candidates to be able to step away from the project and enter, in a sense, look
at the forest instead of just the trees to say, this is really why this project is important,
or we can go next with it if we're successful.
100%.
Yeah.
And having, I think sometimes there's a tendency to be maybe more general or say, oh, this
is going to advance knowledge or advance our understanding of, I think you would probably
agree, I love it when people are very specific and can really put a much more tangible maybe
and a much more, yeah, just a very specific feel of what they're going to do.
If they're going to develop an app that's going to help with the diagnosis, tell us
that.
If you're going to do a whole bunch of Western blots and try to figure out combination therapy
or something, that's important.
But being very specific, I think is helpful.
It gives us a sense that one, you're invested, you know what you're talking about, you've
got a sense of what are the steps that are required to advance to that goal.
And then be able to say, look, yes, if all of these Western blots work, if all these
analog experiments work, if all these CAR T cells work, how are we, Ariane, in two years
or five years, how will we have advanced the shield?
That's awesome.
Thank you, David.
So my second question is, so when candidates describe their research, what is the most
important thing or group of things that they should make sure that they communicate?
Yeah, this is a hard one.
And I think, you know, these days, I think we all understand you can't be expected to
know everything.
You know, you can't be a perfect bioinformatician and a computer programmer and do all the cell
culture and collect the samples.
And so I think we all understand there's definitely some team science, which is a huge thing.
And I certainly, we want to applaud and champion team science.
But that being said, when you're presenting yourself in a brief interview, it's great
to tell people, what is your role?
Right?
Are you someone who's going to collect the samples, put them on the flow cytometer, you
know, compensate everything, and then give the sequencing data to somebody else?
That's great.
You know, just like, I think, but it's very important, I think, to define that role.
One because one, we don't believe you if you say you're going to do everything, because
it's almost impossible.
But also two, it shows us, oh, how do you fit into this team?
And not to say, you know, obviously it'd be great to do many things, but nobody expects
you to do everything.
And so having a sense of, oh, I've thought this through, I am going to need some help
with the biostatistic.
I am going to need some help.
But what I'm going to take ownership of, what I'm going to do when I'm going to be in the
lab later on, or I'm going to do these parts.
And that's actually really helpful, those specificities.
And then I was thinking, you know, two things that I think we've asked, and sometimes people
are really good at is kind of that short-term perspective and the long-term perspective,
which is really to say, you know, short-term, you know, the grant's only a year or two.
So what are you going to accomplish?
But then if you are stuck, you know, opening your own lab and thinking about that long-term
vision, can you put your project into that context as well?
That's a little more of a hard one, but it does give you the sense that people have thought
a little bit beyond their own experiments.
I love that.
And I also appreciate that for candidates, sometimes they're presenting a project that's
not really theirs, right?
They didn't develop the project.
And sometimes we have the sense of like, well, so which piece of this is yours?
And which piece is your mentors?
Can you speak a little bit to how does a candidate present a project when really they're doing
something that the mentor gave them to do?
No, that's so true.
You know, in a sense, you could never expect a candidate to step into a lab and invent
a new project.
That doesn't even really make sense.
You know, they should build on what a lab's expertise is.
And I think that's true.
I think being able to say that, you know, I walked into a lab where their expertise was,
you know, used to be on molecular biology, now it's maybe on CRISPR Cas9 engineering
of things.
But I saw this or I got excited by these results and I wanted to take it farther.
And that's great.
You know, I think have a sense that they, you know, went to some lab meetings, talked
to the mentor and helped devise a project.
Or on the flip side, you can be very honest.
You know, some people walk in and there's a new molecule.
You know, a company has brought a new molecule to play or a new chimeric, you know, a new
CAR-T that's in there.
They said, look, this is an opportunity, but I see this as a really powerful opportunity.
But again, having that, you know, being able to tell people that, yeah, in an honest and
specific fashion, you don't have to be apologetic if you're doing to invent your own project,
but you do have to have a sense of like, oh, this is a good opportunity.
I'm going to accomplish this with these tools is super helpful.
Yeah.
I love it.
So what I'm hearing you say is in a sense, it may not be your project.
You may not have birthed it, but take ownership of it because rarely in science are we ever
creating something brand new.
Rarely.
We really are moving things forward that other people have moved forward.
And I like the way you put it.
We're building.
We're always building.
It doesn't make sense unless someone's built something beforehand.
Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing the project.
But it's really about owning the project and speaking about it as if you're in charge,
but also knowing which piece you're able to do versus the piece that you're going to need
collaborators for.
Yes.
That's well said.
Take ownership of it.
Know it deeply.
But yeah, don't expect yourself to made the genesis of the project.
So moving away a little bit from the research is we asked this question to people about,
we asked people, where do you see yourself by the years from now?
And a couple of people struggled with that.
Can you just talk a little bit about how does a candidate answer that question, especially
when it's like, I'm in fellowship.
I don't know what tomorrow it's going to bring.
How can I answer that question about five years from now?
It's true, and especially when the interviewers, we can't even answer that question usually
ourselves.
So that's a problem.
Now, that was a good question.
What I'd like is that someone has thought about it a little bit.
And I guess I'll give two examples.
So one example is, do you have a role model where you can look at, say, I want to be like
this individual?
And even if that individual isn't your best friend or on your mentorship committee, someone
you've seen, somebody you could say, because I think sometimes people can't identify a
role model, and you wonder if they're being realistic.
You can't say, oh, I want to work in a university, but then travel and collect samples at this
one place, exotic place, and then come back and do sequencing somewhere else.
Because if you don't even have a role model that's done that, maybe your interviewers
aren't going to think you've thought about that very realistically.
And then I think it's more just maybe coming back again to a little more practical, is
have you given any thought just to the steps that are required?
Which is, and usually the people we're seeing, it's going to be papers and grants, and it's
going to be a little bit of that, how do I fit into an academic institution in terms
of clinical and research balance?
And all of which we understand.
But I like the idea that people have thought about it a little more than just, well, someone's
going to give me a job, and I'm going to work really hard.
Even though you know that's true, and their enthusiasm might be infectious.
If you can't identify somebody who you want to be, who's already got a job that you want,
that's probably where I'd like to see people go with that question.
Yeah, thank you for the things you pointed out.
I think also just, I love what you talk about.
At the end, we're not asking you to tell the future.
Right?
I mean, we don't know our futures, right?
But what we're saying is, have you even thought about this?
Have you given any thought?
So doing things as simple as five years from now, I will have graduated fellowship, and
I will be in my first faculty position.
I mean, even just going through the motions of saying what is expected five years from
now, I think allows a candidate really to speak in a way that's intelligent about it.
Like, as a junior faculty, I will be applying for grant funding.
I'll probably be applying for a career development award, those kinds of things.
But you're right.
You're kind of, how much thought have you even given it?
Because if you thought about it, then it shouldn't be difficult to talk about it.
And so perhaps candidates in preparing need to at least have those conversations.
I think it's good.
I think it comes also just to realizing, so often we're mentored by people who are much
senior than us, and oftentimes, in a sense, much more either experienced or successful.
And sometimes you'll have projects where it's a 30-person lab with somebody with a ton of
grant funding and 35 years of experience.
And so you can't immediately expect to step into that.
But understanding that, one, we want the best for you.
We want people to be successful.
We want people's projects to work.
And so biting off a creative project, but something that's tangible is so good.
I think that's really nice, because I think we definitely want to support people who are
going to change the world.
But you've got to do it sort of one step at a time, for sure.
Now kind of as a corollary to that question is, when you know, so one thing we did see
was one candidate who had been working on in a certain area for a long time, and then
all of a sudden made a transition to a totally different area.
And that can happen because candidates moved to a new institution.
That project is no longer available.
Maybe the funding ran out for that project.
How can candidates talk about that and still talk about it in a way that makes sense?
Yeah, and as you point out, we certainly see people where that's way out of their control,
sometimes way out of their control and unexpected.
And I guess on one hand, you could say, look, the ability to shift and be nimble is actually
a huge trait, right?
That's a huge in the plus column.
And the timing of that is not always, as we said, in people's control.
That's the sort of thing where I do feel like acknowledging it and just kind of facing it
head on is so important.
I think, as you kind of recall, we'd see people and then maybe would discuss as a group.
You'd be like, oh, their CV has this big strange gap.
But I think people could take 30 seconds and explain that.
And then the people that do the best are people that say, look, I was working on a project
A, and the mentor had an unexpected departure.
I found a new opportunity.
I got very excited about it.
And again, it was able to shift.
I think trying to cast that in an optimistic, positive fashion is as good as anything.
But facing it head on is probably the most important.
There's no way that, so sure, then nor should you sweep that under the carpet.
That's not a bad thing.
That's a mark on somebody's resume.
It's just an unexpected piece of life, for sure.
Absolutely.
And David, we're going to talk about it as interviewers.
We're like, what happened?
And so you might as well just say something about it.
And then we don't have to ask that question.
Now, when we saw great candidates and we saw candidates that didn't present themselves
as well, when you look at the extremes of who presented themselves well versus those
who didn't, what was the secret ingredient of those who did really, really well?
Yeah, I think people had excelled.
I was trying to think about the top things that really framed them.
One certainly is enthusiasm.
There's nothing that's more exciting after a short day or a long day than people that
are excited to talk about their work, obviously passionate about it.
So that enthusiasm and passion certainly goes a long ways.
I think there was, again, that idea that not kind of respect and appreciate who your interviewers
are, which means we're not experts, but we're not neophytes.
And being able, again, to put things into context, because there's also nothing worse
than listening to somebody and realizing you don't get it.
I think if someone is too technical or if we can't get it, then everybody feels bad,
because then we feel that we're not appreciating it.
And clearly, then that candidate did not get it.
So that ability to frame things succinctly and to have that enthusiasm is super important.
And mostly, I guess I frame this, you're kind of a teacher at that point.
We want to learn.
We're excited to learn about your project.
We want to learn.
So being able to teach that in a brief time, I think, is important.
And the one thing that I think is very subtle, but I'll say it anyways, which is sometimes
we'll have a little bit of an idea.
And I know you mentioned something, and I think I mentioned it in a couple of interviews
where, like, oh, have you thought about this?
And it's important to maybe we're totally off base, but also being able to incorporate
sort of that idea on the fly is a really nice trait.
And some people just have an ability to do that really nicely.
But I like that sort of enthusiasm, being able to frame things, and really being a teacher
for that time is, I think, super important.
I really appreciate what you said about being a teacher.
In that moment, you are the expert on your project.
And I can get why candidates will be a little bit intimidated.
It's like, oh, my gosh, these are the people evaluating me.
But you are the expert.
And so bring your expertise, shine, and teach us something.
And you may not necessarily be teaching us about pathophysiology.
Please do not do that.
But really teach us about why this project matters, why you care about it, where it's
going to go.
And no one can speak to that more strongly or more enthusiastically, really, than the
candidate.
100%.
Yeah.
How about on the flip side of that, those who didn't do as well?
What were some of those things that stood out for you?
Yeah.
And I think, honestly, well, I'll say it just because it should be said.
But lack of enthusiasm, obviously, is a huge red flag.
If you're not excited about your project, then no one's going to be.
We know that.
And I don't think we had people like that.
But I have had moments where people will come give a talk, and then they don't even seem
like they care about their data.
Or just obviously, people could be nervous, but please give us your most enthusiasm.
And then two things, I think, that stand out, which is like everything in life, a bit of
time managed.
You might have 20 minutes or 30 minutes, you might have 30 minutes or 40 minutes.
But you also have to realize, interviewers want to ask more than one question.
So I think if you spend 10 minutes answering the first question, that's too long.
And that just demonstrates a little bit of a lack of how things are going to work.
And some of our best candidates would answer stuff with just enough detail, in 60 seconds
or 90 seconds.
But the moment people go on for three, four minutes and use up a quarter of their interview
time, that's too long.
So I think the poor ones, I think, was that time management.
And then there's just a little bit of disorganization, where unfortunately, you might ask a question
and then it can derail things, because people go off into a tangent.
And it's tough, because I think you do want to answer the question appropriately, but
you also don't want to get too derailed in any nitty gritty.
And I'm not having a good ability to give an example with that, other than to say, it
is good to think about what parts of your project are accessible to the interviewers
that are more broadly accessible, that have clinical applicability, and not get too bogged
down in some of the details, which might be very important, and we want to hear about
them.
But I think it can also derail if people get too nitty gritty receptor signaling or about
cloning of genes or stuff like that.
So that's a more subtle one.
But time management, being enthusiastic are two big ones, for sure.
Absolutely.
David, at the end of each interview, we asked the candidates, what was missing?
If there was a question that we hadn't asked, that they felt like there was something they
needed to tell us about.
I forget exactly how we framed the question, but it was really interesting as far as how
the candidates responded.
Tell me about what was some of the best answers and what should candidates be thinking about
when they have that kind of opportunity?
Yeah, Noah, that's a full credit.
That was your question.
That really worked out well, which was to say it definitely opened a lot of things that
we didn't expect to get, which was nice.
I think there was an opportunity to talk about some of the non-scientific challenges that
people might have faced, and that was super important.
I think we had quite a few passionate people who were in the basic science lab, but also
done a lot of clinical work that was very meaningful to them.
I think that gave people an opportunity to talk about that.
A couple of people talked about mentorship of their own, where they were able to be mentors
to either students or other residents.
I think that was very meaningful.
To your point, it's hard to prepare for that, but I think it's nice.
Everyone has a life outside the lab, and everyone I think also is probably enthusiastic and
passionate about that.
So, maybe they'll just give us one piece of information, whether it's as fun as just vacation
spots or cooking, or if it is really like I have a passion and even though I'm a do
tissue culture here, I also love to mentor on the side.
It was really nice to get a little insight into people.
It also is just open-ended enough of a question.
It's also open-ended enough of a question that it gives you the ability to be a little
more creative and not just answer something point blank.
That was a good question.
I liked that.
Well, thank you, David, for giving me credit for that question.
All the other questions were yours.
So I'm glad that I had one question of many.
Just to go back to what you said, at the end of the day, the research project is the research
project.
I think organizations like to fund people doing good science, but really it's about
the people.
And so, just thinking to that question, it is a hard question to answer, but it really
is an opportunity to talk about yourself in a way that helps people just get excited about
you.
And really, I think all of our candidates are superstars.
We don't always know exactly what ways they're excelling outside of the lab.
But yeah, definitely an opportunity to just talk about the things that make you shine
and not be...
Maybe the word is humble, but maybe not really humility as much as not feel like an impostor
about it.
Really be able to speak about yourself in a way that's in glowing terms.
And that's difficult.
It's difficult for us as MDs.
Difficult, for sure.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Well, David, it's been a great conversation.
I feel like we...
I've learned a lot, even though we were interviewers together.
And I feel like our audiences definitely learned a lot.
And I want to ask that question.
What do you feel like somebody who's listening, who's maybe preparing for such an interview,
what is one thing perhaps we haven't talked about that you want them to know?
Yeah.
Again, just opened enough to be a very challenging question.
That's right.
Thanks.
That's good.
Yeah.
I think you sort of nailed it, which is the project is important.
And certainly the people who got to the stage of the interview, it was based on the project,
right?
Because we read.
But when you're there, and I think when you're interviewing a person or giving a job talk,
I think that would be a very similar experience, giving a job talk or even just giving an invited
seminar.
Sometimes your job is less to wow us in a bit with how much you know, which is important,
but also just to give us a sense that you are the person that's going to tackle that
problem, that you want to tackle that problem, that you tell us it's an important problem
and you feel it's an important problem and you can tell us why it's an important problem.
I love that.
Because as you point, you want to give resources, which is often money, but time and resources
and money to people that just love their work.
And so if you can communicate that and make us feel like you love your work, you've done
your job, you know, and then the chips will fall, you know?
So I think that's a good take home message.
That's really awesome.
What a great place to end.
That's just such, such great advice.
Thank you, David.
So to all of our listeners, you've heard David, he's, he really gave us some great, great,
great pointers as to how to prepare for these kinds of interviews.
If you know someone who is preparing for an interview and they would benefit from this
episode, definitely forward it to them.
Please share if you are a mentor and your mentees are getting ready for this type of
brand application interview, definitely forward it to them so that they also can benefit from
the insights that David shared.
David, thank you for being on the show.
Thank you very much.
All right.
Bye everyone.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic
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