Hello everyone and welcome back to our podcast the researchers round table.
In this episode we will talk to Dr. Sam Amsberg a lecturer at University of San Francisco.
Sam works on plant cell wall and he will share his passion for science.
So for quite a long time when I was a really little kid I was really interested in science
and ecology and pollution.
And his journey to become a lecturer at University of San Francisco.
I'd say it's been quite a steep learning curve so I was very fortunate I finished my PhD
and lined up.
He shares his experience during his early career research fellowship.
I think your grant has to be focused, your proposal has to have, you can't.
And how does Sam unwind himself?
After weekend to do whatever I want to do, go and see friends, I've got allotment, I
go and guard and take time.
There is much more to learn from Sam's journey from undergrad to PhD, from postdoc to current
lecturer.
A good example of having work life balance because I feel like those sorts of things
have to come from the top.
If your PI works all the time it is always in.
So stay tuned to learn more.
Welcome to our show Sam, can you tell me about your current position in the Sheffield?
Yes, so at Sheffield I'm a lecturer but I've just started that position in January so I
was on an early career fellowship before that and when that rolled to the end I was lucky
that Sheffield were recruiting so I applied for a lecturer job and just started that.
So that's nice.
So I will start this conversation with again like when it inspired you to come to science
as a child or what time you realised I need to go for the science?
So for quite a long time when I was a really little kid I was really interested in science
and ecology and pollution, my parents were quite interested in that and then I sort of
lost interest in it through my teenage years and towards the end of school I became really
interested in biology.
I had a really inspirational biology teacher so I applied for a biology degree at university
so that's really my kind of origin story in science and then I really enjoyed my degree
so that's when I decided I kind of want to stay in this area and keep doing that.
So you did your master from Sheffield or?
I didn't do a master so I did my degree at Manchester first in biology and then I transitioned
to plant science and then I did a PhD in Sheffield and then went away a bit to work in Leeds
and then I've been in Sheffield ever since.
So I will start again with the PhD, what was the topic, what were you working on, how you
come to like I need to go for this, you know scientists to work with?
Well there's a mix of personal and professional reasons so we wanted to stay up in the region
so Sheffield is very close to Manchester where I did my degree and my partner was working
in Manchester at the time but also my third year undergraduate project supervisor knew
my PhD supervisor in Sheffield well and so recommended the project because it was in
a related area on kind of the biomechanics of plant cell walls and gave me a good reference
so I applied for it and initially I didn't get it and then there was another project
available and I got it on the second swing so it was a bit of luck but really I was just
looking for plant science related projects that were interesting and there was a lot
of different projects at the time that interested me but this one was about something related
to my third year project so I felt I had a little bit to offer to it.
So currently you're working on cell plants cell wall and all those things so during your
PhD you did the same thing?
Yes in a different system so I worked in my PhD on very specifically the kind of nano
biomechanics of stomatal cell walls and then I've kept some of those techniques and taken
them forward in my career but I've sort of broadened that out to look at cell walls in
other contexts and kind of broadened that research strand.
Oh great so during your postdoc because after your PhD I have seen your track like you
moved there was no any gap like you have continued to float for you know PSD then postdoc then
the discovery fellow.
Yeah I've been very fortunate.
So can you tell me briefly about like how is the journey from like a postdoc to early
careers like a discovery fellow and all?
I'd say it's been quite a steep learning curve so I was very fortunate I finished my PhD
and lined up a job in Leeds with a postdoc with Joseline Venitas Alfonso who was then
doctor is now professor and I was very fortunate that she's an incredibly supportive supervisor
so she really encouraged me to develop my own ideas and apply for things and she provided
me with a lot of support for writing the discovery fellowship application and I was still living
in Sheffield at the time from my PhD so I had a vested interest in moving back to Sheffield
and I really like the department at Sheffield they have really brilliant growth facilities
and there's just a really big group of plant scientists there's a lot of people to bounce
ideas off so I kind of wanted to be back in Sheffield and I just applied for it and it
was a really long process to write it so I guess the first bit of advice would be start
a year in advance of when you need it to start because it took a long time to go through
the interviews and the reviews.
Yeah it's my personal like a question like is it when you're applying for independent
philosophy your profile really matter because sometimes you are leaving your PhD you don't
have that much profile but we say like oh you need some paper for like large paper big
paper something.
There's a mix I would say yes obviously your profile does matter but I was not the most
prolific PhD student I had I had a nice paper for my PhD and then in my postdoc we had a
couple of small additional papers but I did not have a huge CV with loads of big impact
nature science papers and loads of first author papers so I think you need to have something
to show that you can drive a research project through to a good publication but field specific
publications that are kind of lower impact I think are fine and you've then just got
to write a really good good project that's really well articulated that sells the problem
well and I think that's as long as your CV is good enough I think the project and how
you present it and how you sell the idea is really more important.
So it's like you can apply it's not matter that you should have a nature or something
but I think the area of interest where you're applying for the post like you working you're
you know when I see your work it seems like you have moved from but you haven't left that
area of research and it seems like you have you know grip on those subject when you're
writing people can see that but yeah this guy can bring something new.
Yeah kind of build on your skill set if you start something completely different you have
no track record on it even if you've got papers in a different field.
Yeah so it's happened with me like I started with my map kind of signaling back in India
I did in macroanalyzing assist then moved to glucose signaling then go to AVS signaling
and later now I'm doing the simulation so somehow I feel like there is no particular
thing that I'm working but I feel like I'm working on post translation modification.
But thing is that even I feel like when I'm communicating and writing a grant for something
I feel like where I should focus rather than like I don't have the you know niche where
I can go and say like okay I want to work over there but it's a post translation modification
which makes sometimes harder for people like other people also maybe thinking like we have
moved in multiple projects that may be one of the reason that they're you know grant
gain are not successful.
Yeah I think I mean I think your grant has to be focused your proposal has to have you
can't try and incorporate everything that you've done and it's fine to have developed
some avenues of research that you've then not followed up on because you still learn
from that.
Yeah.
But there should be it should build on something that you already know how to do that might
be methodology you might apply existing methodology to a new system or you might continue to
ask the similar questions to you've asked in your postdoc and take them in a slightly
different direction.
So it doesn't have to build on everything you might have done a PhD and a postdoc in
different fields and it might only build on one of them not not on both of them.
I think that's totally fine.
That's right.
So if I say I know postdoc is always like sometimes you know very hectic to cope up
with all this like you have a two years of postdoc there's insecurity that after two
years what will happen because of the your funding and all.
So how do you deal with that from like if I have this year or two years I have to give
this data but suddenly you don't know how much time it will take your research because
it's like uncertainty in the world.
Yeah I found the short term nature of it quite tricky at times and I think you've got to
be really careful to prioritize the most important strands not the easiest wins.
So it can be tempting to say oh this experiment will only take me two days to get the results
I'll do that and then you do another experiment and another one.
But actually sometimes the most important thing that actually going to be key for the
paper you put it off but that might take eight months to do that so you need to get that
started.
But I think all career stages now I've got my own independent position you still feel
like you're juggling a lot of things and you're prioritizing and there's a lot still a lot
of pressure and time frames to get things done and get funding in so that doesn't go
away it just evolves.
So I think that pressure time of the postdoc is kind of teaching you how to deal with those
pressures and how to manage multiple threads at once and how to prioritize.
You do need to be able to do that to a certain extent to run a research group.
So it's totally different as a postdoc and as an independent PI because in the independent
you have to take care of your projects your tenure to complete and all those things but
as a postdoc we have different perspective because I'm a postdoc I'm focusing on that
because I don't know what will be there.
I think the pressures evolve and are different but certainly with the postdoc it's the instability
I think is the hardest bit because if you don't get stuff through to publication it
can be quite challenging and I mean I'm still trying to push out a publication from my postdoc
because I didn't get it finished within the postdoc and then it's hard to find time and
it's frustrating for me how long that's taken it's frustrating for my PI and at least how
long that's taken and we're really trying to push it out and I'm afraid there's no easy
fix for it it's just hard but I think real careful prioritization of what is going to
get me what's the minimum I need to get a paper out of this do that get the paper kind
of get an output.
Yeah prioritize the things what is needed not other than exploring every aspect and
you are ending with nothing in your hand.
Don't save everything up for that hypothetical nature paper obviously if you've got a really
big story you might want to try for that big impact journal.
But at the same time I feel like at the same time when you're aiming for high papers but
you have to be realistic upon your work what you're doing because sometimes you can't say
this paper is going to be in the highest impact journal you have to be open up with like okay
if I'm doing these things if it's a novelty let's try it but sometimes you can't say okay
I can stay for more one year I could try that can drive like a three or four years you're
ending with nothing.
I mean you know not the high impact but four years spend you got one so somehow sometimes
feel like as we spend more time in the postdoc and our publication drops that's also negative
for the career like in the future if you're applying for some kind of independent philosophy
because in three years what you got is like this impact factor.
Yeah I think there's a real balance and I think it's quite damaging for science the
obsession with impact factor that we've generated and it doesn't lead I think to the best science.
Best practices yeah that's right.
But I do think there's different scales of impact and you do need your publications to
go to a good rigorous journal that's respected in your field but I think it's far more useful
for your career to have a slightly smaller paper but that you very clearly lead on than
maybe be one of many authors on a huge paper because you're one of the big things about
transitioning from the postdoc stage into an independent stage is being able to demonstrate
your independence and your leadership and that's very hard you know no one gets a nature
paper on their own those papers have you know it can become quite hard to demonstrate your
independence and your contribution.
And certainly sometimes it may help you as a teamwork you can say like you can work in
a team that's good for like postdoc because you can work in multiple projects because
when you join a lab you don't have to work on one project rather than you have to supervise
sometimes PhD sometimes master and something like that so that that can define like you
can work in a team but ultimately like you said small paper also matter because you lead
them by yourself and you come to that one and small paper again can add multiple things
like and finally you can say that you can lead the big project as well because as a
career we cannot apply for the big grant first of all but like a small grant we can apply
like for me like I'm looking for like a next one what will be either independent fellowship
which I can take it because when I apply for the postdoc now I spent three or four years
here in Durham and I apply for the job which doesn't have the criteria of my salary according
to that and I feel like they won't be taking because they have mentioned this one and like
this one the salary range so I sometimes feel like either you have to approach in such a
way either independent philosophy be applied for together so that will be more entertaining
rather than I will go for like open post everywhere they have means and already like we have this
range so I feel what do you suggest.
I think that's a very yeah kind of a very personal decision but certainly the independent
fellowship gives you a bit more freedom to set your own parameters for every aspect of
the job you kind of have a little bit more freedom to set your salary although still
within institutional boundaries and you've got a lot more freedom on the direction of
the project but it is a lot of work to put a fellowship together and obviously the success
rate is low because they're very competitive so there's pros and cons I think if you can
get a fellowship they're fantastic they really give you time to develop your ideas and your
independence while you don't have say as a lecturer you've got teaching constraints
as well but you don't have that so much as a as an early career fellow so if you can
get them they're amazing but obviously they're competitive and there's plenty of brilliant
scientists that don't get independent fellowships and I think it's important that they still
try and go for for lecturer jobs and things because you don't need a fellowship to move
into a lecturer position yeah plenty of people still don't.
Yeah so recently I was applying for like a assistant professor in India and they have
criteria for different like if you're applying for assistant professor you have to be like
master or PhD no more experience but associate professor maybe five years after PhD you have
to have experience of this one or industrial experience or teaching experience I came to
like teaching experience in UK I don't know how many postdocs go for teaching because
they don't allow sometimes like you have to work so somehow you're not developing yourself
as a looking for like assistant professor or lecturer or something because they will
ask do you have experience but no because in the PhD you just went for demonstrating
and experiment not like a teaching on so I feel like that's missing in.
Yeah I think that's a very good point and I should say my experience is obviously is
very UK centric because I've only worked in the UK system and I've got family ties here
so I'm not planning to move outside the UK system so it's not something I'd considered
because if you're a postdoc applying for lecturer jobs in the UK there's no real expectation
that you've done a significant amount of teaching because that's what the system in the UK is.
It's a challenge for kind of other job markets that have different expectations and yeah
I hadn't considered I think there are opportunities at postdoc to teach often for example I don't
know what it's like here in Sheffield we have modules that have got like teaching focused
stuff on them but then we have research focused guest lectures in those modules to give students
exposure to kind of research led stuff and we sometimes have postdocs delivering those
and so then you've got kind of examples of giving lectures and running practicals and
things like that.
Yeah that's really wonderful because here I feel like PhD scholars can opt for the demonstrator
because they can be paid for that one and that's good but as a postdoc sometimes we
feel like we haven't got any chances for like you know interaction with the undergrad or
like a teaching experience you can include but sometimes like if there is a module where
you can give a seminar so we approach over there they will be not paying for that but
at least we are getting the experience for like interaction with the students that can
may help you in later because suddenly when I am applying for this job I can say at least
yeah I have worked for with a master and all but not completely like a lectureship or something
like for one month or something but there is a one or two class I have taken for this
one.
Yeah I think giving a couple of guest lectures here or there gives you you can spin that
to be quite a lot on your CV if you need to.
So I will come back to you like as an independent researcher how do you unwind yourself when
you are working in the lab or the office and applying for grants and all how do you unwind
yourself?
So I mean I have a two year old at home so there is not a lot of relaxing but because
she is manic but I try and be quite boundaried and I think I try and not to let work bleed
into personal life too much sometimes you do have to I do have to do a little bit of
work in the evening and the weekends but for the most part my work day is when I work and
then when I go home my laptop stays at work or it is in my bag and I do not think about
it and I tell people in my lab that they will not get any response from me over the weekend
but I also will not be emailing them over the weekend.
And yeah try not to think about work in a work way I think about science still because
I am interested in science but yeah spend time with my family and kind of have the weekend
to do whatever I want to do go and see friends I have got an allotment I go and garden take
time away from it and also in work I try and give myself time to think so if you are constantly
doing little jobs here and there you never think and I sometimes just try and give myself
an hour where I will go and sit in a coffee shop and just with a notebook and just take
some notes think about work with no computer so you are not distracted by emails or finishing
of a job just sketching out ideas but crucially that is work so that happens in the work day
I am thinking and I am planning so it is a work job so it happens in the work day.
That's right.
I also like you said I can't carry this notebook with me if I am distracted too much with my
work because whenever I am looking at my laptop I start doing like oh I have to work this
one then I realise oh I have to apply for my post-op position so all the time I am like
switching from one to another so and it is like you can do it because you are just typing
like oh post-op position in the UK you are moving but you are not focusing and one hour
I will spend and I will be like too much distressed so I feel like you said go to coffee shop
go to I mostly go to the drum is really nice place you know it is like a nice garden you
can go and just sit over there and just listen to the music and relax so yeah that is a good
one.
There is a lot of evidence about how constant task switching basically reduces how much
you are able to focus on a thing and so every time you task switch you are losing focus
and you are not regaining that when you switch back and so you lose productivity so it is
better to try and carve out kind of bits of time for those sorts of important jobs without
being distracted.
If I ask you like how is it different now because as a post-doc all the time I am thinking
about my work it is like you know you have to bring that work before your contract ends
but as a PI you know that you have to carry on but you have to also focus on your personal
life and you know work balance something like that but is it different like how you did
when you were doing post-doc?
I always tried to be quite bound read I feel like now that I kind of lead people in a lab
I try and set a good example of having work life balance because I feel like those sorts
of things have to come from the top if your PI works all the time and is always in it
the expectation bleeds onto your post-docs and PhDs and I do not have that expectation
of them.
I think I am still thinking about stuff a lot of the time and it is just what I think
about different before I was thinking about finishing that experiment now I am thinking
about do I have time to go into the lab I have to write that lecture, shall I submit
a grant but I am also thinking about trying to keep on top of the PhD students project
so that when I speak to them I know what they are doing and they do not feel like I am out
of touch with their project.
It is better and worse there is more things to think about but then also I know that the
students are doing some of the thinking as well because they are managing their own project
to a certain extent so yeah it is kind of similar but with nuances I would say.
So how do you explain because I was working with the research culture so we were talking
about what kind of you know what do you think about the research culture according to your
personal view because as a work ethic most of the time we are like okay you are working
on so sometimes you spend extra time Saturday Sunday people are working day and night that
is good for some time because this is demanding for this week only not for like a whole year
how do you think about this toxic culture or something?
I think it is very very hit and miss I think different places but also within a place different
people have healthier or less healthy attitudes and I think it is a reasonable expectation
with the way science works that it is not always nine to five but if someone has got
an experiment that say runs late or runs over the weekend I think it is a perfectly fair
expectation that you take that time back the following week or the next month or whenever
time lets up and what you cannot allow to happen is that feeling of busy busy busy
busy to elongate and be content especially when you have got PhDs and postdocs that you
are managing as a manager I think it is really it is the PI's responsibility to manage those
pressures and to take some of that pressure so when I was working with Jocelyn in Leeds
we had a meeting and she said to me once she is like I think you are I can see that you
are stretched too thin I think you are stretching yourself too far and you are going to burn
yourself out we need to rejig this work load and she had that kind of and initially I did
not respond very well because I felt like she was criticising me she was not she was
protecting me and she was saying no I can see that you are doing too many things and
you are not having time to rest I need to take some off you and that is I think that
is the PI's job and I think some PI's will naturally do that better than others and I
think it is important that institutions have a set of minimum expectations that they enforce
with their PI's and there is clear pathways for people in those groups if those expectations
are not being met to raise them but I think there are lots of there is lots of progress
on research culture certainly in the UK but there is still also plenty of negatives but
I think it is often overlooked that there is lots of negatives in other fields as well
I have friends that work in the kind of the tech sector and there is all sorts of toxic
cultures there not saying that is an excuse but I think sometimes academia is maybe unfairly
demonised for not being better than other jobs when it is actually just the same as
other jobs.
Yeah that is right.
We are coming to the end of this podcast however I will ask if you have any suggestions for
the undergrad or postdoc or as an early career scientist what do you give them?
I would say don't expect everything to run smoothly and to work certainly when you get
into kind of lab projects and research projects stuff goes wrong or you don't get results
that you expect or you get conflicting results and if you get disheartened by that that is
going to happen throughout your whole career you have really got to learn to manage that
and be kind of resilient and sometimes that might turn into a win sometimes that is just
a bad avenue and you have to change tack but learning to deal with that I think gives you
the resilience to carry on.
Yeah most of the time I am saying my personal view because when I work on something I put
myself in that work and suddenly you realise it is not working and I am spending one month
or six months.
Sometimes I feel like it is like my personal view like is it worth to come to the science
like it is like you are questioning yourself and sometimes you don't find answer or support
from other people because there is things sometimes you can't discuss with the people
even your friend because they will oh Prakash come on you are not doing enough maybe people
think like that way right so you know how do you going to suggest like if you come to
this point I suggest myself like you are doing science you know that it won't be hard first
thing you won't be getting the experiment one day and you get the data you will be happy
but stick over there but sometimes I feel very negative for myself it's like.
Yeah I think that's tough and there is a lot of imposter syndrome in science where people
that are really good think that they are not very good but if you are in industry industry
would have lots of checkpoints where they say right if we have not achieved this by
then we can't proceed if we have not achieved this by then or we need these to work for
this to be a viable avenue and I think sometimes in academia we get a little bit too emotionally
attached to the work because we find it fascinating and it's cool and you want to address the
question but it's not always a good use of mental resources and I think building in the
checkpoints early so during my PhD I had a big AFM atomic force microscopy project and
it was really challenging and there was an element of it that we ended up abandoning
but we decided before we even started it we were like right if we have not achieved this
by this point we are going to move on because we don't have time so it means when we hadn't
it wasn't like a shock to me because I knew that was what we were building to and I knew
we had an end point as well so I think if we built those in it makes it a little bit
easier but it's always hard to let go of a bit of a research project that you feel a
lot of affection but sometimes it's for the best and an experiment not working isn't a
reflection on the researchers ability sometimes experiments are just not tracked.
Or the hypothesis is wrong but it was the best hypothesis of the time or we don't have
the technology yet maybe in 10 years there'll be a new tool and that'll be easier.
Yeah that's right.
Alright so thank you Sam for coming to our podcast.
Before ending can you say something for your group if somebody wants to join your group
as a PhD or you know postdoc, say anything?
Well actually yeah I'll be looking for PhD students to work on well there's a bit of
flexibility actually but around cell wall development in plants or fungi and the role
of that in pathogenicity and in stress responses and I'll be looking at that towards the end
of this year looking for students so if people are interested for PhD it'll be on my Twitter
which is at Sam Amesbury and I'm hoping to get postdoc funding soon and so again postdoc
will be advertised through the same.
So thank you so much Sam for coming and all the best for your career.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Wow.