Mentoring Philosophy 
My motivation for mentoring students is that I want to contribute to our collective fundamental understanding of biological principles and to use this knowledge to reduce the impact human diseases in areas in which we have research expertise. To do this, I need colleagues (some will be trainees) who agree with this mission, therefore I strive to train these budding scientists in methods and intellectual frameworks to achieve this mission during our collaboration and in their futures. 

Our group has always been composed of people with very diverse background in terms of nationality, ethnicity and race, primary language, gender, orientation, political philosophy, and other characteristics. This valuable diversity and an emphasis on teamwork & lab citizenship has resulted in a very rich and rewarding experience for all former trainees, both in terms of professional productivity and personal experiences. We will always emphasize this aspect of the lab group, that we all respect each others’ ideas and background and can all work together to push science forward. 

I try to lead by example, still performing many experiments at the bench to help forward all projects in the laboratory. This way I remain in touch with the daily challenges in troubleshooting experiments and am more on top of barriers to progress in the lab. The most important aspect of all research that I perform or oversee is that it is extremely rigorous, reproduced using multiple orthogonal approaches, and outcomes are consistent between individuals or when performed at different times. For this reason, I prepare trainees to accept that we must at times move on and drop favorite hypotheses if the data do not support them. In fact, several trainees have had aspects of their thesis projects that involved disproving favored hypotheses from the literature:  providing incredibly rigorous work to disprove a popular hypothesis made them even more confident and rigorous scientists as the bar for disproof is often much higher than the bar to provide support for a popular hypothesis. 

An important aspect of research training is to agree upon a plan incorporating the trainee’s career goals. Becoming a knowledgeable scholar and expert in the areas in which the student works is important, and must include opportunities for feedback at the laboratory, institutional, and international community levels, thus I help trainees set up opportunities to present their work and obtain critical feedback at all these levels. As a mentor, I am obliged to I enjoy arguing about science with colleagues and trainees and believe that we all benefit when we practice convincing our colleagues of our research convictions and findings! I encourage vigorous scientific discussion in our group meetings that has the intent of strengthening each scientist’s confidence and ability to compose a persuasive argument to the scientific community as a whole. 

All students are encouraged to present their work (and all have so far) at local and domestic meetings, and at least one international meeting during their training. All prior students left with at least one first authorship publication in a high impact journal and are currently gainfully employed in science and medical careers. I remain in touch with many of them >10 years after graduation. Feedback from students indicates that even though their careers may have gone in a different direction from running a research lab, the skills and practices they learned during their PhD and the networking they engaged in were all critical for their future success.