Year 2 in Review

Didn’t I just write one of these? Time is accelerating. Cheers to two years in the books. Here are some annual reflections.

Getting better

A year ago I wrote one of these year-in-review blogs and posted the link to twitter. I don’t have twitter anymore, but someone replied saying something along the lines: “It doesn’t get easier, but you do get better at it” (I feel like this was Michael Baym from Harvard Med, @baym, but I don’t have twitter anymore and can’t check.)

Luckily, I do in fact feel this. Nothing about the business and workload has changed. More than anything, it’s probably increased. But I do feel I’m getting better at it.

Philosophy

I said this a year ago, but before I set out on the venture of being a PI I settled on one simple philosophy: I want to be healthy. I want to be productive. I want to be efficient. I want to have fun. So far, I stand by this and feel like I’ve done my best to achieve each of these goals. The direction I’m headed feels sustainable and fun all while impactful scientific output is right around the corner. The only change I’m hoping for in the upcoming year is “outward” productivity. So far, productivity has been inward and focused on laying the foundation of our success. Equipment is setup. Students are recruited and trained. Experiments are running. Collaborations are set. Projects are maturing. Grants are out the door. I’m super happy with our productivity, but I’m also aware that a more tangible currency is expected of me. Grants need to be funded and papers need to be published. The word that keeps coming to mind is “execution.” Ideas are cheap. Execution is key.

On the state of funding

I started my postdoc in 2019 just before the pandemic. I started my faculty position in 2024 just before a new world order of federal funding of science. I’m just a lucky guy.

This topic deserves a standalone blog post. Maybe I’ll do that one day. But the most immediate thing that comes to mind is time. One of the biggest shifts in mindset I’ve had since beginning this job is my perception of timelines. For most of my career, I’ve thought about the next ~6 months. That’s the timeline to get major experiments completed, dissertations defended, papers out the door, job applications submitted, etc. Now, I think in increments of 2 years or more. I have to propose years-long studies, plan PhD students to be around for 5-6 years, and—most importantly—think about the runway we have with current funding.

A federal funding cycle chomps away at this 2 year outlook like Pac-Man. In the “old” days, we’re talking a minimum of 8 months between an NIH submission and funding decision. Already, you can probably see the issue. 2 years of funding runway naively feels like a long time. But in reality it’s only about ~2 grant cycles away from running on fumes. This is why the name of the game is to submit early and submit often.

I submitted my first federal research proposal to the NIH in August 2024. Since that time, I’ve submitted 6 additional federal proposals as a Principal Investigator. Every single one of them has been delayed in some way. I’m not talking a few weeks delay, but several months. That means we’re taking this already stretched and stressful timeline and extending even further into oblivion. In addition to delays in funding, more specifically there are delays in grant feedback. I’m not even sure how to improve grants because I just haven’t gotten back peer-review summaries (“Summary Statements”) on several that should have been in months ago. I’m just blindly adding bait to the hook and tossing it into the water, hoping for the best.

Overall, it’s bleak. Anyway, I’m optimistic. (I have to be?). I’m submitting what I think are strong, innovative proposals. What else can you do. I’m confident we’re coming out on top.

Teaching

This is the first time I taught a course in both spring and fall semesters. Teaching evokes a lot of the same emotions as parenting 3 children—incredible joy, fulfillment, a sense of purpose, frustration, and a lot of “it’s in the damn syllabus.” For so long, I was trained to be a scientist. I still feel like I’m learning to embrace my role as an educator. I’m learning to take pride in educating and training the next generation of engineers.

This fall, I taught my own course for the first time: “Neuroengineering.” Since signing my offer letter, developing a semester-long course from scratch weighed on me. It was daunting, overwhelming, and—again!—something I was never trained to do. A massive chunk of my summer was spent organizing the course schedule, creating each lecture, and coming up with assignments. Around July, I received the simplest, best possible advice I could have gotten: Have fun with it. This is what I needed to hear. For some reason it hadn’t occurred to me I was sort of an expert on the topic of technologies for the brain? The course was mine and I could teach it my way. That didn’t make it easy, but it did come with some relief. Overall, I was super happy with how the semester went. I’m thankful for students that were engaged and excited to learn about neurotechnology. I did my best and I look forward to teaching this again in 2026.

Recruiting

Something that has become ever more clear to me over the last year: recruiting the right people is an unspoken critical skill of this job. When you’re a postdoc, there is always the looming conversation of whether you are “ready” to run an independent lab. This readiness almost exclusively comes down skills and qualities such as: fundable ideas, grant writing, purchasing the right equipment, mentoring, and managing people. You know what almost never comes up? Recruiting.

I would personally rank recruiting in the top 3 skills you need for success. If you’re a postdoc: have you thought about the type of PhD students people you need to carry out these? (and don’t say “oh I’ll just recruit a postdoc.” All that tells me is that you really don’t know what it takes to recruit and train a student). What is your pitch to recruit these top students? What type of skillsets are you looking for? What type of mindset are you looking for? Why should they choose your lab?

Surprisingly often, new research groups can’t identify or recruit the right people. Yet, your career is very much in their hands. If you’re nearing the faculty stage, put some thought into this and show up prepared.

My Lab>>>

I have in fact recruited the right people. I feel lucky to work with such good people that are also so extremely talented.. I can’t exactly put into words what I saw in them or what they saw in me, but whatever that special sauce was it definitely works.

Recruiting good students feels like investing in Amazon stock in the late 90’s. A total steal. It’s so cool to get to know people at the earliest stages of their careers when the entire world is at their feet. You also get a front row seat to their life. We had one marriage in the lab this year. How cool is that? One day, someone might have a baby. Omg. Can you imagine having a little babe in lab 🥹. I may have to get a pack ’n play just for my office. I also got my first Christmas card from a lab member this year. It hadn’t occurred to me that one day I may get a dozen Christmas cards from former lab members. How special is that.

I don’t know where things are in lab anymore

I’m getting to the point where it’s hard for me to find things in lab….and I love it. I miss benchwork, sure, but there is something cool about knowing that I lead a team of really smart people that are in lab doing awesome experiments every day. I don’t have to know where the lab tape is. I just need to give this group the resources and freedom they need to do great work. We have six full time lab members, and it’s sort of like having six extensions of my brain all working on different things.

On emails

Some people have a reputation for being “good” at emails with lightning-fast responses. I have come to the conclusion that I am not this person.

Writing manuscripts

We’re in the midst of writing our first manuscript. Any day now, you should be able to see it on bioRxiv. I’m super proud and excited of this work. Also - writing papers as a PI is a ton of fun in my opinion (I think because I just have to write and help with figures, not do all the analysis and hard stuff myself). Seeing this work come together brings an immense sense of pride.

One thing I didn’t realize as a PhD student and postdoc: I really relied and trusted heavily in my PI to help sculpt my previous papers. Every part of manuscript writing is challenging in a different way. When you’re a trainee, I think you unconsciously know that no matter what you write, a Real Adult is going to comb through your writing and fine-tune it as needed. It’s weird to be the Real Adult now. I’m the one who has to make major decisions about our where our work fits in the field, our primary claims, and how our data backs up those claims. As a new PI, I’m also hyper aware of the need to carefully thread a needle: I want to hype up my lab and our work, but also don’t want to step on the toes of existing research groups who have done really awesome similar work. It’s a balancing act.

Neuroscience is hard

Every year, I give a “state of the lab address,” where I give a year-in-review to the lab. This year, I was really trying to reflect on the a major research takeaway. One thing kept coming to mind: the work we do is really hard. Probably the easiest process we run in the lab is microfabrication, where we spend a week making hair-like brain probes with arrays of sensors the size of an individual cell. The easiest. The surgical process to implant these arrays, perform recordings, image the brain, care for animals, analyze month-long data sets, and train animals on behavioral tasks is a totally different level of difficult. Obviously, I knew this type of work was challenging, but the full spectrum of difficulty only became apparent to me as I see our lab members take on increasingly difficult experiments that are critical for their PhDs. We take an extreme sense of pride in our work. I genuinely think only a few research groups can do the type of work we do. We’re learning to love the challenge and know it will produce top-notch science.

End

That’s what comes to mind this year. Another blink and I’ll be back summarizing another 12 months of progress. See you then,

-Daniel