Early Days as a PI

It is now almost six years since I started as an assistant professor at UNC. Many things have changed. I have learned so much over the years. I will however never forget the magnitude of the challenge to get a research group off the ground. I decided to write up here few of the lessons (not in any particular order) I have learned that hopefully will be of help to the next generation after me.

• Use electronic lab notebooks and insist on "at least one entry for every day you work for the lab". We started with paper lab notebooks which were not very useful since they are neither searchable not shareable. Since we switched to Evernote, it takes me less than 30 minutes a day to know what everyone is working on. We have now more than 10,000 notes.
• Insist on writing your first large grant (R01 etc) as a single PI grant centered on your research interests. This will establish your full independence!
• Provide a lot of structure to undergraduate research volunteers. Provide even more structure (required number of hours, have them check in and out, clear deliverables). And then monitor closely if they follow those rules. With such a firm structure, they can be incredibly successful. The first author of our most cited paper from the Frohlich Lab is an undergraduate!
• Offer to teach individual guest lectures in different undergraduate and graduate courses. This is a great opportunity to increase your visibility and recruit talented students.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate.
• Use social media to make your research/thoughts/perspective visible on a global scale.
• Create a system in which you will never use any data (e.g. dropbox). Forbid external hard drives and local only files.
• Organize symposia/workshops at conferences you go to (typically you need to submit a formal proposal). This is a great opportunity to reach out to the leaders in your field and build a strong network. This can be quite some work but well worth the effort!
• Finally, and perhaps the most difficult/controversial one: Learn to say no!!!