Helium

In this final episode of the show we sat down with our advisor Mark Wiesner. Mark is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a long time Department Chair at Duke University. He also has directed of the Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology for 10+ years where he worked with Christine. Mark has shared insights about trust and building relationships throughout your career. This is the perfect capstone to the show. Please consider heading over to Patreon and supporting Helium Podcast so we can pay to keep the show online and on the podcast servers.

Courtney joined us in episode 6 as she was driving across the country to her new position at Washington State University. She rejoined us so we could learn how things shaped up in her first year+ of teaching, advising and grant writing. There is lots of reality in this episode, but a bunch of hope for those hoping to land a faculty position someday or starting one soon. She did not hold back telling it like it is and we appreciate her candor.

We take stock of the past 32 episodes and plot a course for future episodes of the show. We both work in roles where we help integrate teams and enable them to co-create knowledge, and we are going to focus on sharing more of those insights going forward. After a paternity leave for Matt we will return with the show later in the Fall. We will have a few longer interviews of academics but mostly focus on shorter 15 minute episodes centered on teams.

You'll hear about how to build a research group through careful recruiting, listening to students and letting go of what is out of your control. Greg dives into the way he mentors students from the day they arrive in his group, he also discusses how he recruits graduate students to join his group and how he has worked through bad fits before. His purpose is produce the best students because they will go on to have a bigger impact in the world than any of this publications. The unifying theme through all of this is his listening to students, other faculty and industry members. This way he gets a handle on the whole landscape of the graduate student career recruitment through placing them in their next gig (whether that be a consulting position or a postdoc).

As an early career researcher how do you transition from covering multiple research areas to focusing and becoming the expert in a specific area? Greg Lowry talks about how he made this transition and learned to say no to opportunities that did not align. He also gives advice on how to stay grounded in the fundamentals so you can pivot to related subjects later in your career. We also had a light-speed round with Greg on his mistakes, successes and how he breaks away from research work.