Shawna Reed

Dr. Shawna Reed, Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Quinnipiac University
(Renee, Alex, Isa, Shawna, Oveen, Vince, Emily, Genna)
https://www.qu.edu/faculty-and-staff/shawna-reed-phd/
Follow her on X and BluSky: https://twitter.com/profpathogen1 and https://bsky.app/profile/profpathogen.bsky.social

Could you share insights into your current research focus?

I’m interested in the molecular interactions between intracellular bacteria and their host cells (usually mammalian, but sometimes arthropod). I fell in love with the elegance and specificity of microbial pathogenesis in my first-ever research experience with Alison McBride at NIH, studying papillomaviruses. In graduate school I discovered intracellular bacteria with their suite of secretion systems and the proteins they inject into cells to survive and thrive within. I’ve been in the “Rickettsiology” field since then, first investigating Rickettsia parkeri pathogenesis and then moving to Coxiella burnettii in my post-doc research.

In my own lab, I am interested in the cell biology of Coxiella effector proteins. My Master’s students and I have been focusing on one protein in particular that seems to interact with recycling endosomes. Alongside undergraduate students in class and lab we are exploring methods in bioinformatics, protein expression and cell biology with the goal of expressing a full library of Coxiella effectors in mammalian cells. I’ve also become interested in the cellular and developmental peculiarities of Coxiella and how bacterial genes are regulated during infection, which is great because I can do experiments with E. coli. Working on a limited budget and with mostly undergraduates challenges us to focus on building methods and producing preliminary results that can be pursued by collaborators and colleagues.

What obstacles did you face as a New PI and how did you tackle them?

The most challenging obstacles I’ve faced are structural limitations; my capacity as a parent, professor, and person with ADHD; the small budget and startup available at a primarily undergraduate and non-R1/R2 institution; and the time constraints of research with a workload expectation of 70% teaching, 15% service and 15% research. The most universal obstacle I’ve faced is learning to manage trainees, colleagues, and myself.

Addressing budget challenges has been the most fun when I’m finding materials from resellers or donations from industry, learning to fix or calibrate equipment, or figuring out how to do experiments on a budget. It’s been the least fun struggling to find any small grants to fund my work, or being unable to complete a set of experiments when we couldn’t afford to buy a reagent or synthesize a tricky clone.

I was formally diagnosed with ADHD 2 years into my faculty position, when I suddenly found myself unable to complete some simple tasks because of the task-switching and social demands of professor-ing. Addressing my ableist expectations of my own achievement and learning to accept my own capacity for work is an ongoing challenge. Surprisingly, the diagnosis and treatment have helped me develop as a mentor and parent, because my expectations for myself and others are slowly becoming more reasonable and realistic. I regret spending so many years of my life feeling terrible about myself every day and relying on emotionally and mentally unhealthy habits and cycles to be productive.

Managing trainees is always a work in progress. I was lucky to do some mentoring training in graduate school and work with undergraduates as a post-doc, but the experience is totally different when you are suddenly the “professor” in the room. I strive for a lot of humility as a manager, and I’ve learned that I must be more clear, explicit and structured in my expectations in order to help my trainees reach their goals. I am intrinsically disordered and generally flexible, but I learned to have more 1-1 meetings, timesheets, goals, and details in electronic notebooks than I might naturally, because it helps students to learn and progress and keeps my expectations reasonable. Attending graduations with students I’ve mentored for 4 years and watching mentees get jobs and graduate admissions is without a doubt the most rewarding part of my career as a scientist to date.

How do you balance the demands of teaching, research, and administration in your role as a principal investigator?

Does everyone just answer “uh… I don’t.”???  In weeks or semesters when I’ve had more balance, it’s because I’ve made a choice to set part of my workload aside. Last summer, I did not take any summer students and took the space to think and write about my work, spend time with my children and family, attend conferences without presenting, and organize myself for teaching and admin work. I also work hard to make teaching and grading more efficient. I fail most of the time at correctly estimating the time it takes to do service and admin work, but I do try to take on service that supports my goals of facilitating undergraduate research and improving inclusive training and teaching at my university.

As a New PI, what’s your superpower?

My superpower is appreciating the talents, quirks, and strengths of my colleagues, scientific buddies, and trainees, and I’ve been told that means I can give supportive and caring advice on NPIS and in real life as well. I’m sure I’ve made many mistakes, but in a nomination one of my students called me a “Rock Star Mentor” and I hope I can live up to that more than 50% of the time.

What mantra keeps you motivated during the ups and downs of academic life?

Whatever I have done today, it is enough.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to your past self, on the day 1 of this job?

Learn to say no and temper your expectations of yourself and others, because doing fewer things well is better than doing many things and becoming overwhelmed and unreliable.

Bonus Question

What’s the coolest factoid about microbes and their relation to cell biology that I never knew I needed to hear/know?

I studied actin-based motility in graduate school and it’s still one of the most beautiful microscopic phenomena I’ve ever seen. We know this motility contributes to virulence and spread within a host for some species of bacteria, but almost all intracellular pathogens interact with actin using at least one protein and many don’t move with “tails”. This means interactions with actin are maintained as critical for survival of pathogens, but we don’t know why YET. While pathogens helped us make discoveries about many critical cellular pathways – phagocytosis, autophagy, motility, apoptosis, membrane trafficking – there is so much left to reveal!

Denis Meuthen

Dr. Denis Meuthen, Principal Investigator and Freigeist Fellow in Evolutionary Biology, Bielefeld University, Germany. https://fediscience.org/@DenisMeuthen

Denis in the News!

Denis’s approach to how to lead a group got published in Science yesterday! Click here to read and get inspired! Also, read about his journey published in Nature, 2022.

Could you share insights into your current research focus?

With my current research, I am questioning a basic tenet in evolutionary biology – whether environmental variation can cause non-random mutations. Many organisms are phenotypically plastic and can thus adjust their phenotype to their environment within one lifetime. Even us humans become tan in the sunlight or gain muscle when we work out. During a plastic response, the perception of an altered environment induces the binding of different molecules to the DNA. These molecules do not alter the DNA itself but influence how often each gene is transformed to proteins. This differential protein production then alters the external traits of an organism. A recent theory postulates that phenotypic plasticity can precede evolution, and this is my main research focus. I aim to determine whether the mechanisms underlying plasticity can influence the probability of mutations occurring in the same genetic regions. If plasticity indeed induces non-random mutation, this shakes up standard evolutionary theory and may also allow us to better predict the direction of evolution in the future. Being able to do so would be particularly worthwhile for vaccine and drug development where research is often troubled by the hitherto unpredictable mutations of pathogens such as influenza or COVID. To this end, I mainly study antipredator phenotypic plasticity in the freshwater snail Physella acuta. This species is known to undergo substantial plastic changes in behavior, morphology and life-history when exposed to chemical cues indicating the presence of predators. Moreover, I am interested in various other related questions in the fields of evolutionary ecology, animal behavior, chemical ecology, visual ecology, toxicology and personality.

What obstacles did you face as a new principal investigator and how did you tackle them?

My first obstacle was that my planned timelines did not account for the length of time it would take me to fill the open positions in my lab. That was because the number of suitable applicants was unexpectedly low, and administrative processes as well as visa application processes for abroad students delayed the hiring process by several months. From two PhD positions advertised in summer 2022, one could be filled in summer 2023, and the other one only in spring 2024. Instead of starting my studies right away, I used this delay as an opportunity to strengthen my methods. Here, I focused on aspects such as reproducibility of previous basic findings, the reliability of different analysis methods as well as on optimization of animal husbandry to maximize growth and minimize mortality. This information will strengthen my main study. My second obstacle came from being a lip-reader since birth (see https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00230-3). Earlier in my career, I had been relying on one-on-one meetings with colleagues and mentors that focused on pronouncing words clearly. As a principal investigator, I am now expected to participate in many group meetings where participants change on a regular basis, and where people are sitting in a distance that does not allow lip-reading. To be able to understand and actively participate in such group discussions, I needed a solution. Early attempts with various transcription software did not produce legible output. Only very recent advances in Tensor chip development alongside state-of-the-art table microphones finally helped me follow group meetings better. Some of my colleagues are now so impressed by this technology that they have asked me for the full transcript of these meetings for their records.

How do you balance the demands of teaching, research, and administration in your role as a principal investigator?

In my opinion, balancing the demands of teaching and research is best achieved by viewing them not as separate entities but as one integrated system. Here are some examples of how I can achieve that aim. In basic classes, students can perform apparently simple experiments many times that we analyze together. These experiments are not only important first steps into learning the scientific method but also constitute important replications of previous publications and thereby address the replication crisis. In more advanced classes, I like to not only integrate the content of new papers in my lectures but also to critically discuss up-and-coming perspectives in my field with my students. Doing so allows me to better keep track with current literature. In individual project classes, I stimulate students to tackle completely new research questions whose results are also of relevance for my own research. The most motivated students in my lab are also given the opportunity to draft a paper based on their own results for publication – which seamlessly connects teaching with scientific output. Lastly, I see my administrative duties as an important cog in the scientific machine – only when administration is performed correctly and in time, teaching and research can function. As many different faculty and rectorate staff is also involved in my administrative decisions, delays are common. This means that I have to ensure to set such administrative decisions in motion early enough so that they can complete in time. That is the reason why I tend to prioritize my administrative duties over teaching and research and complete them as early as possible.

As a NewPI, what’s your superpower?

With an open mind, I have the opportunity to challenge established concepts and bring new perspectives to the table. As I also pursue interdisciplinary research, I moreover feel that I have the unique opportunity to bring concepts from one research field into another. When it comes to teaching, as a new PI, I benefit from still remembering my student days well. This allows me to develop my teaching in a direction that would have maximized curiosity and knowledge gain to my younger self.

What mantra keeps you motivated during the ups and downs of academic life?

I strive to satisfy my curiosity. This is what keeps me going and constantly leads to new research avenue. However, each discovery does not only satisfy my curiosity but also leads to follow-up questions that I am again curious about. Even criticism from others makes me curious about the reasons for the difference in perspectives, which sometimes causes me to discover and learn about new theories, methods or data analysis approaches.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to your past self, on the day 1 of this job?

“Every process that involves other people will take more time than you expect – set your expectations and adjust your timelines accordingly.”

Bonus Question

What’s the coolest factoid about freshwater fishes and snails as model systems that I never knew I needed to hear/know?

My current model system, the bladder snail Physella acuta, became an invasive cosmopolitan species because of both freshwater fish and its own way of reproduction. This snail originally inhabited freshwater streams and ponds in the US. Since the 1950’s, large ornamental freshwater fish farms in the US have unknowingly been invaded by this species. This meant that whenever these farms supplied pet stores around the world with ornamental fish, stowaway bladder snails or their eggs came along. As many aquarists around the globe eventually left the hobby, they regularly dumped their tank’s content along with the snails in nearby rivers or lakes. It takes only a single snail to reproduce since the bladder snail is simultaneously male and female in adulthood. If no other individuals are present to mate with, it can simply insert its male organ into the female one and inbreed. Unsurprisingly, nowadays, bladder snails outside of the US are genetically very similar whereas the populations within US rivers and lakes are genetically distinct.

Maria Holland

Dr. Maria Holland, Assistant Professor, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Notre Dame.
https://commandlab.nd.edu/
(Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Could you share insights into your current research focus?

In my research group, we do computational biomechanics focused on growing soft tissues.  What that means is that we use the tools of computational mechanics (like finite element analysis and continuum mechanics) to simulate and analyze soft tissues as they grow.  We’ve mostly focused on the developing brain, trying to understand the biological and physical phenomena that lead to the characteristic wrinkles that our brains have, but more recently are also starting to study the role of mechanics in inflammatory swelling – how cells and tissues respond to the stresses generated during swelling.

What obstacles did you face as a new principal investigator and how did you tackle them?

Absolute, utter naivete.  (Perhaps this is unavoidable, but I also didn’t do a postdoc, which probably didn’t help.)  Thankfully I found NPIS, which has been the perfect place to ask questions I’m too scared to ask anyone else, or when I want an impartial outside perspective, or to eavesdrop as other people are figuring this PI thing out.

How do you balance the demands of teaching, research, and administration in your role as a principal investigator?

When I started this job, I pretty quickly realized that I would be doing certain things over and over and over until I retired.  Writing papers, writing grants, teaching courses, writing rec letters, hiring grad students, etc.  So I decided early on to invest time when doing things for the first time specifically with an eye towards being able to do it better, faster, or easier the next time.  That has helped me a lot as the demands on my time have ramped up – because I’m able to deal with many things more efficiently!  Specifically thinking about balancing, I also track my working time and at the transition between semesters, I look at how I spent my time and think about if that allocation reflects what I want it to.  

As a NewPI, what’s your superpower?

Maybe systems?  I have spent time setting up systems that work well and help me keep on top of things.  Email reminders, filters that move a ton of non-urgent emails to a folder I review once a week, a to-do list that syncs with my calendar, good file organization, etc.

What mantra keeps you motivated during the ups and downs of academic life?

I’m on the train until the track runs out.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to your past self, on the day 1 of this job?

You don’t have to be perfect on day one.  You just need to start somewhere (start submitting grants, start a new project, teach a new class) and then get better every time you do it again.  

Bonus Question

What’s the coolest factoid about brain development that I never knew I needed to hear/know?

A lot of people think that the skull constraints the brain – but actually, even though the brain is so soft, it’s actually the growth of the brain that drives the growth of the skull.

Adam MacLean

Dr. Adam MacLean, Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor of Quantitative and Computational Biology, University of Southern California
https://macleanlab.usc.edu/

Could you share insights into your current research focus?

I study cell fate decision-making. I am fascinated by the ability of stem cells throughout out life to produce just the right types of cells in just the right places at just the right time. I investigate these processes during development and regeneration, as well as in the case of cancer, when cell fate decision-making goes awry. My methods to address these questions are theoretical: pen paper, laptop. In my group, we develop mathematical and statistical models rooted in dynamical systems theory, parameter inference, and machine learning to build models of who cells are and what they do. We are interested in identifying minimal gene regulatory networks that explain cell state transitions in vivo in order to (we hope!) one day control them. We mostly study these dynamics in hematopoiesis and in the progression and therapeutic responses of epithelial cancers.

What obstacles did you face as a New PI and how did you tackle them?

At the start, I felt like there were so many challenges it was hard to know even where to begin. People always tell you to seek help. The problem is if you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you know what questions you should be asking of people around you. Sometimes unsolicited advice can be nice. Becoming a PI was for me a very isolating experience. Transitioning from a postdoc lab: I lost my labmates. I lost immediate contact with my mentor, with whom I was used to talking about new science ideas almost daily. Towards that end, I have tried to try to find people around me who are at a similar career stage and who work on similar things to bounce ideas off and commiserate together. Peer groups for academic job support (even if not new project ideas) are also great, I am lucky to have such colleagues in my department. Online communities have also provided me with great support, and have helped me immensely to bear this job well.

How do you balance the demands of teaching, research, and administration in your role as a principal investigator?

Chaos Muppet

As a New PI, what’s your superpower?

I am an eternal optimist, sometimes unreasonably so. That helps a lot in this job. It helps me stay calm under pressure. If I come up against a deadline, I will either work through it or not, but if I must give this one up, so be it. I mostly manage to not let them overwhelm me. There will always be a new deadline to miss another day.

What mantra keeps you motivated during the ups and downs of academic life?

There are approximately 0 problems at work that can be solved with coffee, but facing problems with coffee is far more pleasant than facing them without. Also, I keep the snack drawer beside my desk exceedingly well-stocked.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to your past self, on the day 1 of this job?

Be ruthless about the projects that you commit time and resources towards. If it does not fit within your lab vision, cull it, the earlier the better—before you become mired in it too deep to withdraw.

Bonus Question

What’s the coolest factoid about systems biology that I never knew I needed to hear/know?

The rate of production of new red blood cells (erythrocytes) that leave your bone marrow to enter your blood stream is 2 million cells every… second. That always makes me dizzy to think about no matter how many times I tell it. Once I told it to an undergraduate class and a hand shot up at the back.

“but… um… Prof… where do they all go?

Cooper Battle

Dr. Cooper Battle, Principal Investigator and Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Willamette University http://chbattle.com/

Could you share insights into your current research focus?

My research splits into two main areas: chemical education research, and the design of self-assembling biomimetic fluorescent sensors. Within chemical education research, I have two main themes our projects focus on: how to best scaffold upper-level undergraduates into independent research (currently looking at the effectiveness of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences) and how to use K-12 outreach as a way to develop a sense of belonging and identity as a scientist among undergraduates. Our lab’s wet-lab research is currently focused primarily on using DNA G-Quadruplex scaffolds as modular fluorescence sensors for miRNAs in live cells, but we also have some synthetic projects looking at developing derivatives of naphthalene imides as sensors for host-guest complex formation in drug delivery. We also do a lot of basic-science work with G-quadruplex structures, trying to understand sequence-structure-function relationships. Overall, I’m really interested in how we can make responsive scaffolds to sense things- and love having people bring me something new to try to detect to work with.

What obstacles did you face as a new principal investigator and how did you tackle them?

I’ll preface this with two notes: first, I’m a researcher at a PUI, and second, I started just before COVID: so most of my major challenges stem from those two things, and how they inter-relate. At a Primarily Undergraduate Institution, I have no graduate students, research technicians or post-docs: just undergraduate students to push all of our research forward. My students are amazing, and one thing I love about this is that I spend a lot more hands-on time in the lab training and working with my students. It does, however, mean the pace is slow and invariably linked to the ebb and flow of the semester (and year). One approach I’ve taken that I think has helped is in bringing in new students to the lab early (even in their first year of undergrad) and having them work through a “template” project that introduces them to most of the techniques in lab with detailed write-ups and (relatively) inexpensive reagents. There are enough choices for them to make that they get a feel for research, but since I know what the outcomes should generally look like it lets me get a feel for the data they are capable of producing, and where they might need some extra help. It also lets them get comfortable with experiments that (should) work before they push out more on their own.

COVID hit most of us quite hard, and differentially. For a lab full of undergraduates in my second year, it meant that all the students who were trained and starting to work independently had to stop projects and graduated, leaving me starting almost completely over with all my projects once things stabilized and campus re-opened. This also hit a lot of my pedagogical projects hard, as all the changes to classes and curriculum during the pandemic meant that studies in progress had to be stopped entirely or paused for years. I’m not sure I have a good take-away on how I tackled the pandemic related challenges, and they’re still ongoing. The biggest thing I (tried) to do was (a) survive, and (b) make sure that I didn’t change my focus on prioritizing student training, opportunities, and outcomes over research progress, and that’s something I’m proud of.

How do you balance the demands of teaching, research, and administration in your role as a principal investigator?

I’m not sure I can say I successfully balance these things: it always seems like something is taking too much time and something is slipping away from me! Given my position at a PUI, teaching is my primary responsibility: I teach 5 FTE of courses each year, with lab classes counting as ½ FTE. Most semesters, I’m usually teaching 3-5 different things, and that takes a lot of time to stay on top of. Research and service are about equally balanced, but I’ve been fortunate to find some significant service on campus that really aligns with my interests, and that’s helped a lot. I think my “balance” currently lands at 60% of my time teaching, and 40% each on teaching and research… which suggests that I’m not really all that balanced.

As a NewPI, what’s your superpower?

The ability to use snark and sarcasm to deal with frustration? More seriously, especially working with undergraduate researchers one of the things I’ve found to be the most useful is developing the ability to not show frustration in a very visible way. Nothing can be as crushing early in a research career as making mistakes (and we all make them) and most of my students are hard enough on themselves without me adding on. Finding ways to help make mistakes, losses, and damage into learning experiences helps me survive, but also (I hope) helps template that same growth mindset for students.

What mantra keeps you motivated during the ups and downs of academic life?

Realistically, the mantras I have used most over the past few years should probably not be shared here. But what I fall back on the most is reminding myself that in the big picture, the most important outcome is not any individual piece of my work, but the students who come out of my lab and classes and what they will do over the rest of their career. Re-centering my focus on the students having genuine, enjoyable, and accessible experiences with research (and science) helps me get through even really challenging times.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to your past self, on the day 1 of this job?

I’m going to cheat a bit here, because there isn’t one single piece of advice I’d give, but:

Everything is survivable with a strong network of colleagues, friends and peers.

The pace of research isn’t constant: don’t try to measure things on the month scale, look at the big picture of how things will progress over years.

Trust in yourself and your priorities.

Bonus Question

What’s the coolest factoid about DNA nano-machines that I never knew I needed to hear/know?

How scalable they are. One huge issue for a lot of molecular machines is the complexity of the synthesis, both of individual parts and the final assembly. But given the ability to easily replicate DNA sequences at scale coupled with the fact that the goal is to design them to easily fold under the desired conditions, the ability to go from a prototype to broader use is (potentially) a lot more straightforward.