A career as a biologist-a lifelong morphogenetic process

Abstract

How life emerged, how species diversify and interact, how cells work individually and collectively, and how a single cell gives rise to the trillions that constitute us all, are some of life's most profound questions. For the last 20 years, I've been a professor in the Biology Department at Duke University and spent summers teaching at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. I use the small nematode worm C. elegans in my research to understand cell-extracellular matrix interactions, and I've taught and mentored hundreds of undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs and many junior faculty. Young scientists often become discouraged during their training—the modest pay, the long hours, and the herculean task and many setbacks that occur conducting research, writing grants and papers, teaching, and managing a lab. It can seem to be an impossible challenge and leads many young scientists to curtail their training and leave fulfilling scientific careers. A core element to success is that scientific skills and expertise evolve slowly over an entire career through engagement—learning by doing—and requires patience, acceptance of failures, continual exploration, and a flexible growth mindset. Everyone also takes a unique path and there is no simple rulebook. This is difficult to convey through courses and workshops. By sharing some tools and approaches I've learned through my own setbacks, observations, and reading, I hope to help junior scientists view challenges in this career more as lifelong opportunities for building new skillsets and growth, much like the emergence of form and function that occurs during developmental morphogenesis. Embracing constant change and evolution can lead to a deeply meaningful and fulfilling career.