Time management: Seize the moment
For the brand-new principal investigator (PI), excitement can soon give way to stress as the mountain of tasks becomes clear. In addition to the main charge — to develop and carry out a research programme, complete with writing grants and managing a lab — the new PI must find time to prepare and give lectures, grade papers, develop and administer examinations and fulfil service obligations to the institution and scientific community.
It is all a far cry from a postdoctoral fellowship, in which the job is to focus on research and nothing but. The transition can be like jumping from musical soloist to symphony director, says biologist Jing-Ke Weng, who was hired in 2013 as an assistant professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. “You’re not just responsible for your own playing, you are responsible for the music coming from a group of people,” he says… Read more at Nature. (PDF)
Biotechnically Speaking 