00:11
I wanted to talk about today, since you are a newly hired PI.
Well, I guess it's not that new anymore. You've been on this job for how long now?
Almost two years.
Wow, okay. Wow, really?
Like the pandemic really skews your time perception.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, I know that you've been busy building your lab, hiring people and stuff.
Also, as I sort of progress in my grad school life, I start to notice that
there are many different types of PIs. It's really not just one type of person,
one type of academics. I was curious, do you have any sort of goal in mind?
Do you have some kind of vision for what you want your lab to be like?
What kind of people you want to work with?
It's so rare for me to see that building up process, because my lab is a very established
lab. He's been here for a while. I'm just curious.
I just wanted to have a lab where people can speak up freely.
That's so important.
There's a Japanese word, Sontaku, which I really don't like. I didn't want to have a lab where
PIs would require students or postdocs to do something, and they wouldn't accept any different
opinions against the PIs.
Does that exist?
It does exist, I think. I hear a lot of rumors. There could be many different types of PIs.
I wanted to give my lab members freedom to express their opinions. I think that's the
baseline, basic of any good science.
I'm going to ask you one more question that's a step into that.
So not everyone just naturally becomes confident, right? Especially if they're undergrads,
especially if you're a new grad student. Do you do anything special to make them feel more welcome,
make them feel like they can make a mistake?
03:02
Yeah, exactly. Some people are more comfortable in speaking up compared to other people.
But in any case, I try to encourage, and even when they make mistakes, we all make lots and lots of
mistakes. I make mistakes almost every day. So I try to not be mad or anything, because
probably we learn a lot of things from our mistakes, and there's no way we can avoid
mistakes. So I try to tell them that it's okay to make mistakes, but as long as we can learn from
the experiences. And it is true that we learn a lot of things from mistakes. So
that's one of the things. So whenever something doesn't go well, I discuss with lab members a lot,
you know, why it didn't go well. And sometimes we can come up with even better ideas
from the mistakes that we make. So that's one of the, I think, interesting
parts in science where, you know, what we had planned didn't go well, but instead we find
something even more interesting. That's kind of the whole point of research, right?
Yeah, exactly, exactly. But in some cases, it's not, yeah, it doesn't go that well. And
people, you know, try to suppress what they think. And some people are scared of telling,
okay, so you said this, but you're wrong. Yeah, some people are scared to say that. But
I know that I'm wrong 50% of the time. So I want people to, you know, say, okay,
um, you said this, but you were wrong. But it's okay. You know, I try to encourage them to,
to tell me when I'm wrong.
That's, that's, that's a pretty brave move. I think it's easier said than done.
Yeah, exactly. And I'm really happy that as far as I know, they tell me.
Yeah. And it could be, but at the same time, I'm also telling people that when
when I don't agree with them, I, I just, you know, I just tell them, I disagree.
So you can, so the, or it's both ways. Yeah, both ways. So it's the, our conversations can
get very intense once in a while. But I like it. I like it. I like it very much.
Where do you think you learned that sort of attitude from? Like that kind of intense
discussion based lab culture? I think we learn from what we experience. So well,
06:09
sorry. Um, so was it like this in your PhD lab or in your postdoc lab? I experienced both.
Where it's, it's very difficult to disagree with someone. Yeah, I experienced that too.
And also I experienced that it's much more easier to, you know, say, I disagree with the PI.
And I sometimes made PIs mad because I was so honest. I don't like, I can't, I, yeah.
You're, you're, you're no bullshit lady. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, I always liked the
environment where I can say, you know, when I don't like it, I wanted to say, I don't like it.
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really important because I definitely, I think took maybe a year
or two to feel comfortable to sort of scientifically disagree with my boss.
Mainly because I was a new, you know, baby scientist and I felt like he was always right.
And more often than not, he was, but as I became more comfortable and became more independent
in the, in the research environment, I can be like, well, actually that's not how we do it
in the lab. Or I can tell him that, no, this is actually this many millimeters and not what you
think, or we have changed that part of the instrument or something like that. And like,
and slowly like bit by bit, I have more things that I know about the lab than he does who is
not in the lab every day. Right. So, and I think that kind of iterative process of like
me becoming more confident, him starting to trust me and back and forth and back and forth
made it definitely easier for me to sort of get to the next level in terms of being a member of
the lab, you know, who isn't just like, yes, yes, you're always right. But my boss is very,
very smart. And if you are going to tell him that he's wrong, you have to be ready for it.
So, yeah, so you are graduating soon, right? And then yeah, yeah. Do you have any kinds of ideas
09:05
or thoughts on what kind of scientists you would like to be in the next several years?
We're actually at the time point where we should cut this episode and move it on to the next episode
to talk about that. So let's go do that. Yeah. All right. That's it for the show today. Thanks
for listening and find us at Eigo de Science on Twitter. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
