 We are coming to you from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology on the beautiful island of Okinawa, Japan to celebrate the launch of ROS, the Rosalind Franklin Forum for Female Scientists, open to all. Viewers are invited to follow along with us at the website. ROS collects career questions from graduate students, post-docs, starting assistant professors and their mentors around the world. Renowned senior scientists also from around the world, from Asia, the Middle East, Oceana, Africa, Europe and North and South America so far, answer selected questions with humour, compassion and honesty. If you happen to work at the research base in Antarctica, please get in touch. With us today are Professor Paola Laurino, bio-organic chemist, originally from Varese, Italy. Erika Fukuhara, Protein Engineering graduate student, whose roots are here in Okinawa. Tato Mohotu, Neurosciences graduate student from Maseru, Lesothu. Sagnita Toledo Patino, post-doc in structural biology here from Morelia, Michioca, Mexico. And Professor Peter Gruess, distinguished molecular cell biologist, president of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, German by birth and upbringing. In short, we are a microcosm of the United Nations Science Summit itself, and honoured to be with you. I am Amy Stanton-Gooch, a graduate student of OIST. I give you now Professor Laurino. Rosa is our lovely, loving nickname for Rosalyn Franklin, an eminent chemist and crystallographer. In our name we have created a career advisory website for graduate students, post-docs, entering assistant professor and their mentors. Rosa also offers inspiring downloadable posters for supporters and anatomy of a research report, a checklist guide to written and verbal scientific communication. On behalf of Rosa, I am so pleased to welcome and to thank you for joining us. We have selected five questions from the ROS website to consider today, and asked each of you to identify the answer you consider most meaningful and impactful. Nikte, would you kindly read question one followed by the answer you choose, and please let us know why you choose that answer. Sure. So the question I am honoured to read goes on impact, and it reads as follows. In your experience, it is more effective for a new professor to address incremental questions on one topic within her comfort zone, or a second one, to undertake more challenging and possibly more impactful big picture projects, or a combination of both. So it's a great question, and among many other of these answers, I selected one that I really liked, and it goes as follows. I was recruited as a lecturer, and I am now a full professor. Thus, I have walked the full path. As a department chair, I advise new researchers as follows. During the first years until you get your tenure, pursue two lines of research. One in which you have proven skill, and it's the reason you were recruited, and the second that is ambitious. The comfort zone creates a solid basis for publication, and I want your successful and secure tenure. The sky is the limit. Leave your comfort zone. I think this is a great answer because it's very complete from this professor, and it's a great piece of advice because I think we have to be all ambitious, of course, but sometimes taking a step out of our comfort zone doesn't really hit upon us. It's depending on our career stage, or depends on how much resources we have in the lab, etc. So it's very wise to also take it a little bit more wisely, especially for projects that can take, I don't know, 10 years, for instance. And yes, we have to frame well these projects. On the other hand, however, I have to think many times I encounter papers in my hand that I thought, like, why I think him up with that? It's so simple and so beautiful and so short. So, yeah, a little bit of intuition, a little bit of creativity is needed. So that's my opinion. Thank you, Nikita. Does anybody else comment on the first question and the first series of answers about impact? Yeah, I would like to maybe chime in a little bit. I think that that was a really good answer because it focuses on the two aspects of familiarity with something as well as really going out of your comfort zone, but also honing in on the importance of prioritizing which one is more important, especially at the early career stage. So I think that really critically thinking about that and reflecting as a scientist on where you are in the journey and then deciding what's more important, do I do something familiar and get tenure or do I go ambitious? Do I even have the resources, as she has mentioned, depending on which institution you are located? These are so practical that we have to consider everything to make the right decision. So I think that was a really comprehensive answer. I would like to add something also on this answer, which actually was also my favorite one for the first question. A little bit from my experience as a lab head. I called it a bread and butter policy because you always have people that you advise, but you also need to do research at the cutting edge, which is more risky where the probability where this will be successful is unclear. So the right thing to do is really to have a little bit of both the bread and butter policy. Yeah, I think it's also very important. I mean, I'm for the high-risk project. However, it's very important the small project also for the atmosphere in the lab because people grows together and it's important to publish small paper all together. Let's go for the second question. Tato, would you like to read to us the second question and also your favorite answer or what you found more meaningful and impactful? Right. Happy to do so. So the second question is about independence and it reads as follows. First projects are often related to postdoctoral research. How soon must I try to differentiate independent projects from my previous work? And so I posed through the very many answers that we received and actually saw that a lot of them do kind of hone in on very similar aspects, but I did choose one which was my favorite and this was from a person-initialed SI who is in the field of deep learning and artificial intelligence and their answer was familiarity feels safe but only unique research questions are made misgivings that your lab is less your own than an outpost of your advisor's lab. Try not to worry about formulating distinctive questions. They are already taking shape themselves at the intersection of your intuition, the current literature, exposure to professors and speakers and awareness of emerging technologies. Not forgetting the literature of a generation or two ago where pioneers identified then unanswerable, now answerable challenges. What you consider compelling is worthy of your best attention and effort. It will become synonymous with you. So for me this was really interesting and I think it kind of adds on to the first question as well. This answer for me brought home the fact that building one's own scientific identity from the early point is really important and to establish what it is that you are contributing to the field not just what your previous lab in your postdoc time was contributing to the field but at the same time it's also giving some practical advice about the fact that it can be difficult to do so. So they say don't worry about the creative part of how to come up with these distinctive questions. They are already taking shape as long as you are exposing yourself to the literature and to the presentations and such. So I find this aspect kind of encouraging because it's not only saying be independent, be unique but it's also telling you how to do so. And I think for me just on a last note the reason I identified a lot with this is that it kind of reminds me of my own lab. I'm not a postdoc, I'm a graduate student but my current PI is very specific about us owning our own work so when we go to conferences he's always saying if it's your project, you present it I'm not going to represent it for you because I want people to associate your work with you and your face. And at first I found this a bit intimidating when I attended my first conference but I understood afterwards that now people want to know me because they associate my work with me rather than with my boss. So I value this a lot. Thanks so much. Does anybody else want... I think this is the real right attitude. No matter where you come from or what you need to establish and that's why I like this advice to go out to conference you have to establish your profile as an independent researcher that profile may build on your previous work it should ideally not compete with your previous boss but it will, in the context of your independent work it will help you to be visible to the scientific community as the one who is doing this line. That's very important. Does anybody else want to add something or comment something? You know, I think that's just a bit of a silly question. It's a great answer. Yeah, I like the answers that was my favorite for this question and I like that because as a first year student I feel really pressured to be able to come up with my own projects and my own ideas and the fact that as long as you expose yourself to new ideas and continue to read literature things will just come to you naturally and then you have the support of your professors and everyone around you to help you formulate new ideas and to be able to have the courage to explore new areas and really enjoy that. Thank you. Would you like to read the question number three and the answer that you found most important? So the question that I have the privilege of answering or reading today is the states I consider collaboration a source of inspiration and collegiality as well as functionally important at the beginning of my career and my better off seeking collaborations avoiding them in the name of independence or placing myself somewhere on a continuum between the two. And while there were so many wonderful answers that I got to read the one that really stuck out to me the most and the one that I really resonated with the most was a response from a professor researcher from India who goes by the initials RA and her response goes on the one hand do not collaborate automatically a young PI learns by venturing into the unknown to some degree acquiring new abilities instead of immediately turning into colleagues. On the other hand, highly specialized experiments outside your area call for collaboration but consider the big picture do not depend on collaboration for most of the project. So I thought that this answer was the most appealing and the one that resonated with me the most because she gave some really insightful advice for those starting their research career whether it's your graduate student or if you're a professor and I really thoroughly enjoyed that she suggested that it's important that you develop your own foundation that you make your mark that you have to explore unknown areas and that you venture into unknown disciplines and tackle new ideas yourself before seeking the help of others and then when you've established yourself and when you feel a bit more comfortable and you've done a lot more research then collaborations are probably going to be a lot more attractive whenever you want to get into more cross-disciplinary work because seeking the support of others is undoubtedly going to be helpful whenever you come across a time in your project when you need skills and techniques that you don't have and you need the support of others to help you and so I also really liked how she ended her response with saying that you shouldn't depend on collaboration entirely for your project because at the end of the day this project is your own you have to make sure you maintain your independence you maintain the vision throughout your project because you don't want that credit to be taken your ideas, you want to maintain that credit yourself and as a PhD student I feel like I can take this advice currently now and apply it to my graduate studies and continue to carry with me in my future I hope you don't mind if I comment on this as well but this is very short because there are literally today compared to 50 years ago no single author papers anymore so if you look at publications most of the publications demonstrate what you just said you need collaborations for OIST just to give you a number 65% of the OIST's publications are written with an author that is outside of OIST so it tells you if you want to be competitive you have to have the personality go out and engage people engage people with specific expertise to help you in your research yeah I can comment a little bit we cannot be the one man orchestra or the one woman orchestra so I can just agree that we cannot be experts in everything so we need some help and I really enjoy these papers in which you see people using machine learning get another paper, apply to another thing and it's just great so why not? it's just really clear to me that it kind of goes both ways one hand you establish yourself and your expertise and then bring on other people who have their own expertise but also at the same time because you've already established yourself in the field you are going to be sought out too by other people who want to collaborate with you so it is really making yourself more competitive in the field that way so I think that's really important yeah I would like to add something about collaborations of course collaboration is fun and we have to keep science enjoyable Professor Gross as we call here a toy Peter would like to read the question I would like to elaborate on thank you do you agree that interdisciplinarity is the way of the future approximately what percentage of time did you invest in cross disciplinary work as an assistant professor versus today my assistant professorship is long time before I come to the answer that I think represents a certain aspect I'd like to point out that I counted the answers there were 24 answers all of them positive but everyone is supporting the use and the value of interdisciplinary research I give you one from my own background I was almost 20 years working in a Max Planck institute for biophysical chemistry everything under one umbrella this institute has produced four Nobel Prize laureates the prize within the institute and I will mention two the one prize was driven by neuroscience and was given to two people working in the neural department at this institute one was a medical doctor and the other was a physicist and both worked together to develop a method called patch clam patch clam is a method where you have a very fine capillary and you can measure everything through one receptor on the surface of the cell so you can this is important for drug development this is important for science because all kinds of receptor you can test as to what opens the receptor how is the flow of information through the receptor so that's the first and second thing the second Nobel Prize more recently was given to a person who is a physicist but has again worked with a neuroscientist and this person has developed a method that is called stead microscopy you have to understand that in light microscopy so if you want to look at biological material the light microscopy has a certain limitation of resolution which is according it's called abbey barrier has nothing to do with the previous prime minister the abbey barrier is 200 nanometers so you cannot go below a resolution of 200 nanometers but this guy has developed a method called stead stimulation emission depletion which means by means of fluorescent molecules he could go down to 90 nanometers and by now it's in the single nanometer range so you get the message without an environment that is conducive to bring together experts from a variety of areas these Nobel Prizes would not have been worked out I should also say I think you had to set this at the beginning this was only possible because they had a stable funding this would not this would not have been possible with the NIH or a JSPS type grant so after this long introduction after this long introduction the answer the answer that I picked was because it also gives you a little bit of the current thinking in the mainstream research inter-disciplinary has various facets it lends more tools to bigger problems but it can stretch an individual researcher a bit thin though ever present in the biosciences it can lead to falling through disciplinary cracks in reviews try to ensure the right people see and champion your articles and propositions I consider myself 100% inter-disciplinary but because I was also known in a defined area I doubt that others saw me that way again inter-disciplinary is subject to interpretation so this I thought is a very smart answer because it outlines the use, the value but it also outlines the danger many scientific fields are streamlined through the refereeing process so let's say if you are, I don't know what your discipline is so sorry but let's say you are your neuroscientist you are talking about okay and then all of a sudden you are working with a physicist to do something completely different you will have a problem with studies that have seen you as a neuroscientist all your life that this may be valuable for a young person this is even worse because your career is also tracked with what we just discussed you have to get a profile in the young stage of your career in a certain area this profile is added but if you completely move out you will get a complete new profile and you have to consider yourself whether you have enough time to establish this profile having said all of this you need to do what you think will address the scientific question most profitably that's the only thing that matters trust your gut feeling but as I said watch out for the pitfalls yeah the gut feeling is a good point we have to develop a little bit of intuition for approaching people and exactly not deviating too much from our projects because of course we are not experts so it might be dangerous and perhaps this intuition comes with time and experience within the field to know what to look out for and what to watch out for because I think it can be a little bit difficult just entering the field yeah you might learn all the technical words and all it takes time it takes a lot of time so you must be willing to give this time and not be patient and not rush what I do appreciate when it comes to OIST and the setup of OIST if I can talk a little bit about that just the way that our labs are structured it is very easy if you're a person who is pro-interdisciplinarity to actually form those meaningful connections with people who are outside of your lab because we are not divided by departments so we have a neuroscience lab and there's a molecular biology lab right there and there's a chemistry lab right next door so at lunchtime you're talking to these people we have internal seminars for people of different fields and they are presenting in such a way that the information is accessible to you so if you do find some common interests it does make the pathway to making this conversation happen a slightly more easier platform so that the initiation can happen so I think that this is something that other universities might not have that we do have here at OIST yeah there is I think two plus points of OIST of course the support and also the fact that we are not so big I think a small community can interact easier and better rather when it becomes too big probably it's more diluted yes to have interaction with someone really out of your field I'm going to read the last question question number five and I've chosen also one answer which was the most one of the most meaningful actually all of them are very meaningful question five is about advisors and networking the question reads like this how did you build a network of male or female colleagues and mentors who helped and advised you on to the path you took how and where do you interact with these friends today I found particularly interesting the answer of SI she specializes in deep learning and artificial intelligence some curiosity is unusually penetrating well-trained and always on highest alert some people question their own thinking they probe what they encounter or create they make unexpected connection they can summon enormous concentration they express themselves elegantly with economy and evident enjoyment in person and in print we value these colleagues whether senior contemporaries or younger and form life-long association with them I have eight groups I have yet to experience an effective one but certainly consider myself part of a movement promoting inclusivity in science well I found this very interesting actually these and few others I think because she point out that we should not limit our advisors or supporters to collegue in our own field as curious she says well-trained or question their own thinking that can be someone we want to connect and keep connection there is something that many of the senior scientists actually point out is the importance to have collaborator in younger scientists I think often people underestimate this but this is very important and I think also very enjoyable and there is something else that I identify myself I also found difficult to have a mutual eight groups rather I think about advisor as single person this can be a friend from elementary school or senior scientist in another field or someone very close to my field or maybe my direct advisor and another things I identify myself is the fact that yes probably initiate I mean I'm sure initiate Ross because I wanted to promote inclusivity in science does anybody else want to comment or other answer on advisor or networking do you find difficult networking? now I don't find it too difficult but I have to admit that when I was an undergraduate student especially it was overwhelming to approach senior scientists something that I particularly found very useful was that my previous supervisor would help me for example we go to a conference and she would say oh look this is Nikta and she works on this and that I want to talk to her about this and this so it was you know like the big step is done and now you just have to fill the gas so that must be useful and I think the more you do it the more naturally it becomes and you have to forget about being shy I think you want to build a network I agree with having connections with people outside of your scientific circle because it's important to make friends to make colleagues who understand what you're researching but I think I've made a lot of connections with those who are completely different from a field I still have friends who are like in psychology or not even in research at all but they provide me a lot of emotional support to help me get through my graduate studies like going from an undergraduate degree to straight into my PhD it's been extremely difficult but to have friends who can support me overcome all these problems anybody else wants to comment if not we can go on ROS exists to promote scientific inclusivity and diversity through equal full access to important information it should never be necessary to guess or intuit it the custom and criteria of academia there will always be a safe place to ask questions you are never alone ROS is there for you in that light and in closing I call your attention to a second future of ROS we call it anatomy of a research report it is sentence by sentence word by word guide to the scientific presentation and writing you will have to constantly do Nikte did you have a chance to have a look at the research report would you like to call yes I found it very useful I think I think structure in everything brings something useful even when you read an email and somebody writes an email structure you enjoy reading it because it respects your time and everything so it's the same when you have a research report not only you can formulate it better for your supervisors or probably future colleagues that are going to be working on this project but also for the reader in general like for example a paper when it's well written then it's much more easier to get an idea for instance so I think it's very useful and very important to introduce some structure to the research report do you have any advice on scientific writing or communication you better learn it the writing is how you establish yourself for eternity actually in the German language we have the same those who write stay translated so in other words our world is fast and if I go back to the 19th century for example people who are very well known and did fundamental work they published a book or two in their life this is all so you need to learn structured writing and from our point of view I think always it's going to support this we really have courses for for writing, I mean scientific writing hoping that at the end of the day you cannot and will not leave this university without having written your own papers at least the first laugh then go to your 15th I think this is a very considerate approach and I'm really happy that we have it and people can access it because as she said it can be a really overwhelming transition if you're going from undergrad to postgrad and knowing what is expected by the field and the standard and the level of writing this gives us this kind of guideline and I think that it will make life much much easier and will save a lot of time for people to know exactly what's the point of this paper what am I trying to communicate with the aspects that are important and just cut out all the fluff and just say what needs to be said I think it's really important I hope lots and lots of people gain access to it I was actually quite excited to see this because I just started my second year and so now I'm going to have to start thinking about my thesis proposal so being able to communicate all my ideas what's important what's not important how I structure everything how do I organize everything really will take the load off of things help me better communicate my ideas Lastly in addition to question and answer and to our invaluable guide anatomy of a research report ROS also provide a photographic sampling of our strong determining inspiring international support anyone might download their poster in value size and display them on their bench door always or even take them to conference we are proud of this poster to finish I ask you if you can think of any person apart from your doting mother a colleague who gave freely of his or information knowledge skill support to you an helper Tato do you have someone in mind you can just say the first name apart from my doting mother your mother doesn't count you shouldn't say your mom with a someone who provided me freely yes yes knowledge skill support I can say few names for myself I can say recently for a long time Danny Erika for me the first person that always comes to mind is Amy she's been in my life she's helped me immensely since I've been here and she's been super helpful, super impactful she's given me so much guidance and I really appreciate all the support that she's given me since I've been here currently support support because ok this is not my mother, it's close to the mother of my father, my grandmother she gave me so many advices not research related but academic related she always she had no she didn't have the opportunity to study so she told me you better do that to be independent from any man and be independent, I mean she's almost 90 so you can imagine that this is the thinking of the past so yeah that was a good advice I think for me I can think of two people the first postdoc I worked with at OS this was an Abutnaut unit and she's no longer at OS because the lab closed down but her name is Teresa and she's from Mexico and she was the first person to actually teach me a lot of the techniques that I now know in neuroscience because at the time my PI didn't really have the time to be in the lab he was more doing administrative duties and I really relied on Teresa for all of the experimental work but also I remember a high school teacher of mine who once told me that if ever you're given an opportunity to be the first at something to volunteer for something or to initiate something don't ever be shy to raise your hand always be that person who says me and then figure out the steps later but always say me and honestly this has been one of the motors I've used throughout my life and it's gotten me to where I am now because I've not been afraid to just take the plunge when no one else had laid the foundation in front for me I never had to say oh but I don't know anyone at this university how am I going to go I was the first person at OS from my country because of this kind of mindset that I'm not afraid to be the first and this is because of what the high school teacher once said you want to tell us well I can you know of course it's a bit outdated if I talk about my mother but I can talk about other things that I find important throughout the course of your careers and the two elements that we should never forget is be courageous and be critical and the reason I'm saying this is you are now many of you I mean sorry I don't know what state you're at but many of you are learning the trade the trade is experimental the trade is theoretical it gets you ready to be yourself and that's why I'm saying be courageous and be critical so a great poster but if you have advising you sorry but if you have the feeling you have an idea that is different don't be dissuaded that means in science very often it's the path where you pick that is different from the route others take so be courageous be critical you can accept training but at some point you got to find your own way so I ask you for an advisor because Ross wants to be that person for you at Ross you are welcome anytime, any day wherever in the world you are on the clock you are always welcome to visit the Ross website and the answer again I thank each of you for your generosity in participating today we are fully grateful for countless form of encouragement and assistance given by OIST and we are honored to have taken part in this United Nations Science Summit bye for now bye