When Christine Jacobs-Wagner made her first stop in Lucy Shapiro's Stanford lab 12 years ago, it was the first of five interviews she had scheduled for postdoc positions across the country. After one day with Shapiro, Jacobs-Wagner's mind was made up. "I was so excited by her research I cancelled the rest of my interviews and joined the lab."
Two factors were most convincing for Jacobs-Wagner: "[Shapiro's] energy and the quality of people she could attract," which Jacobs-Wagner immediately appreciated when talking to lab members. It's a decision that served her well: the work Jacobs-Wagner did in Shapiro's lab appeared in such top-tier journals as Cell and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
"The most fundamental thing a mentor can do for a lab is to help to maximize a lab's productivity," Shapiro says. "That's based on creating an environment of collaboration and respect." It's a tone that is ...
