Scientists at the Summit

Courtesy of University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Roy Herbst In those rare moments when Roy Herbst isn't seeing a patient or assessing the results of his research, he's aware of the quickening pace of time. So much of his time has been absorbed with education, training, mulling choices, and making hard decisions, each with potential to twist his life in a new direction. Somewhere in between the classes, the residency, the research, and the promotions, 22 years have slipped by. "How do you get where you are when you are constantly being pulled in so many directions?" wonders Herbst, an associate professor of thoracic/head and neck medical oncology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. "How do you get where you land?" Herbst has landed at one of the nation's leading cancer centers as its principal investigator for Phase I clinical trials of Endostatin, an anti- angiogenesis drug that kills tumors by cutting off their blood supply. His timing is perfect. At 40, Herbst is just entering midcareer, when life scientists have developed sufficient reputation and professional muscle to wrangle funding for their own projects. "Anderson was the perfect place for me to do what I wanted to do," Herbst says. "I was brought in to lead the lung cancer group. I feel very fortunate to be right on the cusp of things here. It feels very good." FROM SELF TO SOCIETY The midcareer years feel good to most life scientists because, for the first time, they can stop fretting about someone else's project and unleash their creativity to accomplish their own goals. It's all part of what Fran Sharples calls the "ages and stages" of a scientist's career. "You've got to stop and come up for air and look around," says Sharples, director of the Board on Life Sciences for the National Research Council. "Midcareer gives you that freedom." With that newly found freedom, midcareer scientists often are more active in professional organizations, says Patrick Sculley, executive director of Sigma Xi, the science research society. The early part of their careers is consumed with training and finding a job and a line of research. Midcareer is about contributing more broadly to science and human kind. "Many scientists have not had the opportunity to develop leadership skills and administrative skills," Sculley says. "In midcareer there is the opportunity to provide broader service, to give back via a leadership position. And that is tremendously fulfilling." Biology is the home of most midcareer scientists. According to a National Science Foundation (NSF) survey in 2001,1 of the 118,600 doctoral scientists in biology, 85,120 have had their doctorates for at least six years and less than 20 years, an interval that roughly defines the boundaries of midcareer. Of the 5,240 environmental scientists in the survey, 2,120 fall into the midcareer category, while 11,080 of the 21,390 health scientists have reached midcareer. Of the 56,100 chemists surveyed, 23,920 are in the middle of their careers (the survey exempts biochemistry). Salary-wise, midcareer seems to be when life scientists start reaping the rewards for the long hours and low pay they endured during their years as postdocs and junior investigators. According to the NSF survey, nonmedical biology scientists realize an $11,000 (US) pay hike between the ages of 35 and 40. During that same time span, medical scientists receive an $18,000 raise, while biochemists' salaries increase by $9,000. MULTIDISCIPLINED, MULTILINGUAL Unlike most life scientists, Lucy Cárdenas-Freytag got the big salary and plush benefits package long before she hit midcareer stride. The former Fulbright Scholar from Cali, Columbia, was halfway through a three-year postdoctorate in microbiology with a pharmaceutical company when her bosses offered her a job as scientific liaison to lawyers for Spanish-speaking countries. "It allowed me to do something I couldn't have done being a bench scientist, which was have a nine-to-five job," says Cárdenas-Freytag, 46, who received her PhD from Tulane University in New Orleans. "But being a scientist at heart, I got bored. I wanted the challenge of being at the bench." Two years later, Cárdenas-Freytag returned to Tulane. She now works on four projects, funded by a $4 million National Institutes of Health grant, investigating infectious diseases and strategies for preventing their spread by bioterrorists. Boredom is no longer a primary concern. "I found what truly excites me," says Cárdenas-Freytag, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane's School of Medicine. "There is always something happening for new therapies and a need for new vaccines. So the questions are always changing." Courtesy of Edward D. Freytag Lucy Cárdenas-Freytag As she moved up the career ladder, Cárdenas-Freytag's level of responsibility changed; no longer can she sit back and focus solely on her experiments. She has projects to develop, grants to write, and a lab's worth of people to pay. Boredom may not be in her vocabulary, but stress may be. When all the frustrations pile up, she just backs off. "When things like that happen, you hang up your lab coat and go home and have a margarita," she says. FREEDOM AND FUN Gabriel Zwart, a microbial ecologist at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, has more than once considered replacing the stress of academia for a nice, cushy industry job. "I have cycles of, what else could I do?" Zwart says. "It comes up now and again." But now when the question arises, he has two reasons to dismiss it: freedom and fun. "It's fun stuff and fun people here," says Zwart, 40. "The position I'm in now, I have a lot of freedom. I've got more liberty now." His transition from junior to midcareer scientist was gradual. Over time he noticed that he was being asked to switch his focus from just his work to helping manage the larger lab. Though he doesn't like giving orders, he has learned how to motivate people. "Otherwise people will go in a different direction that we don't want," he says. "We're trying to make it fit together so we can help each other." Zwart now writes project grants, hires postdocs, and finds himself answering questions that he once asked. "We've got some new students here now and they look up to me," he says. "It's strange and I don't think I deserve it. Sure, it is rewarding." Courtesy of Fraukje Rienks Gabriel Zwart Roy Herbst, a graduate of Rockefeller University's MD-PhD program, also would describe his career as rewarding. Herbst constantly felt tugged between the MD and the PhD, but he finally found peace in the middle. "I was very research oriented," he says. "At the same time I always wanted to be a doctor working with patients." Herbst credits his sprint up the ranks, which included time at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard, to working at the best labs and clinical settings in the country. "Mentors are the key thing," he says. "A little bit is finding your way, but you have to have someone looking out for you." With a stack of published papers and a reasonable number of awards to his credit, Herbst feels he's in a position to be a mentor for young scientists. It is, he says, a turning point in his career. "I feel ready for that," he says. "If they are successful, then I feel I'm successful." Bob Calandra (rotoca@aol.com) is a freelance writer in Philadelphia. 1. "Characteristics of doctoral scientists and engineers in the United States: 2001," National Science Foundation, available online at www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/nsf03310/start.htm HOW TO MORE THAN MUDDLE THROUGH MIDLIFE Even at mid-career, life scientists have plenty to learn. And most of it has nothing to do with the bench. Running a lab is like operating a business, and that requires skills that may be as foreign to a scientist as nucleotides are to an accountant. "I think administration is an area that we as scientists get thrown into and we are very naive about it," says Lucy Freytag, an assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at Tulane's School of Medicine. Like most of her colleagues, Freytag acknowledges acquiring business administration skills through on-the-job training. Her number one tip: Be careful with grant money, especially in the first year of the grant. "Don't go crazy the first year of the grant and buy every piece of equipment you ever wanted," she says. Also learn the grant rules. "Spending grant money, you have to be judicious about it." Another lesson Freytag has learned is to surround herself with good people, whether they are postdocs or technicians. She looks for people who have good hands on the bench and good heads on their shoulders. "The ideal is the person who comes to you and says, 'I just read this paper ... can we apply this to our project?'" she relates. She says it is important, even for the experienced researcher, to learn how to write a good grant proposal. She has been at National Institutes of Health meetings and seen good ideas from respected scientists turned down because the proposal didn't meet the standards. "Go to these grant writing workshops," she says. "It takes a weekend and you'll learn a lot." Her final tip to mid-career scientists is a simple one. "You have to be a good colleague and collaborate with people and help people out," she says. "People will be there for you to help you out." function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

Scientists at the Summit

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Courtesy of University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Roy Herbst