Setting up your research group
With Prof. Jason King
Jason has travelled the country from Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow to Sheffield from his undergraduate degrees to his current role as a Cell Biology Professor. He has held 2 fellowships, following a long postdoctoral period at the The Beatson Institute for Cancer Research.
Jason shares how building a research team can sometimes feel quite haphazard, and is shaped by the opportunities that arise. As a new PI eager to start a new research group, it can be difficult to not take opportunities to recruit team members quickly. However, finding your feet when you are transitioning from a Postdoc into a fellowship may takes slightly longer than you anticipate. There is a fine balance between the eagerness of recruiting team members, the availability of opportunities and having things set up for your group to be functional.
His advice to new PIs would be to take their time at the beginning of their fellowship and not recruit too many people at the same time. Research teams are always in flux with team members joining and leaving. One of Jason’s concerns is the challenge of retaining critical technical skills in the team. Thinking about the transmission of key skills within a team is an important consideration for retaining research expertise.
More about Jason
https://jasonkinglab.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/home
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
How to be not too precious with your research niche but flexible to see it evolve and even pivot
How constantly appraising your approach to individual team members is needed to best support them
Why promoting efficient working matters more than assuming hard working
“I think not being too fixed with your ideas and you may come to the realisation that your original idea was wrong or not going to work, or that there’s a better direction. So, having that flexibility is really good”
