When flexibility mattered
With Dr Ruth Payne
Ruth calls herself “an accidental academic” and admits that it was the inspiring and supportive approach of her academic manager/ PhD supervisor during her research fellowship position and PhD that led her to continue a career that embraced both clinical work and research.
Building a research team is never easy but establishing yourself as a new PI when you work 50% time as a clinician and 50% time in research, and then on top of that a world pandemic is forcing you to stop your research…well that is quite a start when you are a new Principal Investigator.
This challenging period has brought her resilience and connections. During the Covid period, her experience in vaccine development enabled her to get involved in many new vaccine clinical trials projects, that she could never have predicted. It allowed her to jump into new projects and build very close working relationships with many new colleagues. It created opportunities to be involved at a national level in policies related to vaccine development (e.g., UK Clinical Vaccine Network, Covid19 task force of the British Society of Immunology).
More about Ruth
Ruth entered the world of research as a doctor following her appointment on a research fellowship position that became her PhD work at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford (2012 - 2016). Her interest in malaria and vaccine development is anchored in a childhood spent in East Africa and in seeing first-hand the impact of this disease. After her research fellowship/PhD, she went back full time to a clinical role in Nottingham before jumping into a Clinical Academic Lectureship position. She is now a Senior Clinical Lecturer in the School of Medicine and Population Health at The University of Sheffield.
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/smph/people/clinical-medicine/ruth-payne
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
How embracing the silver lining (in this case - the Covid pandemic) can create more opportunities and exposure
How embedding yourself into larger projects creates the economy of scale needed when you get started as a new PI
Why keeping lines of communication within your network increases your opportunities
“really strengthening some of those networks and relationships that you’ve kind of peripherally known, through different opportunities at work, but actually when you’re in a different position and on your own...suddenly those relationships can change quite a lot”
