Lessons Learned - August 2025

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Medical Genetics at the UTHealth McGovern Medical School in Houston, TX. My doctoral research under the mentorship of Dianna Milewicz, M.D., Ph.D., also at UTHealth assessed molecular mechanisms of thoracic aortic aneurysms and dissections caused by rare genetic variants in the MYH11 gene, which encodes smooth muscle myosin heavy 

chain. As a postdoctoral fellow, I worked with Thomas Carroll, Ph.D. at UT Southwestern to study the role of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in the stromal cells of the developing kidney with the hypothesis that constitutive activation of β-catenin in the stroma could drive the pathogenesis of a pediatric renal cancer called Wilms tumor. I moved back to UTHealth and the laboratory of Dianna Milewicz for my second postdoctoral position, where I initiated an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) model system for studying molecular control of smooth muscle cell differentiation in vitro. My lab uses this model system to study the impact of genetic variants causing moyamoya disease, a rare vascular disease that causes stroke via occlusion of the internal carotid artery, on smooth muscle cell phenotype. The long-term goal of my lab is to identify molecular and epigenetic mechanisms driving smooth muscle cell fate specification and to assess how those pathways or chromatin remodeling changes are altered in patients with moyamoya disease. A second major research direction in my laboratory is to characterize the molecular functions of nuclear actins in muscle cells.

Like all of you, I am sure, I have faced challenges in my career. For example, going through the pandemic as a postdoc parenting a young child was a tough period that required a tightrope walk of time management. As scientists, we have the benefit and the curse of schedule flexibility – which means that during that tough year I could be available to home school a few hours a day, or that now I can be at every little league game – but also means that it’s hard not to feel guilty for not working harder. I joked at our Early Career panel at the NAVBO meeting last year that the best way to ensure you have work-life balance is to raise a child, because both your “work” and your “life” (as though those are fully two separate things) become top priorities demanding your time and attention. While that’s reductive, I do fully believe that I am a better scientist because I focus on other things for a portion of the day each day. That brain rest keeps my motivation and creativity high when I am focused on work.

I am amazed by how quickly what I do each day changed when I started my independent lab, and the bulk of what I do today is very different than what I did three years ago as a postdoc. I have been lucky to get funding early in my faculty tenure and to have a large number of active projects – but that has meant my lab grew much faster than I expected, going from a group size of 2 to 10 within one calendar year. We aren’t taught most of the skills I use today to run my lab during our training. I want to share some of the things I have found the most difficult in my transition and what I have learned from this process so far, especially things I have not seen covered as much in recent lessons learned – so while I agree with that past advice, I will not talk about how you should apply to tons of grants or how to approach your first hires.

1) Build the strongest network you can – before you enter independence

I have been extremely lucky throughout my career to have exceptional mentors, collaborators, and colleagues who have helped me get to where I am today – and I do not say that to downplay my own success or hard work! I truly believe that you cannot be successful in science today without a strong network and community. For one thing, no one person can be an expert across all of the disparate technologies that we need to use in this era of interdisciplinary science. This network serves a number of

invaluable purposes: senior mentors can provide critical feedback on your ideas and writing, peer sounding boards are there to support you through the good and bad, and the broader community through organizations like NAVBO is a great space to get new ideas and new friends. Building my network did not come easily for me, so my advice is to put yourself in a position to build your network early and often, whether that’s by going to conferences, volunteering on a committee, or whatever works for you.

2) Learn to receive – and give - critical feedback

One of the hardest parts of our chosen careers is dealing with negative feedback. We submit our papers, our grants, our literal years of intellectual and physical labor, and we get back a litany of critiques that can range from fair to, well, usually fair but poorly worded? As a junior faculty, you have to get used to rejection and learn to separate your self-worth from your work – which can be really hard for those of us who built a career out of academic achievement. This is where the work-life balance I mentioned above becomes really critical – having something else besides science as part of your identity and daily routine helps create this separation. I let myself feel frustrated for about a day after reading reviews, and then I take a day more to breathe and think about something else. When I come back to the critiques, I try to be as objective as possible and assume that the reviewers are all making their comments in good faith. On the other side, as a reviewer, I try to think about how my words come across. Learning to give careful feedback – both trusting your own judgment and being able to couch your critiques in a way that makes the work of others better – is another one of those skills I wish were taught more formally.

3) Embrace your own success

You probably all know the term “imposter syndrome.” This is something I have really struggled with as I have progressed in my career, gotten my first funding, and started (I hope!) to build my reputation in the field. I am actively working, even as I write this document, not to downplay my own success. It’s important in our field, with all of the rejection I talked about above, and especially in the current climate, to celebrate every success no matter how small.

4) Take scientific chances!

My final “lesson learned” is to follow your scientific interests, even if they take you to unexpected places. I am constantly telling people that I don’t have any real expertise in any of the fields my lab is working in – but I am enjoying the ride, trying to leverage my network from point one to help me learn and break into new directions, and learning new things all the time. That’s what we’re here for! So don’t be afraid to push the boundaries of your expertise and pursue a cool idea or new project.

I am always happy to talk to anyone at any career stage, so reach out to me – let’s be part of each other’s networks, give each other thoughtful feedback, build up each other’s successes, and discover new and exciting science!