Thank you, and thank you for the organizer for inviting me here again. And these are my disclosures, nothing to do with these presentations though. And first I will give you a little bit of introduction on my experience and why I guess I'm here talking to you today. And so I graduated from medical school at University of Padua in Italy, where actually I completed my GI training. And then I moved in this country in 2006 and I completed a master in science at UC Davis. And then since then I took off and for almost the past 10 years I've been funded through NIH, through my first, well, first KO-8 and then RO-3 and currently funded RO-1. And the common denominator of my research has been the study of epigenetic regulation of gene expression in Wilson disease, so a rare disease. I also received various intramural grants, but also recently became the TL1, our CTSC TL1 training grant, which is NIH funded, which is a training grant for pre-doctoral and post-doctoral students on clinical and translational research. So I do spend a lot of my time also in mentoring and figuring out mentoring strategies and training strategies for our students. But yes, I do, I'm a clinician, but also I do have a lab and I work with animal models of Wilson disease. So, and I will talk about what my ideal day is. I strive for that on a weekly basis. It doesn't always happen like that, but that's what I try to do. So from morning, well, we try, I don't have pictures of babies or kids. I do have kids, but I'm so happy to be here without them that I didn't bring photos of them. But we try to go to work, try to go to work with my bike and I take them to school with their bicycles. So I have the impression that I'm sneaking in some exercise. But then the first thing that I like to do in the morning is check with my people in the lab, a very important part of my life. And we check on overnight experiments or experiments from the day before. And if they're doing well, okay, we keep discussing and we keep the same strategy. But if it's not doing well, going well or going badly, then we discuss and we try to avoid more failure. Then what I want to say that then there is lunchtime. One advice that I have is that it's great to meet with your mentors and collaborators at lunchtime. I realized that it's a good way to have their unconditional and undivided attention. So no emails and phone calls. So try to use that time to meet with your mentors and people that are helping you. Then afternoon time, it's more discussion of our experiments and eventually lab meetings. Now you definitely have to make time for writing. And we are all looking for the time where we can write for three or four consecutive hours. But that it's not always possible. However, the message for today is that even if you have just 10, 20 minutes a day for writing, that it also will help your productivity. So make sure that you include the writing in your daily activities. No matter how you feel and how you're doing. Like you would see patients, like you would do your lab work or you would teach, no matter what. Sometimes even if you're very tired or sick yourself, still do the writing. And read what you've wrote the day before. It may not be perfect, but actually perfectionism is on the way of good enough, really. And writing should be a daily habit. And then there is the evening time where you have several options. You can read papers, continue writing, and carry on some additional experiments. Or finally, and that's my favorite, of course, take care of family or do something fun. So what are the advantages of this type of career? So I always feel part of something bigger. Doing hypothesis-driven research, it's challenging, but also you feel like always on the cutting edge. And it's always fairly independent type of work in the sense that you can create and design your experiments and direct on your own research. It obviously depends on the funding sources that you have, but you feel fairly independent. You can do essentially what you want when you want. And you get to interact with the most interesting and the smartest people, collaborators, mentors, and mentees, and obviously you get to travel and present your data. And talking about collaborations, so my recommendation, my suggestion, it would be especially when you're starting your own research group and your lab, make sure that you collaborate with some larger labs where they also have their own graduate students and postdocs, so they're just eager to be more productive and to be part of other projects, to be co-authors in other projects. And so that's a way basically to expand your own lab at not much cost. And also make sure that you take advantage of core facilities and biorepositories and existing databases, because that's just basically a way to expand your productivity, increase your productivity, and increase basically your startup packet. And how to choose your team, that's a crucial question and it will continue to be throughout your career. Well, especially for a lab, you can choose between graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research scientists, and technicians. I'm putting in parentheses undergraduate students, and even though I'm sure there are very gifted and talented students, but also make sure that they don't take too much time for their own training in the lab. And so while you're writing, for example, your first grants as principal investigators or writing your papers as senior investigator, you have somebody in the lab that is fairly experienced and technically advanced to take care of the lab and teach other students, not so experienced students while you're writing. So make sure that you have high quality people in the lab that can take care of the continuity and teaching. What are the challenges? Well, of course, I share the joys and the pains with previous speakers. As clinicians, I do have two half days of weekly clinics and I have in-patients work. I do have growing administrative obligations, NIH study sections. Again, I'm the director of the training program, journals editorial board, and I'm not in the committees, member of several committees. And I'm not saying that it's necessarily a bad thing to be part of committees and part of the academic life, that it was a requirement for all of us. But making sure that when you choose your obligations, you choose something that is also helpful for your own research and it gives you opportunities for your lab. And obviously, there are personal obligations. And for example, in my case, I also have a location challenging. My lab is in Davis and I see patients in Sacramento and there is a distance of about 15 miles. So other things, obviously, working hours, long, but who does not have that? Competition can be fierce. Frustration, of course. Sometimes sense of loneliness and isolation. Sometimes I feel like, especially when I'm writing grants, I'm the only one understanding what I'm doing and funding challenges. But as far as funding for basic scientists, obviously, NIH R01s are the backbone of our work. But fairly soon, you will realize that one R01, it's actually not sufficient. So you will need more support for that. That can come from training grants that can support your own students in the lab and really can expand your group. Consider that our values in each mechanism, I won't go into that, but look for grants for collaborative groups, other sources of funding, USDA, Department of Defense, and of course, foundations. And here is my key message, takeaway slide. And so be always available for your lab members, literally from morning to night. Interact regularly with your mentors any time of the day. Write regularly, even 10, 20 minutes a day may be sufficient. Diversify your lab, but always invest on quality people and material. And thank you for your attention. Thank you.

medical school

research

NIH funding

epigenetic gene regulation

Wilson disease