Dear NAVBO community,

I would like to touch base with you all, given that we are living through truly unprecedented times. The scale and pace of the #COVID19 pandemic is having an enormous impact on all of our personal and professional lives. Many of us are now working from home, switching our efforts from bench to desk, or from bedside to telemedicine. Society will be defined by how we respond to this changing landscape, and how we work together to confront this enormous challenge.

I would like to take a moment to update you on some of NAVBO's upcoming planned events. I hope that touching base and keeping you informed will help everybody in their efforts to plan the months ahead.

The overall approaches regarding how we deal with the corona virus risk remains extremely fluid. Changing sometimes by the hour. However, I want you to know that our primary concern is your safety, and right now the CDC and WHO recommended aggressive #SocialDistancing. So please #StayHome and stay tuned for the changing ways in which NAVBO will continue to provide value to your scientific lives.

Due to the current situation and unknown circumstances ahead of us, we would be grateful to you for a donation to NAVBO ( click here) and choose Educational Programs. We will use these funds for educational activities and for finding ways to keep you connected scientifically.

Ondine Cleaver,

NAVBO President

As stated above in Dr. Cleaver's message, the Education Committee is developing new learning opportunities.

Regular readers of NewsBEAT will be familiar with the popular bimonthly Lessons Learned feature in which junior faculty members share their experiences and advice to help trainees and new faculty navigate this important and sometimes difficult period of their career. Building on the success of Lessons Learned, Leaders' Lessons is a bimonthly forum in which senior members of the NAVBO community will share their wisdom and advice on how to succeed throughout one's career. Each article will feature curated responses from several experienced scientists on a single topic, offering a rich diversity of advice and opinions that we all can learn from.

This month's question is "How can faculty maintain trajectory throughout their career?" Several NAVBO Council Officers generously shared their advice for this first edition - many thanks to all of them for their insights.

In the coming months, we want to address YOUR questions - please send your suggestions to anita@navbo.org.

And of course, we also need our senior members to contribute and will be reaching out to many of you in the coming weeks to ask for your lessons as leaders. As Linda advises below, "once you are established, it's time to give back"!

Leaders' Lessons: How can faculty maintain trajectory throughout their career?

Masanori Aikawa, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School

I have always tried to implement new technologies in my manuscripts or grant applications.

I have also focused on proposing new concepts rather than follow others' footsteps. 

I have tried my best to maintain mutual trust between leadership members of my department or division.  If you support them, they may want to support your career development too.

I suggest to my trainees to have courage to innovate, which energizes the entire team so that you as a PI can fly high with them.

Ondine Cleaver, UT Southwestern Medical Center

How to maintain your career trajectory in science throughout your career? My answer is do what you love. Stick to the science that excites you, and put one foot in front of the other to get the answers you seek. It's not easy, be clear on that right upfront. But with a sense of humor, resilience, persistence, and creating peer groups for cross-critiques, venting and support, it can be done. Demand critical feedback, and thicken your skin so you can make use if it. Value and foster a love of discovery in your labs, simultaneously challenging them and appreciating their efforts. Write those papers and grants, and expect rejections. But keep submitting. Remember it's a marathon, not a race. So learn to enjoy running, and maybe the view along the way.

Bill Muller, Northwestern University

The most useful thing I have found to help maintain trajectory is to realize that you are in it for the long run.  This is easier to say than to do, but if you focus on a question or series of questions that you want to answer and stay focused on answering them-knowing that science never proceeds in a straight line-you are less likely to get too distracted by the usual disappointments that come with the territory (e.g. manuscript rejections, bad grant reviews, getting "scooped") or worry how much time you are losing by moving your lab or your institution.  Hot topics go in and out of fashion, so don't run around like a groupie following them.  Stay focused on the science you want to do and do it really well.  Eventually, it will be a hot topic again and then you'll be in the middle of it.  Most of all, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have spent your life doing exactly what you wanted.  And how many people can say that?

Kristy Red-Horse, Stanford University

I try to maintain my trajectory by making time to push my brain in new directions. When I feel myself starting to go on autopilot with the same thinking, proposing the same experiments to address a question, I take the time to read and think about something completely different. This is tough as time goes on because of the increased amount of administrative tasks that need to be done as you progress in your career. For example, the other day I had so many tasks on my plate, but gave myself permission to instead take time out to read (slow reading, not scanning) about the collective behavior of ants. I left that day inspired and invigorated instead of with a head bussing from a day filled with completing tasks. I find doing this on a regular basis translates to me giving more creative advice to my trainees.  

Linda Shapiro, University of Connecticut Health Center

I raised three children while my husband traveled extensively and have been fortunate to have been able to maintain NIH funding since my first award in 1996, when my youngest was 3. I think the most important part of combining a research career with a family is organization- I'm a great list-maker and avoid procrastination. My kids had the most elaborate excel spreadsheets outlining their summer camp schedules, immunizations, soccer practices etc.! One mistake that I do regret is that I stopped attending meetings for the 5 years when my kids were in high school- too old for babysitters but too young to be trusted to not have parties when Dad's in Germany and Mom's at NAVBO! Getting to know other investigators, learning what's at the cutting edge and selling your science is very important to advance your career and harder to do without establishing face-to-face personal contacts.

My advice to early stage investigators is to concentrate on their personal careers - publishing, obtaining funding and networking/presenting at meetings to the exclusion of many 'public service' roles such as study sections and institutional committees. The goal should be securing funding as the highest priority-this will enable your promotion to the next level- tenure (if available) or senior faculty, to prove your ability as an independent scientist and obtain some degree of stability in this very unstable career.  

Once your funding is in place, I feel serving on a study section is an invaluable learning opportunity to discover how the system works and ways to improve your grant writing. SROs are constantly in need of fair and reliable reviewers- ask colleagues who have served to suggest your name to their or other study section leaders. Continue to come up with new research projects and lines of investigation- this keeps the science fresh and much more interesting as you learn about new fields and systems. Never stop writing papers and grants- it takes so long now to publish a paper or get a grant that you have to have a few in play at once.

Finally, once you are established, it's time to give back.  Emphasis at this point should be on training the next generation and serving the organizations that have supported you for so long. I don't mean to stop your research, but you have the experience to make it work with less effort. Finally, never stop striving for diversity and inclusion- valuable insights and opinions are critical!

Cindy St. Hillaire, University of Pittsburgh

I strongly feel that a key to success at your own institution it to have people know you and like you and your work, thus, try and say yes to things that matter to those who will be reviewing your promotion and tenure documents. Almost more important, anything you say yes to, you must adhere to timelines and follow through with good work.

We are seeking submissions in any area of research that members consider topical as well as ideas for the Vascular Therapeutics session. Our goal is to broaden the scope of our meetings, enhance the member experience and respond to our members' interests.The featured workshops at Vascular Biology 2021 are Developmental Vascular Biology and Genetics, and Vascular Matrix Biology and Bioengineering. The deadline is May 1, 2020. See the web site for more details. 

The Journal Club will be led by Xiaowu Gu, UT Southwestern Medical Center, and a member of the NAVBO Education Committee.  The paper is:

The guidance receptor plexin D1 is a mechanosensor in endothelial cells.

Vedanta Mehta, Kar-Lai Pang, Daniel Rozbesky, Katrin Nather, Adam Keen, Dariusz Lachowski, Youxin Kong, Dimple Karia, Michael Ameismeier, Jianhua Huang, Yun Fang, Armando del Rio Hernandez, John S. Reader, E. Yvonne Jones and Ellie Tzima

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1979-4

Elisa Boscolo is the AHA's 2020 Werner Risau Early Career Awardee in Vascular Biology

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Our next online mini-symposium, will feature four presentations by NAVBO Trainees that presented posters at Vascular Biology 2019:

Renal stromal netrin-1 signaling drives kidney arterial development   

Xiaowu Gu, UT Southwestern Medical Center

Inhibition of Notch signaling in pericytes leads to AVM-like lesions

Taliha Nadeem, University of Illinois, Chicago

Dach1 Promotes Coronary Artery Endothelial Cell Specification    

Brian Raftrey, Stanford University

Pro-angiogenic properties of Purified Exosome Product (PEP)

Ao Shi, Mayo Clinic 

The session will be moderated by Kayla Bayless, Texas A&M University 

 

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3821322281504631809

Please note:  the mini-symposium will NOT be recorded.

Thanks to last month's presenters, Matthew Scott, Bandana Singh and Yoshito Yamashiro and our moderator, Magdalena Chrzanowska. The session was a resounding success!

We received several more submissions and will be building more sessions for you.  Check our web site for updates.

The Lab of Dr. Angela Glading
This month we are highlighting the lab of Dr. Angela Glading, who is an Associate Professor at the University of Rochester. Find out more about Dr. Glading's lab at https://www.navbo.org/membership/members-labs/913-lab042020.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme implicated as mediator of SARS-CoV-2 infection 

Yanan Cao and colleagues at the Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine in China discuss in Cell Discovery further explore angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) as a cellular receptor for the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2, suggested by previous studies that correlate ACE2 expression and the infection in vitro infection by the known coronavirus SARS-CoV. In their new letter, the authors report a systematic analysis of coding-region variants of ACE2 that may affect the expression of ACE2 in different populations. No direct evidence was identified supporting the existence of coronavirus binding-resistant ACE2 mutants, but Cao et al. suggest that further study of ACE2's roles in acute lung injury and lung function is warranted.

Research!America surveys reveal mixed bag of public views of science in the US 

Research!America has released results of their recent surveys that explore the views of Americans on medical, health, and scientific research. Responses revealed a sentiment favoring genetic research as important to improving family health and agreement that more donated organs and tissues will help researchers make medical and health breakthroughs. There was also marked support for federal investment in research to improve healthcare quality and safety. At the same time, however, confidence in the value and safety of vaccines has decreased. While we are living in a time when trust is being undermined and misinformation spread, the survey results affirm that Americans rank scientists high in credibility and view research as means of solving problems.

New guidance and resources for NIH research related to COVID-19 

The NIH has begun to mobilize resources, keep grantees apprised of relaxed policies, and invite grant submissions focused on various aspects of the coronavirus disease COVID-19. "Guidance for NIH-funded Clinical Trials and Human Subjects Studies Affected by COVID-19" (NOT- OD-20-087), issued on March 16, 2020, addresses potential measures to protect study participants and research staff. Guidance also addresses delays in research progress and unanticipated costs. "Availability of Administrative Supplements and Revision Supplements on Coronavirus Disease 2019" (NOT-HL-20-757) from the NHLBI promotes research objectives that include identification of existing cardiac, respiratory, or hematologic conditions that predispose persons to acquire SARS-CoV-2 or to develop severe COVID-19 disease.

• MDPI Cells is an open access journal with a current IF of 5.7
• Articles will be published immediately after acceptance
• Colleagues may be eligible for discounted publication charges (limited availability on a first come first serve basis; please send an email to Dr. Turowski)

 

The editors wish to be notified if you plan to submit a paper.

Patric Turowski - p.turowski@ucl.ac.uk