About Me:
- Professor and Chair
- West Virginia University
- Department of Neuroscience
Getting to Know Him:
If you are sitting on a plane with a stranger and a conversation starts up, how do you describe what you do for your job?
I’m a professor who studies biological timing, as individuals cannot do everything all at once or continuously. I study how individuals parse their physiology and behavior over the course of a day, as well as across the seasons.
Tell us about your path to academia.
My path to academia is typical in the sense that it is not ‘typical’. I grew up working on a farm in North East Ohio. During my last two years of high school, I worked in a turkey processing plant every night. I first attended a small college, Hiram College, that was 3 miles from my house, but I quit after a year. I continued to work nights, typically a 3:00 pm to 3:00 am shift at the abattoir, a schedule that turned out to be incompatible with success in college. Instead of college, I took a job as an autopsy diener at the Cleveland Clinic, where I learned a lot about anatomy. I worked there for about 18 months and conducted 106 post mortem exams. After a particularly disturbing post, a 3 year old girl who died from lead poisoning, I took a vacation to San Diego. Like everyone else, I was enchanted with the place. I did all the touristy things, including going the zoo on my last day. I decided that I should be living in San Diego and went to their HR to inquire about jobs. I was told there were no entry-level jobs available and indeed the only job posting they had was for someone to help conduct autopsies on the animals that died in the zoo. I told them that I was their guy and said I’d be back after giving my 2 week notice in Cleveland. Done. I showed up 2 weeks later and the curious HR person asked me whether I had received their letter—I said no. She told me that they had re-organized the position and now it was a work-study position for a student at UCSD. Being the Midwestern hick that I was, I asked, “what’s a UCSD”. They explained it was the newish shining academic light on the La Jolla mesa, so I applied to attend UCSD and was admitted. Of course, my income over the previous 2 years put me out of the running to receive work-study financial aid, so I never got the San Diego zoo gig, but found myself a psychology major at UCSD.
While working as a rat runner/lab assistant with Professor Tony Deutsch in studies of cholinergic mechanisms in learning and memory, I read an article assigned in my comparative psychology course written by Frank Beach at Yale entitled, “The Snark was a Boojum.” This 1950 article bemoaned the fact that American comparative psychology wasn’t particularly comparative in terms of species (70% of published studies were on rats) or approach (the vast majority of studies were on conditioning/learning paradigms). I discussed with Dr. Deutsch this paper, given his research animals were rats and his approach was definitely learning and memory. He knew Beach and said he could arrange for me to transfer to Berkeley to work with him. I didn’t know that Beach had moved to UC Berkeley from Yale several years ago, and in those days it was relatively easy to transfer among the UC schools, so I did. I transferred in my third year and ultimately worked in Beach’s beagle lab doing work with a postdoc on maternal hormonal effects on social behavior. I also worked for a grad student in Irv Zucker’s lab where I did my senior honors project. During my last term, I took a graduate seminar that Beach and Zucker led on hormones and behavior. Beach offered me a graduate fellowship to work in his lab and I did for about a year, but eventually I transferred to the Zucker lab where I finished my dissertation work. I currently work on how light at night disrupts circadian rhythms and how that affects physiology and function.
What do you think is the piece of your work that you are most well known for?
I had no idea so I looked at citations in Google Scholar. According to their database, my highest cited work is our research on aggression. A close second is our work on seasonal changes in immune function.
What is one piece of your work that you are most proud of?
I really like our current research, which explores the consequences of light at night disruption of circadian rhythms. We have new projects on the effects of light at night after a cardiac event (cardiac arrest or stroke, i.e., global or focal brain ischemia, respectively), as well as work on pancreatic cancer risk. The former work is being translated into ICUs at West Virginia University.
Is there is a piece of your work that you think doesn’t get enough attention?
Years ago, we published a paper showing that animals could be conditioned to suppress immune function and these animals had more chemically-induced tumors. I won an award from NCI for innovative cancer research, but I don’t think that paper has been cited 5 times. I never had a grad student who was interested in following up and eventually, I forgot about it.
Questions with a focus on student and postdoc issues
What are the biggest changes you have noticed in academia since you were a graduate student?
I had a blast as a graduate student, lots of fun. I don’t think current students have as much fun these days. I took seminars and was a teaching assistant all over the university as a graduate student. For example, Frank Pitelka and Paul Sherman taught a sociobiology course and Steve Pruitt-Jones and I were the teaching assistants. GC Williams did a sabbatical at Berkeley, and taught a seminar that was attended by grad students in zoology, psychology, and physiology, as well as faculty including Frank Beach, Steve Glickman, Irv, Zucker, Paul Sherman (Psych) and Roy Caldwell, Howard Bern, Harry Greene, George, David Wake, Marvalee Wake, Bill Lidicker, Jim Patton, and Paul Licht (Zoology). In front of these luminaries, another graduate student, Ed Heske, and I presented on the adaptive function of the Bruce effects in nature—we got a real grilling, but heady times. Ed and I conducted a field study and published a paper without our mentors on this topic. This is the most fun gig I can imagine, and preparing for this job by reading, thinking, and talking to smart people is great fun. We socialized with faculty and were always considered colleagues. I don’t see the joy in most current graduate students and that is sad. The joy of analyzing data and being the first person to know the truth, even a small truth is so much fun. We’ve lost something, I don’t know whether it is the funding situation, the lack of decent jobs, the increased competitiveness due to Malthusian population increase, but I think that is the biggest change.
How do you evaluate students that apply to your lab for graduate or postdoc positions? What types of characteristics do you look for in applicants?
I assume everyone with a college degree is smart, unless proven otherwise. I want people who are highly motivated. I prefer B+ students who love biology over an A student who is just looking to stay in school. I do not generally accept ‘failed’ premeds; i.e., folks who planned to go to med school, but didn’t get in and view a PhD as a ‘backup plan’. I bring in folks to interview who have good recs and solid research experience. I explain during the interview that I provide the space, equipment, tools, experimental ideas, and grant money for success, but I cannot provide motivation. They meet with the current lab members and if even one person vetoes the student, we do not pursue.
Our program requires rotations. There is a session where each faculty member discusses their research/lab. I stand up and say, “We study biological rhythms in our lab. There are 3 8-hour shifts in the Nelson lab and you are welcomed to work any two of them.” Then I sit down. I don’t get many takers and 16 hour days are rare, but highly motivated students are not deterred by the thought of long days.
How do you evaluate applicants that are applying for a postdoc or for others that are applying for a faculty position at your university?
I hope to see scientific productivity, cool ideas, some reasonable technical skills in their technique ‘tool-kit’, and during the interview I want to see that they are going to be a good colleague and like talking about their work.
Do you think there is an optimal size for your lab group, or optimal postdoc: grad student ratio?
My preference is for about 5-8 trainees in the lab. I prefer graduate students. I currently only have 3 first-year grad students, 2 techs and 2 research scientists in my new lab.
Some years ago there were two pieces written about ‘modest advice for graduate students’ by Steve Stearns and a response by Ray Huey. What do you think should be added to these advice letters for current graduate students?
I think this is a timeless article. However, I’m often confronted these days by issues of the work-life balance in grad students’ and postdocs’ lives—this was not mentioned per se in the Stearns and Huey papers. Personally, I think this issue has been illogically portrayed. That is, as usually framed, being at work robs one of life activities that energizes our life and possibly our work. The goal most of us are striving for is fulfillment and to flourish as a human being, both others’ and ours. This may be something akin to the old Aristotelian concept of eudaemonia. It is not just a happy or balanced life—though it may be happy—but a good life, one lived for worthy purposes and possibly uplifting to others. I may have to do work at home, sometimes it’s lots of work and yard work, but I also have a good life, both at work and at home. Having friends to the house or admiring the view with my wife through the trees that I trimmed is fulfilling. Joyless activities are interspersed with joyful activities both at home and at work. Going to countless committee meetings or slicing countless brains (n = 20 actually) is work, but even when I’m at work, I can have a very uplifting experience of helping students or colleagues that provide joy. I see this as worklife ‘integration’ and try to instill that perspective in my students.
General work issues that academics/scientists face
How do you work? What’s your daily schedule?
I just moved so my schedule is still in flux. I usually am up by 5:00 am. I read the NY Times and FB, then check emails and try to answer by 7:30 am. I then write until 8:30 am, usually work on a book or a current paper. Then I drive to work. I work on mostly joyless activities as soon as I arrive, such as paper reviews, conflict resolutions, writing agendas, etc. At 9:00 am my research assistant professor comes in with a daily progress report. Around 10:30-11:00 am I visit the lab and we usually have a 15 min ‘huddle’ just to check in with everyone. These are valuable to keep projects moving. The rest of the day is generally devoted to administrative duties.
How much time do you spend on research, teaching, mentoring, writing, and administrative duties? What would you like that breakdown to be?
Again, new to this gig so proportions change daily. My job is to set up and chair a new Department of Neuroscience, as well as direct the Neuroscience graduate program. I’m also helping to set up a new undergraduate neuroscience major. Finally, I am the director of research for the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. I only teach a couple of lectures per year and oversee a grad student seminar. Thus, my proportion of time dedicated to Research is ~20%, Teaching is ~5%, Mentoring is 10%, Writing is 15% and Admin is around 50%. As my lab grows and some of the programs that I oversee develop, I’d like to see that change to 30% research, 10% teaching, 20% mentoring, 10% writing, and 30% admin.
When do you write? Do you have any specific habits that have helped you become a prolific writer?
I generally write (or edit) early in the morning. I insist on writing an hour per day even if that only results in 1 sentence.
How do you keep multiple research projects organized at the same time?
I’m good at compartmentalizing, so it is generally no problem. Although the projects in the lab may seem unrelated, they are all related in my head.
This interview was conducted by Mena Davidson and Sarah Westrick on October 4th, 2018, and edited for clarity by Victoria Underhill on December 4th, 2019