Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Back from a needed break

I took a break because I took on two more students. Right now I am supervising four students (2 masters' and 2 undergraduates). Since I've embarked upon my PhD studies, I supervised a total of 6 students. A friend of mines who happens to have a Masters and PhD in physics from Princeton told me they are really working me to death since it is a big commitment to train students. He said they are getting their money's worth out of me. I told him that I prefer training students to doing the actual work myself, so I'm looking to take on more students.

Everyone here in the lab think that I'm crazy for taking on so many students while at the same time trying to complete my PhD requirements. The other students and the post docs asked me how do you manage? All of them told me that it slows them down tremendously to have to train someone else and they find that it is easier to do the work themselves. My response to them was that it indeed slows you down but only temporarily, after the students are trained, you in essence become so productive since you have more hands working on your project. I've managed to divide my project up so that each individual is working on their on mini-project. They've also said that they think I'm the most productive person in the lab. The good thing about training people is that you have increased your chances to get many manuscripts published in a reasonable amount of time since your name will be on the paper as a second, maybe even a first author to the Masters student and you will definitely be the first or primary author on the work that the undergraduate students are doing for you. I told them I'm in a win-win situation.

Northwestern has a policy that if you publish at least three manuscripts; you can graduate within a reasonable amount of time. When I say reasonable, I mean within a 5-year period. This is my fifth year and I'm trying very hard to finish by the end of the year. Everything is looking good. One of the graduate students I'm training is making very good progress. We will be analyzing an assay today and if that works, I have already designed enough experiments for him to do and we can start writing a paper by May. I've also designed other experiments that one of my undergraduates is anxious to assist me with them. If all goes well, I can start writing another manuscript at least by June.

Currently, I have two publications. I only need one more manuscript published and I'm eligible to graduate. Hopefully, I will be able to get at least 2 - 3 more, as it will look good on the resume...


Research Publications

1. Daniels CM, Wolverton E, Sprague S, and Ameer GA. (2005) Assessment of the stability of an immunoadsorbent for the extracorporeal removal of b2-microglobulin from blood. Blood Purification (scheduled to come out in the May issue).

2. Kang RS, Daniels CM, Francis SA, Shih SC, Salerno WJ, Hicke L, and Radhakrishnan I. (2003). Solution structure of a CUE-ubiquitin complex reveals a conserved mode of ubiquitin binding. Cell 113 (5):621-30.
http://www.cell.com/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS0092867403003623
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