Transitioning to Academia in India- Face to Face with Punit Prasad

Most of the graduate school training during PhD and postdoctoral tenure is focused on shaping the minds to tread the academic path. The trainees, therefore, always look forward to academia is their natural progression to move up the academic ivory tower. However, in today’s funding scenario the limited academic options are making PhDs re-think their career path. As scientists by training we are never expected to follow herd instinct, even when it comes to picking and choosing classical vs unconventional career options. You will find resonance in to this fact when you read Punit Prasad’s interview with Club SciWri. Punit recently transitioned from being a postdoc at Karolinska to a Faculty position at the Institute of Life Sciences (Bhubaneswar, India). But before deciding in favor of academia he did test the waters in industrial research, until he found his true calling in academia. Find out more about his planned roadmap to an academic career and start gearing-up early if you believe that academia is the place where you want to be!

1. How did you know it was time to move on from your postdoctoral fellowship to your first professional position?

There are several points that I considered when I thought of applying for a professional position:

1. Number of years into post doc: It should be 3 years and above such that your application gets some weightage. I gave my first talk for faculty position when I completed 3 years. At this point I was not expecting an offer but wanted to get exposure and experience on my future applications.
2. Number of first author paper(s): It is important to have atleast one first author paper from your post doc. I had one shared first author paper in ‘EMBO J’ when I started applying. However, at that time I did not have any paper on the area I was planning to work as an independent faculty. It was seen as a negative point as I was shifting from yeast model system to haematopoietic development. Showing preliminary data in your proposal or during the talk does not help much. The screening committee wants to see that you have proved yourself in the area you plan to work. Therefore, I spent a year and half more until I got my paper in ‘Blood J’ accepted for the publication. This atleast gave a better response to my application. Corresponding authorship does help significantly. I had one corresponding author publication, a review. I am not sure if it helped but certainly is a big boost to your application.
3. Area of research: I also learned that I have to differentiate between my future and my post doctoral research. In an ideal situation one has to have different aspects of study to avoid any overlap/conflict with one’s post doc mentor. This is a very important aspect, which I was asked in all the places I interviewed. I was preparing for it from the beginning of my post doc and I was able to convince the selection committee for the same.
4. Other credentials: During my post doc I received several post doctoral grants as an independent investigator and was/is a co-supervisor of a MSc and a graduate student. I was also invited for platform presentation in reputed conferences. I think all these factors add value to the application. Personally, I think having independent grants added value to my application.

2. What was your motivation towards an academic career?

I have several years of experience working in a company before starting my graduate studies. Therefore, I have got flavour of both industry and academics. I loved the freedom of doing science in academia. Through years of experience, I developed concepts and hypothesis to work in the field of chromatin biology and I got inclined to do more basic science. In short, freedom of doing science of my choice is my biggest motivation.

3. What do you enjoy about being a professor?

Good question!! It’s been few months in my new position at Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India and currently it is not fun. I have to learn the administrative processes in every small aspect. It takes enormous amount of time, leaving little opportunity to do science in the beginning. However, I believe it is a passing phase and soon I will get back to the bench. The excitement will be to train the students and do good science.

4. How did your postdoc training make you competitive for an academic position?

I believe that the training starts from PhD and then continues in your postdoc. Few point that I would like to address regarding this:

1. Research Projects: I was given full freedom to carry out research within the lab’s overall theme. Apart from my mentor, Prof. K. Ekwall’s interest in understating mechanistic details of chromatin remodelling in fission yeast, I could also initiate my work on understating the role of chromatin remodelling complexes in blood cell development. This gave me ‘space and time’ to develop the research area of my interest which I could carry out further as an independent faculty.
2. Grants: Writing and obtaining successful grants is very important. I strongly suggest that one should keep writing grants even if they are not successful. I got good training during my PhD with Prof. Blaine Bartholomew, where he allowed me to write my project for the NIH grant. It was a great experience and his training helped significantly.
3. Courses and workshops: Karolinska Institutet (KI) organises several courses/workshops and open discussion forums for leadership, mentoring, grant writing, lab safety, etc. I have attended some of them and have found them useful.
4. Student training: I have supervised Master projects and am a co-supervisor of a PhD student at KI. This was a good experience for me as it ‘tuned’ me to handle students, their projects and other professional issues.

5. What advice do you have for postdocs to make best use of their time?

I have already mentioned several points in response to previous questions. My advice is to follow it from the start of Postdoc as it takes time to acquire above mentioned qualifications, which not only gives you confidence but also makes your CV attractive.

6. Can you briefly describe your plans about the size and mentorship style of your laboratory?

The size of my laboratory is dependent on number of grants I would acquire. To begin with I would like to have couple of PhD students and a laboratory technician to kick start some projects that are promising. However, when I receive successful project grants, I would like to have one/two post doctoral fellows depending on the grant money. Interested postdocs with fellowship can also join my lab. The advantage of having postdocs is that they will not need basic training and can get going with the projects. Since my projects require significant bioinoformatics, I would need a person as a JRF/PhD/Postdoc with some kind of training in programming and statistical analysis. With this size group I plan to get going for a couple of years before I take any more student.

7. Do you have teaching responsibilities?

Teaching responsibilities are bare minimum and therefore I can spend almost 100% of my time in research.

8. Were there any specific resources such as the Office of Postdoctoral Education that you utilized to help you transition into an independent position?

No, there were no office of postdoctoral education in Karolinska Institutet to groom me for an independent position. However, as I mentioned before, Karolinska Institutet organizes general courses about leadership and mentoring that partially helped me for the future.

9. Do you have any advice for postdocs about grant writing and successfully obtaining funding?

I have few points to mention:

• The goals of the projects should be clear and focussed. Vagueness is a definite let down.
• If there are several goals, they should not be totally dependent on each other. This ensures that if one plan fails, there are backup plans to pull through the overall project.
• Grants should have defined sections like purpose, hypothesis, specific aims, background, project design, preliminary results and significance of research. Hypothesis should be backed up by previous literature and /or preliminary results. This lends credibility to the proposal. It is also important to discuss caveats of the proposed projects and alternative strategies to circumvent them, if any.
• The writing should be clear, precise and concise. Succicnt, jargon free write-ups are always appreciated.
• If possible, do get your grant reviewed by another scientist.

10. Do you have any advice for postdocs making the transition to an independent career?

Be patient and persevering. If applying to India, be prepared for long waits to get any response. Also keep in mind that there is an unsaid age rule of 35 years or less during the time of application in most Indian institutes. While stellar applications may be exempted from this rule, most applications may get weighed down by this factor if competition is high and the institute chooses to exercise this rule. Therefore, prepare your applications in advance to avoid falling in this category. I also recommend attending YIMs in India to increase one’s productive network and get to know inside information of institutes that are hiring at the moment. Heads of granting agencies also attend YIMs and one should also run by their future proposals by them, if possible, to get inputs on how to improve the proposal.

11. What suggestions do you have for CSG to improve the postdoctoral networking experience?

CSG is already doing an excellent job in promoting post doctoral network globally in various disciplines. It is also providing valuable information about available positions in academia and industry, grant writing, mentoring, alternate careers, etc. Currently I do not have any more suggestions for CSG other than to keep up the good work. Thank you and wish you the very best!!

Punit Prasad was interveiwed by Abhinav Dey. Abhinav is a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University and a Young Investigator Awardee from Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation for Childhood Cancer. He is also the co-founder of PhD Career Support Group (CSG) for Science PhDs and ClubSciWri

(https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavdey)

This work by ClubSciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.