- [Brad Grueter] There's definitely different
levels of collaboration.
And really what I'm
learning, the biggest thing
is manpower to be able to collaborate,
especially with graduate students.
I had, there are those
cherry on top experiments,
where somebody would come to me and say,
hey, we've got this one final question,
and you've got the expertise
to answer that question.
You know, like one panel is a figure.
And those are often easy decisions to make
if I have, you know, the
students or the post-docs
are able to do that.
And those are almost always a yes.
(soothing music)

- [Thi Nguyen] I'm Thi Nguyen for Strategy4Scientists
at the University of
California, San Francisco.
In this podcast, I talk to Brad Grueter,
an assistant professor
at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
His research focuses
on how the brain adapts
to drive for warlike behaviors.
And a primary technique used
in his lab is electrophysiology
As you can imagine, he's
engaged in several types
of collaborations,
internally and externally.
And in his first four years,
he's been awarded an R01.
I thought he was a great person to talk to
about strategic collaborations.
To start the interview, I asked Brad what
factors into his
decision-making when taking
on a postdoc.

- [Brad] An ideal
world would just be based on
their skill set. But the
reality is that these
early stages I'm looking
at: are they eager to learn?
Because as a new assistant
professor, well... relatively
new assistant professor,
what I've found is that
you're not going to find
that perfect candidate
to fit that perfect
role. I took on a postdoc
not too long ago and it
turned out to be awesome.
She did in vitro electrophysiology,
which is very different.
The work we do in the lab is
spliced electrophysiology.
So ex vivo electrophysiology.
And it sounds similar, but
it's actually really different.
But she wanted to learn the components of
ex vivo electrophysiology
and so I brought her into
the lab and there was a
six-month learning curve.
You know, with a postdoc,
you kind of want to
hit the ground running. But like I said,
it took her about six months to do that.
But once she did, it was fantastic.
She had a systems
approach to what I call a
molecular lab, a molecular question.
And it was really able to
open my eyes to actually
approaching this from
her perspective in the
systems level, in addition
to the molecular level.
So she was able to contribute
a lot to that process as well.

- [Thi] One of
Brad's approaches is taking
on a postdoc who can bring a
new perspective to the lab.
I asked Brad about another phase.
When a postdoc is serving
her, his, or their own lab,
what does the conversation
sound like when they're
discussing who works on the project?
Does the postdoc take
it, make it their own?
Does it stay in his lab?
I asked Brad's approach to this
new role and collaboration.

- [Brad] We're
finishing off a few papers that
she's got. For example, a
few manuscripts that we're
going to wrap up and move out.
We don't have any specific
collaboration set-up,
but the questions are still there.
She's still is starting to get going.
But these early stages,
you don't really want to
collaborate too much
with your foreign mentor.
Because you've got to build on your own.

- [Thi Nguyen] Brad mentioned
that the primary technical
skill his lab uses is electrophysiology.
He is invited to collaborate a lot.
So, I asked how he
approaches those requests
and how he decides with
whom to collaborate.

- [Brad] Still learning
on that curve, (laughs)
that is a steep curve.
So, recently I've been
asked more and more to
collaborate on R01s.
Where we get, you know,
5% effort or 10% effort.
And those are really
the ones that I have to
really start to think
about. I was recently asked
to be a collaborator an R01.
They requested 10% effort
on my part. And as I dug deeper into that
research proposal, it was
more like a 50% effort
type effect. And ultimately,
I can't devote 50%
of my effort to something
that's not directly in-line
with my interests. It
overlaps, but it's not
going to benefit me to the level of 50%.
So, not only is it my
commitment, but it's also
the commitment of my
trainees because the reality
is, you know, this could
be this postdoc that
is collecting that data.
And if I can't get them
interested in it, you know,
I can't collect that data
anymore. I sit behind a
desk now. I have to get
them interested in it as well.
Everybody has beautiful
questions, you know,
there's all kinds of beautiful questions.
And you'd like to be
able to help everybody
out. But what I've
learned recently is it's
more about, again,
re-focusing on mentorship.
And what does that get for
my students too. You know,
does the student in the
postdoc, does the middle
authorship help them? Is it beneficial for
future, for long-term collaborations?
Or is this a short-term collaboration?
The short-term collaborations
where, like I said, there's
a figure to, those are
fruitful as far as I've found.
The long-term collaborations
you've really got to
be devoted to it. It's got
to have a student that's
really interested in it,
or a trainee I should say,
or it's going to fall apart.

- [Thi] So, for Brad,
two factors he considers
when making a decision
on collaborations are:
interest, student and postdoc power.
I asked him what other
metrics he uses to predict
whether a project might be successful.

- [Brad] Really,
deciding what's a good project
or what's not a good
project. So I look for a past
history of their collaborative efforts,
does it align with my interests?
For instance, I've got this
uh, I've always been interested
in structural proteins and
the post-synaptic density.
But I'm not a molecular
biologist and in order to
look at these types of
proteins, I really need
to collaborate with the
molecular biologists.
And, so they have these
complimentary approaches
that make, they don't
necessarily do physiology
like I do, and so, they
need me, I need them,
type of collaboration.
So I wouldn't necessarily
collaborate with someone who does, like,
physiology, for example,
that wouldn't be fruitful.
They can do what I can do,
but if I can collaborate
with a molecular biologist
who makes transgenic mice
and characterizes their
behaviors, for example,
that's turned out to be a
beautiful collaboration.
And a very easy collaboration
to parse out ownership
to, there's no fuzzy
lines in the ownership.
The collaborator does this, so I do that.
So that has been really,
the best collaborations I've
had so far have really looked at that.

- [Thi] To have a
symbiotic collaboration,
Brad considers his own labs' strengths and
capabilities, and the
collaborator's strengths,
and also how they can
proceed and benefit mutually.
I then asked Brad to give us an example of
a beautiful scientific relationship.

- [Brad] So Rob
Malenka was my post-doctor
mentor out of Stanford.
And he surrounded himself
with some fantastic scientists
and most recently he
collaborates with Tom Südhof;
officially, they share lab space.
And so, Rob uses the models
that Tom has developed
all his pre-synaptic
protein models to study
post-synaptic manipulations.
And it's just been a
beautiful relationship
as far as science goes. And
that's one of the things
that I like to, I see how
they complement each other
as far as science goes.
And I try to model my
future based on their successes.

- [Thi] Brad also
shares advice that he
would give to a new junior
faculty starting out:
About one, how to be
strategic about spending
the start-up funding. And two,
about suggestions for hiring.
First though, he talks about
how and where to invest
the start-up.

- [Brad] I don't
remember who it was that
told me this. But, uh,
early on I was told,
before, when I was working on my budget.
It's not, the equipment
doesn't collect data,
people collect data. So,
I was told you can have
one piece of equipment
and run it 24/7 and have
three shifts if you want
to. But it's hands that
actually collect the data.
With that in mind I tried
to focus my resources
towards a couple postdocs
and multiple students,
more towards man power.
Then I built up the equipment
as the years went on.
But I also, one thing that made it,
helped me make the decision
about the equipment
was that our 00 has a cap of direct-in
and direct-costs, it's
different than other types
of ours. For example,
it's capped at $249,000.
And one of the things that I learned
right-off-the-bat is that
I can buy more equipment
and there is no indirect
cost for that equipment.
So I can take that
$249,000 and stretch the
indirect component, or shrink
the indirect component,
by charging all the equipment to that R00
and charging the salaries to my start-up.
So that stretched that money a little bit.
And then, also another decision is,
a lot of people that I've
talked to over the years,
they want to hold onto
that start-up money.
And I get some great advice from my
grad school mentor Danny
Windor, and he told me,
he's like you know that
call it start-up money
for a reason. There's no such thing as
finish-up money. That
money is out there to get
you rolling. You get
going, you get going fast,
because it's a very
competitive field and you
want to collect as much data
and get as many publications out
as soon as possible to make
your impact in the field
and to develop your niche.
So that way you can,
when you go to apply for
those R01s that you've
got the publication record,
you've got the track record
and that's what that money is there for.
You can always ask for more money later.

- [Thi] And now Brad shares about
how he handles the personnel
part when starting out.

- [Brad] Really,
it's getting the right people
in so that you develop a lab memory,
so that you get the students to learn,
once the students learn these techniques
and how things roll.
Then I have more time to
devote now, behind the
desk writing grants,
writing manuscripts while
they're out there collecting data
and they're developing
new questions and then,
it's just propagating itself.
So, really it's an
investing in the individuals
that you're training. The
more you invest into them,
the bigger they payout is,
the exponential payout.
Because, like I said,
they propagate that to
the next student and the next trainee,
then the next postdoc and
it just grows from there.
And it's been a wonderful
experience watching
that growth as well. It's
very rewarding watching
those students learn and
watching that information
propagate from student to student.
They've taught me a lot by doing that.

- [Thi] It was
really refreshing to hear
Brad share that his priority are his
graduate students and postdocs.
So then I actually had one
last question for Brad.
Whenever he told his lab
that there was one rig
and they were going to have three shifts,
how did they do it?
Did he nominate someone
to work the night shift?

- [Brad] (laughter)
Well, the sad part was that was
me. (laughter) So I work that late shift
and it turned out that they're naïve,
as I was. So they're "okay,
everything sounds great"
and that night shift turned
into, that three shifts
turned into, an early morning
shift, an afternoon shift,
and then the late-evening shift.
So, we weren't exactly
burning 24-hours, but it
was a good 18-hour day, as
far as that rig was going.
And I will share that,
that was short-lived for
my time on that rig. (laughter)
But, you know, they saw the data coming in
and they were able to share just fine
and they coordinated with each other and
some days they needed, they'd have all day
to collect that data.
And, so, on many days
they'd share within a
day, but also they'd share
based on the transgenic
mouse availability.
They'd have days off so the
postdoc could work all day,
for example, while the
student studied for instance.
So, it turned out to be,
kind of forcing people
to interact with each
other. At that level, they
trained each other as well.
So, it worked. The personalities worked,
that was a good part.

- [Thi] We laughed
about how it helped
the students and postdocs to
see him get his hands dirty.
I hope you enjoyed listening
to Brad share stories
about how he approaches his
collaborations strategically
and how he considers ways
that the collaboration
not only benefits his
personal research and
and career interests, but also
how it benefits the people in his lab.
Thank you for listening
to SStrategy4Scientists.
Interested in learning
more? Check out the online
lectures co-produced by iBiology
of UCSF Office of Career and
Professional Development.
We'd like to thank the
Burroughs Wellcome Fund
and the NIH National Institute
of General Medical Sciences
or NIGMS for grant funding. Thanks also to
PRX Podcast Garage in
Boston for the studio space
and helping us to get
started with this production.
Tune in for more stories about
scientists using strategy.