Our mentorship philosophy

CMC Unit considers preparing the next generations of scientists, engineers, clinicians, etc as one of its core responsibilities to society as an academic unit. Thus, we would love to contribute to both aspects of this responsibility (training and mentoring the next generations).

Our mentorship is based on the following principles:

Adaptive supervision: We believe the flexibility of the mentors is a key strength. Undergraduate and PhD students (and even sometimes postdocs) perform their best under different forms of supervision. For instance, some prefer step-by-step guidelines, while others prefer long-term planning and way more freedom on a daily basis. Thus, the mentor and mentee should identify together the most suitable supervision method.

Scholarship beyond research: In our unit, mentors train mentees in every aspect of scholarship, not just research. This includes peer review: mentors involve mentees in the review process and teach them to criticize with kindness, following Daniel Dennett’s four steps for constructive criticism. It also includes open scholarship and reproducibility, which we treat as valuable contributions to science and society rather than mandatory boxes to check. These are just a few of the many practices the lab values in supervision.

Unit’s success is tied to the success of the mentees: One of the most important criteria for academic success should be based on judging the next generations they trained. This ranges from trivial matters, such as publishing papers, to joining good labs as graduate students and postdocs, to becoming mature scientists and establishing their own lab. The mentor should try her/his best to optimize mentees’ trajectory; thus, s/he needs to communicate in a timely manner and provide them with feedback (both positive and negative) frequently. Lastly, the mentor is also responsible for helping them to prepare for and plan the next stage of mentees’ career by providing them with timely hints on the critical actions they need to take according to their career stage.

Mental health: The mental health of the unit members should be one of the most important concerns of the mentor. Our unit PIs had the chance to be one of the ombudspersons at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics for four years and also PhD and postdoc representatives. These contributions taught them how critical it is to care about mental health in academia, and how severe the lack of accountability can affect students. Thus, it is the responsibility of the PI to take any action needed to maintain a healthy team. The principles mentioned above are some of the key contributing factors, and in addition to those, the following is also needed to maintain the mental health of the team: 1) Normalizing failure (e.g., rejection of a paper): we might frequently face such failures in our academic career. 2) Fostering teamwork and collaboration: not only because of the moral support it creates but also because it creates multiple sources of success for members of the unit. 3) Organization: to allow a smooth and stress-free workflow for all members.