One of the most rewarding aspects of my job as a faculty member is training the next generation of scientists in my laboratory and in the classroom. Since starting my independent laboratory in 2009, I have mentored postdocs, graduate students, undergraduate students, and summer high school students. In addition, I have also been rewarded with the opportunity to mentor ~40 other graduate students by serving as the Neuroscience Theme Director of the Graduate Biomedical Sciences (GBS) program from 2016-2021. I have served on their thesis committees for many of these students. Throughout my career and training, I have realized the importance of obtaining extramural funding. As a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow, I was granted individual F31 and F32 awards as well as a position on a postdoctoral T32 training grant. Finally, I completed my training with one of the first cycles of NIH K99/R00 awards. Together, these experiences have taught me the necessary building blocks for a successful training program. My graduate trainees have successfully received F31 applications. In the classroom, I have served as the course director for the Neuroscience Graduate Student Summer Seminar Series and currently direct the Introduction to Biostatistics and the Circadian Clocks Journal Club. In addition, I was invited to lead two workshops on for Trainee Day at the 2012 Society for Research in Biological Rhythms (SRBR) meeting. After this rewarding experience, I served as the Professional Development Day director for the 2014 and 2016 SRBR meetings. In 2014, I served as one of the invited instructors for the International Chronobiology Summer School, where I directed workshops on “Clock control of excitability” and “Statistical Analysis of Rhythmic Data.”
