That's what my PhD advisor of five and a half years, Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri, would tell us — graduate students and postdocs working in his laboratory at Scripps. "I'm just a cheerleader" was his humorous way of saying that we were the ones pushing research forward, while he was there to encourage and motivate. And that he did. The interesting part is how.
Professor Reza Ghadiri himself probably did not expect any of the following to come out in the open, and become readily accessible to a worldwide audience. Let alone have a website like this pop up every time someone types Reza Ghadiri in Google. What can I say? Welcome to the Information Age!
This post is composed of tiny little chapters. (Should we say, nano-chapters?) There are eleven of them here already, I can think of a few more that I might append in the future.
CONTENTS so far (click to jump):
1. "I care about my students"
Even before I joined the lab, Reza Ghadiri proclaimed himself as a caring PhD advisor. He made a good impression on me when I first met him. Very amiable guy, smart, approachable and enthusiastic. He said he cared about his students. That's why, he said, he only had a few — so he could take better care of them. When I joined the lab in August 2003, there were four other PhD students already there. Of the five of us, only two ended up choosing to remain in Dr. Ghadiri's "care" long enough to get PhD diplomas. One quit graduate school altogether (that's me). Two switched labs in their second or third years (read a comment from one them).
2. The Great Grant Scare
Research projects I worked on in the Ghadiri group were funded by an NIH grant (R01GM067170, Design Of Intrasterically Regulated Chimeric Enzymes). The grant was for a total of $1.35 million, spread over four years, Jan 2003 — Dec 2006. All Reza had to do was submit a progress report to NIH once a year, and another $300K+ was added to the lab's budget. A standard procedure, not a competitive process, no peer review involved. In other words, something very difficult to screw up. Except, of course, I didn't exactly know all of this back then. And Reza used my ignorance for motivational purposes.
Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri would say that we (myself and two other guys) had to work extra hard, because he needed to "renew" the grant. According to him, we needed lots of good results and, hopefully, publications asap, or else the funding could be lost. When Reza talked about this, you could see the seriousness in his face and hear the composed concern in his voice. From what he said however, it was never really clear what the exact deadline for this "grant renewal" was. It was always "soon". Whenever I thought the time was up, it was as if Reza magically procured four or six more months for us to prove ourselves.
This grant talk went on for years. In 2005, Ghadiri pressed me to prepare the drafts of two papers I finished collecting experimental data for. He said something about the grant renewal deadline approaching again. He seemed pretty enthusiastic about the results I obtained, awarding me with his usual epithets of approval like "excellent" and "fantastic". At that time, I actually thought I might avoid the curse of JRD. I didn't, but Reza really had me going for a while.
Needless to say, Prof. Reza Ghadiri got all that grant money just fine, even with 0 (that's right, zero) publications in four years. As far as I know, the only paper to officially come out as a result of that $1.35 mil so far was the one published in late 2007 in Angewandte. NIH RePORTER and PubMed confirm this (the 2003 paper can be ignored as it contains results described in the original grant application). So... a 1.35-million-dollar paper, anyone?
3. Reza talks about happiness
Do you know that old Bill Cosby's show, Kids Say The Darndest Things? They should make one with profs instead of kids. Then Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri could star in it.
I think it was my second year in the lab, I was in Reza's office for a one-on-one meeting. We were discussing research, Reza might have asked how I was doing, I probably said I was fine — the usual. But then, out of nowhere, he paused, looked at me and said, thoughtfully: "You know, Andrei, happiness is not the most important thing..." I had to do a double take in my head to make sure I heard him right. Reza must have noticed my raised eyebrows. He cautiously began to explain something about working hard and getting good results in the lab. Of course, I knew where that bullshit train was rolling. So I jumped to say: "Oh, um, but I thought, getting good results in the lab was something that could make one happy".
And with that, the happiness lecture ended. Nice try though, Reza.
4. Crime and Punishment
It happened during my second year at Scripps and in the Ghadiri lab. Reza was acting so worried and concerned as if I nearly killed somebody and was going to jail for life. No, but I did get reported by Scripps sysadmins for running a BitTorrent application on my laboratory laptop. I had been doing it for several months, and probably managed to go through about 40 Gigs of bandwidth, give or take. I was not downloading anything illegal, but still, Scripps policy was for the internet connections to be used for work-related purposes only.
Prof. Reza Ghadiri told me it was very good I was not denying anything. The thought of lying about it never even crossed my mind. But the expression on Ghadiri's face was like that of a caring lawyer who just secured a way to shave five years off his favorite client's jail sentence. He said that I should not worry about it too much (as if I was going to worry at all), focus on my work instead, but that the dean will want to talk to me. I was puzzled by the amount of drama, but I had to shrug my shoulders and go on with my daily business, unfazed.
Some number of days later, Ghadiri called me into his office again. This time he said that my bandwidth usage had cost Scripps thousands of dollars. I resisted commenting on just how ridiculous that claim really was, but said that Scripps could take whatever I owed out of my salary. I was beginning to get somewhat annoyed.
Reza's tone softened as he went on tell me that I would not have to meet with the dean after all. Which made me neither happy nor unhappy, but at least it made sense (I imagined a dean would have had better things to do). What Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri said next, however, clued me in on what the whole tempest in a teapot was really about.
Reza said that he vouched for me and told the dean that I was a good, hard-working student. By the looks of it, I was probably supposed to think that he saved my behind from impending doom. Instead, I thanked him politely, and asked how my being hard-working or not was at all relevant in this case. His didn't quite answer my question. In a caring and trust-inspiring voice, he suggested that now I needed to work very hard in the lab, and try my best to get really good results, so that "everyone would forget what happened".
Trying to make a big deal out of my little crime just to scare me into working more? Oh Em Gee, Reza! Good times...
"Working hard?"
I don't know if Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri realizes this, but he might be the inventor of an awesome new greeting in the English language. PIs take note: it is especially practical in communicating with your students and postdocs. So, forget "Hello", "How are you?", "How's it going?" and meet... "Working hard?"
It is meant to be said nicely, just like Reza always said it, the same way good friends say hello to each other. To be fair and precise, Reza did not always use it instead of "Hello" or "How are you?". In fact, "Working hard?" is just as good when used in combination with conventional greetings.
Hello, reader. How are you doing? Working hard?
How great is that! But wait, there is more. Want the goodbye version to complete the set? It's "Work hard". Just remove the question mark and make it an imperative. Dr. Ghadiri would say it after a brief conversation in the lab or a meeting in his office. It is similar to "talk to you later" or "see you around", but incomparably more energizing.
To students and postdocs: in case you are wondering, the correct responses to "Working hard?" and "Work hard" from your PI are "Paying much?" and "Pay more". Just kidding, don't say that.
Well, that's it for now, folks. Work hard!
Immigrant labor
Dr. Ghadiri had countless reasons to offer to his PhD students on why they needed to work really hard. Some of his motivational "advice" was quite general, some was very personal. Some was tailored to specific kinds of students and situations.
One example of the latter concerned non-American PhD students. Reza had a candid revelation in store for them, including even Canadians. In private, he would tell those students that they had to work harder simply because they were foreigners. Because, according to Reza, not being a local was a significant competitive disadvantage for those who wanted a science career in the United States.
That's what he said, to at least two different students that I know of. Does Iranian-born TSRI professor Reza Ghadiri actually believe that himself? Who knows. But I'll bet he wants his foreign PhD students to believe it 100%.
Words, words, words
"I like you, Andrei"
"I want you to have papers in your second year"
"We need to get your name out there"
"I want you to start making a name for yourself"
These are some of the things Reza would say to me. I'm quoting from memory, but I'm pretty sure I have it all word for word. Simply because Dr. Ghadiri repeated himself a number of times over the course of the years and my conversations with him.
I can't say I've ever been perfectly accustomed to hearing "I like you" from another guy. So that was a little strange, especially in the beginning. We didn't exactly hang out. But that was nice to hear. And I am not being sarcastic: all else equal, a verbally supportive PhD advisor is better than a verbally abusive one. How often he sends you flowers or publishes your papers is another matter entirely.
A quiet scandal
Of course, Prof. M. Reza Ghadiri was being coy when he said he was just a cheerleader. To continue with the sports analogy, he was also club president, team manager and the referee.
Two Ghadiri lab members, a graduate student and a postdoc, worked on a project together. They eventually diverged, because Reza said he wanted the student to work on something of his own. The postdoc carried the project into the final stages. So when the paper was published in 2007, he was expected to be listed as the first author. What came as a surprise to many, including myself, was that the student's name wasn't in the author list at all.
The publication in question is the same 2007 Angewandte paper I mentioned twice before. It's the same paper that was reportedly sent to Science first, and the only paper to come out of a $1.35 million grant. It was also the only paper that the postdoc got out of 3.5 years in the Ghadiri lab. And I'm sure it was nice for him to be not just the first, but the only author on the paper (besides Reza as the principal investigator). Just like as if he had managed to do all the work by himself. The truth, however, is that a lot of the work was done by someone else. Less than a half, perhaps, but no less than a third of lab work by my judgment. I know because I was the closest to where both of the guys worked. In fact, the three of us were a subgroup within the Ghadiri group, our desks next to one another, sharing the same lab benches and equipment, working on closely related things.
The name of the postdoc in this story is Nathan Gianneschi. He did his PhD with Prof. Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University. Drs. Chad A. Mirkin and M. Reza Ghadiri are colleagues — and friends. Dr. Ghadiri sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of a journal called Small, where Dr. Mirkin is chairman. Reza is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Nanosphere, Inc. (NASDAQ stock symbol: NSPH), which Dr. Mirkin co-founded in 2000.
In 2008, Dr. Nathan C. Gianneschi was offered a tenure-track position of Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego (Nathan's faculty profile at UCSD is here). Who knows just how much screwing a student out of a publication and getting all the credit for collective work helped in that regard. But, you know, I'm pretty sure it didn't hurt.
Glimpses of the true colors
Besides Dr. Ghadiri himself as the PhD advisor, my thesis committee was originally composed of Floyd Romesberg, Gerald Joyce and Chi-Huey Wong. Romesberg and Joyce were my own choice. Reza reacted by saying they were "tough", like it was something I needed to worry about. Wong was his recommendation. During the first meeting, a.k.a. the PhD candidacy exam, the guy was so quiet he hardly said two words. From my perspective, he was useless. Reza, on the other hand, must have liked him there. Too bad, because I was able to swap Chi-Huey Wong for Pete Schultz the following year.
Going to PhD committee meetings with Reza Ghadiri turned out to be quite interesting. Reza, normally composed and relaxed, became visibly tense, nervous and on edge. Ironically, I found Romesberg, Joyce and Schultz easy to deal with. Ghadiri was the one who got really "tough" on me. "Tough" is the wrong word. He was a pain in the ass.
Like a pesky back-seat driver, he was interrupting my presentation, getting annoyed, telling me to flip through slides faster, voicing dubious comments which began with "If one does this experiment properly..." (implying I didn't), jumping to scold and label me as "defensive" simply for addressing criticism. All of a sudden, Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri seemed a lot less like a cheerleader, and more like someone who could throw you under the bus if it helped him look better.
Mandatory bonding
On the Sunday of July 9th, 2006, the Olympiastadion in Berlin, Germany, hosted the 18th FIFA World Cup final between Italy and France. At the same time, across the globe, Prof. M. Reza Ghadiri's house and backyard in Del Mar, California, hosted the annual Ghadiri group get-together.
Not only did Reza insist on that specific date, he also insisted on perfect attendance. In two previous years I had successfully managed to take a pass on a couple of lab picnics. This time, however, Reza approached me personally and demanded, albeit politely, that I be there. Jah only knew what the big deal was, but apparently it was no longer optional.
Well, it wasn't too bad. Reza did allow us to watch the game, even though I would have much preferred to enjoy it in a pub with some friends instead of my boss's kitchen with my boss. And then, after the match, I could have still made it to his place well in time for most of the eating, sitting around, contrived conversations and veiled boredom. One postdoc actually dared to do just that, and was promptly reproached by Ghadiri upon her belated arrival. I suppose back then Reza didn't know she was to become Prof. Phil Baran's wife, otherwise he might have chosen to keep his managerial displeasure to himself.
"It's not rocket science"
That's another phrase Reza Ghadiri seemed to like throwing around in an upbeat and supposedly encouraging manner. Many a planned experiment, procedure, task or part of a project was easy and not "rocket science" according to Reza. To be sure, Ghadiri lab doesn't do any aerospace engineering. But what a nice way to put someone under a bit pressure to get the job done!
Unfortunately, pressure sometimes backfires. One postdoc in the lab was quietly "let go" without recommendation letters for his attempts to falsify experimental data. The guy, allegedly, faked analytical HPLC traces by adding compounds from the bottle in order to produce the appearance of successful reactions. The project was a failure, his work did not produce the desired results. In a desperate and risky move, he decided to try and "live up to the expectations" anyway. He got caught thanks to an observant lab member. Ghadiri was lucky, as he came pretty close to publishing a fraudulent paper. He and the postdoc were already working on the manuscript.
comments for this post
I've been a student of science for over 10 years. Most of that time I worked in academic research labs. The last and the longest time – in the laboratory of Dr. 
"When I joined the lab in August 2003, there were four other PhD students already there. Of the five of us, only two ended up choosing to remain in Dr. Ghadiri’s care long enough to get PhD diplomas. Two switched labs in their second or third years. One quit graduate school altogether."
Does Reza's lab represent the graduate student turnover typical in academic labs?
"Let alone have a website like this pop up every time someone types Reza Ghadiri in Google. What can I say? Welcome to the Information Age, Reza! :)" He also has a wikipedia page...
1) 60% of students changing advisor or quitting is higher than average, I think (at least it was at Scripps).
2) Lots of profs have wikipedia pages. Very few (if any) expect their PhD students to blow the lid off things they do and say in the comfort of their own labs and offices.
Many profs seem to initiate their own wikipedia pages...proactive I guess.
I bet they task their secretaries with this. "Suzie, do that wikapedia thing for me, will you. And make sure it has all my honors and awards."
Wikipedia entries can be written by anyone about anyone. So that doesn't prove Reza knows that much.
Even the imaginary Yu-Gi-Oh character Yusei Fudo has one! I doubt he had much to do with it.
As far as typical turnover, it varies a lot. Some labs have extremely high turnover, like 90%. But 50% on average seems typical where I'm at. Lots of people are looking at the sixth years and people on their third post-doc and are deciding to leave on that reason alone.
Ghadiri is up to date on technology, he's got an iPhone and everything. It's just that I doubt he ever saw this coming. I mean, written about – and, essentially, judged – completely in the open. And he is the kind of person that, I suspect, googles himself once in a while. RezaGhadiri.net is already #3 and #4 for searches like "Reza Ghadiri" and "Ghadiri Lab". Somehow I don't think Reza is going to be thrilled if it jumps to #1. And all I did was start a little blog.
Definitely sounds like my PI. Always bitching about how there is barely enough money for everyday orders and how we can't update anything. Then he suddenly starts using the big chunks of money leftover to order random shit. It's retarded, takes a few years to catch on.
You gotta post this graphic on your blog from the NY Times, lol. Graduate school is a bigger scam than culinary school, lol.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/education/edlife/18phd-t.html?pagewanted=1&sq=long%20haul%20degree&st=cse&scp=1
Click on the part where the graphic is, a separate window will pop up with all the graphs.
That is just so fucking sad, professors just sit on their ass and fuck everyone over that comes in.
6.9 years for a PhD in life sciences, on average? Damn. Thanks for the link, good article. I definitely want to find and assemble some numbers and graphs.
Good luck with that. That's like shaking a finger at McDonald's for marketing junk food, and wishing it would publish Happy-Meal-induced child diabetes rates.
Andrei, you're coming at a time when graduate students in all disciplines are beginning to reach their maximum limits. You are catching this wave of realization. The NY Times article just touched the surface of the problems in graduate school. The sciences are beginning to join the humanities in the massive waste of time the PhD has become. I look at my lab right now. It's just pitiful. Graduate students here for six years now (some even more!!), with no job prospects. >90% regret it. People doing postdocs going on 3-5yrs minimum. Even when they do get a job, they get laid off in a year and sit around on unemployment or beg their spouse/family to support them. It's fucking pathetic.
No matter what any of these dumb shit PhD LOYALISTS says, you are telling the fucking truth. Someone needs to have the balls to say it, we need less cowards. The truth, it's incredibly ugly. Science has been hampered by graduate school, not enhanced by it. The smartest have turned away disgusted by it. Every time I walk into an instrument room and see a graduate student brag about how they worked 70hrs that week, I wanna punch them in the face. Get a fucking life people, realize this whole system is bullshit to get government money. The jobs are being shipped out. No one wants to pay you $100K/yr to run columns and PCR all fucking day. The science in academia is a charade. Would Nicolaou's synthesis of Maitotoxin really contribute anything? No, it'd be a fucking waste of money and people in graduate school. It has nothing to do with reality.
If I leave it, I still gotta pay for this shit with my taxes. I'll also have to start all over again, there just is not any demand for people of science. If I stay in, these professors continue to rob me of my youth. After investing so many years, it's hard to leave. Where the hell would I go? By the time most graduate students realize what I've realized, it's already too late, the amount of work that it would take to undue the damage is incredible.
Here is something from the comments of blog of a Major League Baseball pitcher :) :
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/04/26/maitotoxin_revisited.php#comments
I love those initials KCN, appropriate for chemist!
I'm hoping there's a wave. I want to see more people thinking and talking. That's the #1 goal of this website, basically.
It's pretty damn hard to leave grad school. But looking back, I'll say the barrier is 99% psychological. A bunch of unfounded fears. I don't know anyone who quit and was not happy about it. There are infinite ways to survive and much better opportunities to thrive on the outside. The real world is way more fun.
I see grad school as a boot camp of sorts. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. The critical thinking, analytical and organizational skills you develop (and take for granted) are invaluable in all kinds of intellectually-challenging situations, not just in science. Anyone who can handle grad school, can kick a lot of ass in the real world. The biggest obstacles, I think, are getting stuck in the "academic culture" mindset and remaining hung up on flawed expectations. (And I suspect that finishers of the PhD/postdoc marathon are at a higher risk of falling into this trap than quitters.) But if you manage to flush all the garbage out of your head, the question isn't really where you can go. It's where you want to go.
So where do people go after the quit grad school?
Someone posted this on Half Sigma's blog?
Here is something that I also like that is very funny:
Well, there is one advantage if you don't let grad school go to your head, and that is mobility, like I've said before on this blog. It allowed me the chance to live in a big and great American city for five years with a stable job. Albeit the income was rather low. And the last two years were 30-40 hour work weeks, but still the publications kept the boss happy. The rest of the time I focused on playing video games and on the girlfriend. I was really happy because of the last two factors, but the thought that I'm wasting the best years of my life was at the back of my head. Still, I can't really imagine a better way to spend the time if you're not sure what you want from life. It's drifting and it's pretty secure.
Now, I get to do a postdoc in a prestigious lab in a completely different country. I love the new culture and I love learning a new language (or two). This was the reason I got my Ph.D. I wanted the mobility to do my postdoc in an interesting place. My research is still really good, but I'm not that well organized, so I guess I can't be a PI. I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do after this postdoc is over though. But damn, it's so awesome now. Working a bit, getting results, then going out to the bar with friends who are from all over Europe. Going hiking or to the beach every single weekend... this place is way better than my former American city, for which I thought graduate school was a perfect excuse to live in. I should have come here at the beginning for the Ph.D (except, I would have not been trained well in organic synthesis, one of the reasons I can kick everyone's asses around here).
So a Ph.D means mobility. It can be a big plus if you're drifting and not too sure what you want to do in life. Think of a science Ph.D as a modern day version of Hemingway's 'Fiesta' or 'The Sun also Rises'. There he had American writers and journalists living in Paris and boozing it up everyday at cafes or going on fishing trips to Spain. Now it's scientists in Max Plank, Karolinska, or the Weizmann. If you're not taking advantage of the social life, you are dumb. I'm really starting to feel like I'm partially living in that book now. Last week was just too many parties and trips to the mountains... Shit, better sober up, run a column, and check if my latest JACS was published.
But yes, things do tend to reach a limit. As long as you don't end up with a femme fatale type like in 'Fiesta' or realize you're getting too old you'll be fine with the new 'research culture of the 21st century'. You've just got to embrace the lifestyle. I think I'm getting too old to not be thinking about the future or to not be thinking about starting a family (or finding someone to start a family with...)
I can relate, I was in it for pretty similar reasons. In a word, I wanted to explore. I moved around geographically, I changed fields a little bit. I was trying to understand where I wanted to be, what I liked, what I didn't like, and what I wanted to do. That's why I still value the experience. It got me where I wanted to be, helped me figure out things I was trying to figure out. Along the way I managed to pick up everything I needed to set out on my own. And then, when I was ready, I simply got out. So I can hardly complain. I'm happy with the way everything worked out (and couldn't care less about a PhD diploma, papers etc.). But it was tricky. Grad school is too much of a scam, it's easy to get screwed by taking things at face value. Not letting it mess with your head really is key.
what is even funnier about the this 'chemistry culture' aka slave labor - Woodward did his PhD in a year and EJ Corey did his in about two years. Now its about 6 years with insane hours - 15,000 hours according to prof. barry snyder at Brandeis - do the math - the other profs there refer to him as "the asshole".
@Andrei
How many other grants did the Ghadiri lab acquire during your period as a graduate student? Was that specific R01 grant you listed the only source of the Ghadiri lab's funding or he had other grants?
Andrei, I can't believe you were not listed as an author in any journal publication from the Ghadiri lab as you worked for him for more than five years although Ghadiri did acknowledge you in some of his publications as one who provided technical "assistance and helpful suggestions". I guess that is just another disincentive against one to consider attending grad school.
@anon
BTW, more people know about Yusei Fudo than Reza Ghadiri even though he is a fictional character since a bunch of Japanese people see him every week. Yusei' Fudo's popularity certainly eclipses Reza's population and notability. I am going to YouTube now to see the next subtitled episode of Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh! :)
@anon
I found this blog from a Google search engine query by typing "PhD glut" as I was looking for information about the employment prospects of high skilled labor in the current economic environment. I suppose that might somewhat be relevant to the New York Times link
Labs like Ghadiri's always have a bunch of grants at any given time, like 3-5, or 2 at the very least. And any given grant can go on for a number of years. Reza's peptide nanotube grant was 15 years long, for example. Started in 1995 and just ended last year. I know of one grant he got while I was there, that was in 2005, $800K a year for 5 years. The lab is not poor by any means, the overall budget is at least $1.2-1.5 million/year or so.
I'm not on any publications because Reza did not publish anything I've done, and also because he was against me working on other projects with other people. He really wanted me to focus on this one big project, which he figured I could do by myself, and did not allow me to get too much involved in anything else. Except for 3-4 small related side projects, which I've done and Ghadiri approved of – but in the end was always too "busy" to publish.
@ Andrei
About the Kids Say The Darndest Things idea. It should feature this quotation from Reza: “Welcome to the world of bullshit. There is much you can learn here.”
Oh, no, Reza himself never actually said anything about a world of BS. A caricature of him did (that MS Office assistant thing). I.e., it so appeared, that somebody thought Reza was full of shit and made fun of him that way.
Well, the quote from the Microsoft Office Reza is still hilarious though. I love it :) .
"40 Gigs of bandwidth?"
So you used 40 gigabytes (or bits) of bandwidth per second (or even minute)? Wow, that is an accusation I would immediately doubt because that is so much bandwidth.
You used it on bit-torrent, not on your other Russian website, right?
By "bandwidth use" I meant the overall amount data transferred, in gigabytes, via BitTorrent protocol. The fact is, even back in 2004 internet data transfer already cost cents per gigabyte. Reza should have known way better than even try to BS me about "thousands of dollars". Notably, he also went into the cautionary lecture mode on me about how he heard that people inadvertently p2p-shared tax forms with all their personal information on Kazaa. So it seemed like his problem was that he knew too little about this type of stuff, but assumed I knew even less.
How many people really care that Reza Ghadiri is a Searle scholar (except those in the academia status game.) I bet a lot more people could name a Cy Young winner off the top of their head than Searle Scholar (which to do justice to the honor is very prestigious).
True that. Most people don't know what Scripps is, even though it is supposedly #2 after Harvard in ratings for organic chemistry. (What's more, most people don't care about chemistry, lol.) In San Diego itself, if you tell someone you're doing PhD at Scripps, they'd go "Oh, so you're in Oceanography?", meaning Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
I started a topic on forum.thegradcafe.com: How does your PhD advisor motivate you?
Looks like the New Yorker is even taking a jab at the PhD joke.
http://laughingsquid.com/the-new-yorker-boomerang-generation-cover-by-daniel-clowes/
Good image for another post, lol.
Nice. I'm thinking I'll need to get a little gallery going here.
I enjoy the blog, generally don't see too many angry chemistry blogs. I'm planning on applying to graduate school at Scripps, so nice to have information, even if its not on the professors I would even consider.
Please don't tell me you too want to work for Phil Baran! Just kidding. Seems like a lot of chemistry students who go to Scripps do though. I've been wondering what I could write about Scripps that would be useful to new or potential students. So if you have any questions, ask away, I'll try my best to answer them. You probably already know that the application is free. I can tell you that if they invite you over for an "interview weekend", it means they want you. You have to go, but as long as you don't get totally wasted during the reception or decide to greet Nicolaou with a Nazi salute, they'll send you an acceptance letter afterwards.
Actually, yea Baran is one of my top choices (he is one of the top synthetic chemists). Good to know there will be many others also wanting to join his group. The great thing about Scripps though is the number of professors who are synthetically inclined, compared to other institutions.
The most valuable information would probably be like what you suggested before with the ratemyadvisor, but since that's not a reality, I can't really think of any good questions.
Phil Baran's first students at Scripps came from my class. I think he got five right away. Out of about 25 new chemistry students, more than any other Scripps professor that year (2003). And several more next year. Rumor was, some of the other organic chemistry profs were
jealousunhappy about it and wanted a limit for students per year per lab to be imposed.Baran taught half of a synthesis class I had to take. He is a bright, charismatic guy, full of energy. I liked his lectures. As much as I could like synthetic organic lectures anyway. I could definitely see why students would be drawn to him. And he is a top synthetic chemist, to be sure. How about those 35 (or whatever the exact number is) papers with KC Nicolaou? Or, perhaps, the real question is how having so many papers for your PhD is humanly possible. The rumor I heard about it at Scripps was that Nicolaou let Baran stay at his desk writing and editing papers, while countless other people did all the work in the lab. And then Baran would end up as co-author on this obscene amount of publications. Often second author after Nicolaou (because KC always puts his name first). Actually, the way I heard this was "Baran's never done a single experiment during his PhD", but that's probably an exaggeration. I doubt anyone would dare to ask him or KCN directly though.
Reza's lab is right across the hall from Phil Baran's. At times I worked early, sometimes I worked late into the night, but I'd always see light in that lab. People were working there pretty much 24/7. Sometimes, during the day, you'd catch sight of the Baran boys going to or from their workout sessions in a gym at Scripps Green Hospital, which is connected to the chemistry building. It was kind of funny, because Phil Baran himself was very buff, despite being a nerd like the rest of us. Run some columns, lift some weights, run more columns. What a philosophy! LOL. Sorry, devout synthetic organic chemists blow my mind. The only synthetic chem student in my class that I thought was normal/cool ended up leaving the Baran lab (he was actually one of those first five), spending some time in M.G. Finn's refugee camp, and then quitting Scripps altogether.
I wonder if Ghadiri still hangs out with Baran. Because at one point they started leaving the Beckman building together after work. And everybody in the lab started noticing Reza wearing t-shirts and shorts instead of the usual shirt, dress pants and belt. Even funnier, it appeared like Reza, too, was gaining some upper body muscle weight. And I guess that baseball cap he wore was also supposed to make him look younger, less bald and more hip, lol. And I mean that in a lighthearted way, it was pretty amusing.
If you visit the Baran lab, ask someone if it's true that Phil gave out "purple hearts" and if so, whether he still does that. A "purple heart" being some sort of a faux medal awarded to a Baran group member who works the day, the night, and the next day straight, without sleep.
You have amazing stories. Enjoying to read them.
What was on the baseball cap? Was it a San Diego Padres logo and did Reza (or any lab members) talk about sports at all when you were at his lab (just curious if sports are one Reza's non-academic interests)?
Are there really refugee camps in grad school? What are refugee camps like? And did that student from Finn's lab quit grad school altogether, or just Scripps?
I don't remember what was on the cap, I don't think it was a sports team logo though. We, lab members, talked about sports now and then. Reza didn't seem like an avid sports fan to me. He said he played soccer when he was young (and "wasn't very good, but scored a lot"). But then he didn't care too much for the FIFA World Cup final in 2006 (Italy-France, Zidane's last game) when he insisted on a lab get-together at his house on the same day. He did let us watch the game on his flatscreen, but was clearly not that into it himself.
I was referring to Finn's lab itself as a "refugee camp", metaphorically speaking. ) The thing is, M.G. Finn is one of the relatively few professors at Scripps whom synthetic organic chemistry students can turn to if they decide to leave some other lab. The general understanding being that the big guns like K.C. Nicolaou, Dale Boger etc. will have none of that. Those guys, they ain't messin' around. You either enlist on day one, or forget it, the door is closed.
The Baran/Finn student left with an MSc, and I don't think he ever came back to grad school. (Technically, Scripps does not have a Master's program, but they'll give you the degree if you quit the PhD program after three or more years.)
I am not that autistic where I take terms like "refugee camp" literally; I just wanted to know the metaphorical meaning of the term. BTW, I bet you think that the Master's degree you received from Scripps is worthless to you. .
Did anyone refer to Nicolaou, potassium cyanide, because of his initials?
BTW, for some fun, here is a wikipedia page on the MLB Derek Lowe that I vandalized before someone reverted it (look at "early years" and "personal life"):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Derek_Lowe&diff=364053758&oldid=364053551#cite_note-16
KCN — not that I've heard, no.
I don't have a Master's degree from Scripps. It's not automatic, you still have to write a thesis etc., it's a solid couple of months of work. Which I didn't do, because it wasn't worth my time. I didn't just think the diploma would be worthless, I knew it would be worthless. I could use it to decorate a wall or something, but I can think of nicer decorations.
I'm in a program where we have "refuge camps". I'm surprised that the term is used at other campuses, even scripps. Maybe it's just very appropriate. Where I'm at, it basically means a lab that you can fall back on when you can't stand your current lab or you get kicked out. This lab will give you a place to cool off, get your shit together and decided why the hell your here, all in a low pressure environment. Not every place has them, but at my campus, there are two well known labs where people fall back on in trying times. Getting a PhD from these labs can take a long time though and it's not recommended. These types of labs are not known for producing stellar graduates.
Are the refugee labs well-known within the graduate school among the grad students, or well-known because it publishes a prolific amount of high impact papers? You said they are not known for producing stellar gradutes.
Andrei, how many people do you know that there graduate school experience killed their curiosity for science?
They are just well known among the graduate students there. They generally produce low impact papers. These groups just don't attract the most driven students and the lax atmosphere is not conducive to high impact research.
Interesting. I certainly won't be asking that question during the interview/visitation weekend, but it's good to know alittle more about these people (albeit through rumor).
Why not? I mean, why not ask? Just to think how incredibly hush-hush everything is. What is this, the Sicilian Mafia? Rhetorical questions...
"Dafni's former job inspired at least one of the songs. "I was at a low point during my research job as a postdoc at UCLA. A lot of the time things don't work and it becomes really frustrating. I kept a guitar in my lab; I locked the door and wrote 'One day' really quickly. The lyrics---'one day I'll wake and this will all be a dream'"
http://www.dafni.us/bio.html
Feeling down on the research postdocs and grad students? Here's the song "One Day":
http://www.dafni.us/music/Drifting-in-circles/
I want your sports analogy to be based on baseball. So are you more like an infielder, outfielder, or pitcher. (I ask this because there is a guy who runs an excellent scientific blog about the challenges of drug development and is also currently a starting pitcher for the Atlanta Braves. (Or more likely, the guy shares the same name as the pitcher and they are different persons.))
If you are a pitcher, are you the ace, in the starting rotation, the closer, or the dregs of the bullpen in Ghadiri's lab? Did you rely on power (velocity) like Randy Johnson or finesse (control) like Greg Maddux. Continuing the analogy, you do not see to be like a Cy Young winner.
Yeah, "In the pipeline" Derek Lowe is a different Derek Lowe. :)) I don't think there ever were any MLB players with a PhD. For that matter, has there ever been a player in any major/national league of any sport who had a PhD? I'd be more than surprised.
I wouldn't push the sports analogy too far, it's bound to get inaccurate and confusing. The best I could answer your question would be to say that I've been playing a different ball game all along, and this game led me through and then away from the academic arena. What do you call a baseball player who is pitching while looking around and moving towards the exit at the same time? On the other hand, if we get into car analogies, Reza did compare me to a Ferrari once. )
I promised not to talk about Gerald Joyce a few weeks ago, but I wonder if Reza got the analogy from Joyce. He used the Ferrari analogy here:
http://sage.ucsc.edu/L1/final/Joyce_final_version.pdf
I cannot believe I remembered that Joyce said that three years ago!!
Actually, I know one MLB player, Mike Marshall, who actually has a PhD (exercise physiology from Michigan State) in 1978 when he is still pitching. He isn't a just mediocre pitcher, who is crappy starter or reliever for a crappy team, since he won the National League Cy Young Award in 1974 (between the Hall of Famer Tom Seaver's Awards in 73 and 75).
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-marshall051007
Derek Lowe, I just like to pretend that the pharma Lowe and the pitcher are the same person.
5'8''? (Aren't you a little short to be an MLB pitcher? A play on Princess Leia's quote about Luke Skywalker being a Stormtrooper)
What happened to the grad student who didn't get his name on the paper?
I'm leaving that as a mystery (don't want to drag people into this unnecessarily).
@ Anonymous:
I didn't know the term "refugee camps" was already in use, actually. It really must be a natural way to refer to these kinds of labs. The upside to them is that the profs tend to be nicer as people and treat PhD students/postdocs more humanely. But the downside is inevitable: these PIs and labs are second-grade, with lower productivity, lower impact of research, less of a star status, less money etc..
Scripps is a top school, so even "second grade" there is impressive enough and "lax" is pretty hard-working compared to other places, but still. Who is M.G. Finn compared to the big guys in the building? It's a "nice guys finish last" type of deal.
This is how the current system works, this is what I was talking about in the previous post. Of course, it's possible for a PI to be both a prick and a loser (relatively speaking). But not neither, because lab personnel must be pushed to the limits one way or another.
@ Yusei Fudo:
I don't know anyone who lost curiosity for science because of the way grad school is. Why would they? Science is science. Grad school is not a part of science, it's the other way around.
What do grad students and PIs talk about besides lab work? Does anyone talk about politics too? BTW, I do not want know about GJ's political views; I'll be unpleasantly surprised if he is a right-wing "nutjob".
Talk about Reza's political views if you want to, I have no particular attachment to him... What did he say about Obama?
Well, I've finally decided to post! Hi Andrei!
I was a student in Reza's lab when Andrei joined. After 2.5 years, acing all of my classes, passing my candidacy, and (YES!) publishing a paper in Reza's lab (all due to the constant nagging my post-doc co-worker put Reza through), I decided to leave the lab. I didn't WANT to leave the lab, which is why it took me so long to make that decision. I loved the ideas that support all of the projects in that lab. But, I was forced to leave it. I was told to my face that, after all I had done, I didn't have what it takes to graduate with a PhD. Even then, I thought I might stay on, just to prove him wrong. But then, in the midst of all this, Reza threw a curve ball and said something to me so completely inappropriate that I have repeated it to only a handful of people since then, and only in privacy.
I'm Canadian, but have an Indian heritage. I got the "You need to work harder for your skin color" speech. I also got the smile-and-nod-then-ignore treatment as most women do in that lab. (Yes, Reza has many issues working with women.) I got the "you have to raise it up a few notches" critique on my work ethic all the time. But it was his last, horrid statement to me that sent me packing. And I've never looked back. In fact, I left the lab with nothing. The dean was told that I hadn't done any of the work in the publication. So after 2.5 years, I had an empty thesis.
(By the way, Reza would always pass me and say, "Working hard to make me famous?" I would reply, "No, working hard to make ME famous." I thought I was joking with him. I was wrong. He didn't like it.)
I ended up joining the "refugee" lab. I figured, MG Finn was a great chair on my committee, so why not join his lab? It was a slow start for me, being drained and jaded. But eventually my interest in research brought me back into the think of things. And I became the grad student I always knew I had in me. Yes, I worked hard. Yes, there were ups and downs. And No, I didn't always think my new PI was a great guy; sometimes he could well piss me off. But here's the difference: I could tell him so. And he would listen. He was a human. And he knew I was also.
I guess my point here is to talk about refugee labs. They are not necessarily filled with second-rate students doing low-profile research. I worked at three labs at Scripps and in each lab, weather high profile or low, there was always the same mix of researchers that excelled at their work and those that were substandard. This refugee lab was no better or worse. The difference was that the people in the lab were relatively happy and relaxed. They could take weeks off here or there to vacation. They left in the evenings to pursue hobbies, sports, etc. In fact, I rarely worked weekends and that never presented a problem.
In the end, Reza was not right. I did graduate with a PhD. And I completed my thesis from start to finish in just three and a half years. My publication from the refugee lab is still one of the most read on JOC, even more than a year after it was published. I would label my program in his lab as "successful," and I wasn't even one of this lab's better students!
My advice, if asked, is not to think of these "refugee" labs, which have more seemingly lenient PI's, as back-up or second-rate. The students in that lab met the same qualification standard for grad school as you did. They are simply happier. Remember that when you join grad school, you will be there for a long time, at least 5 years. Maybe you have the energy, ambition, and enthusiasm to face the most rigid of PI's when you enter grad school. But consider what kind of working environment you want to be in five years in the future? You are giving YOUR EDUCATION a large chuck of your 20s. Usually people date, meet significant others, get married, and have kids during this time of life. You may want to do the same. The last thing you want then is a jerk PI calling you on Saturday morning asking why you aren't in the lab.
When I hear about students that just feel like they have to quit grad school because they hate their labs, they hate their lives, it saddens me. Scripps in particular recruits from the best of the best students out there. Each and every one of the grad students are top performers academically. To have any of them "fail" to get their PhD is not their own failure, it's a failure of the process.
Hey, "Anonymous"! :)
That's right, I forgot, Reza did use to say "working hard to make me famous" in the beginning. Because with me it became just "working hard?". I guess at some point he decided to drop the "to make me famous" part. I wonder why, lol. You must have ruined it for him. Well, as for making him famous, I suppose this website might help a bit. Although, I've got to say, I'm already pretty tired of writing about Reza Ghadiri. And I'm not even close to being done in terms of stories for this post. I might have to move on and come back to it later.
I agree with your advice on "refuge" labs. I'm driving at this from a different angle, but I have a lot of respect for PIs like M.G. Finn. And I think it's messed up that, career-wise, the system encourages and rewards the Saturday-morning-phone-call assholes. When really, they're not even necessarily better at science — they're just better at being assholes.
I hope you don't mind, I moved your comment so that it's on top of a new thread. Actually, I feel like making it into a standalone "guest post" of sorts, for more visibility. What do you think? Would you mind?
Anyways, I'm pretty stoked to hear from you, glad you decided to comment!
Oh my... I wish I had the guts to write a similar post about my PI... :D
That's because you have to work in his lab and you do not have "fuck you money" to walk so you must subsist on the grad student stipend and not bite the hand that feeds you.
Feeling clairvoyant today?
Curious, what was the fake paper on?
Biomimetic polymerization catalysis, trying to emulate nonribosomal peptide synthetases.
I know I'm replying very late, but I just came across your blog today.
Regarding the "Phil Baran never did an experiment in his Ph.D" comment, that's impossible. Whether he did enough work for 30 publications, I don't know. But I wouldn't doubt it, and that should say enough about his skill as a synthetic chemist. Quite simply, his work is exquisite. This year alone he's completed the synthesis of Vinigrol and Palau'amine, two molecules that other synthetic chemists have not been able to complete for ~20 years. His thinking is at a different level and his approach to total synthesis is radically different. It's so different from Nicolaou's approach it's difficult for me to understand where he developed this mindset.
This is the reason that people scratch and bite and claw to get into his lab. You WILL get awesome publications (yes, multiple) that will be cited a ton of times and you WILL come out knowing better chemistry than most of your peers. And for that you WILL sacrifice a large portion of your life. But there are far lesser professors that will require the same work ethic of you and not present you the same opportunity that Baran will.
And if I sound unreasonably fanboyish, read the writeup of his Palau'amine synthesis on Totally Synthetic and see how many of the comments sound far off from mine. Many of the readers of that blog are at very high tier schools in big-name total synthetic groups.
That's cool, no such thing as "late" around here, hardly anything is too time-sensitive.
I'll be sure to read that writeup/comments. But anyway, I'm not saying Baran's not a brilliant chemist, I was impressed by him too. Which kind of feeds into the issue of doing experiments. How many times does a brilliant guy like him would need to run a column to learn all he possibly could from that exercise? Or even a not so brilliant guy for that matter.
I'm totally with you on the point about lesser professors who are slave drivers. That's what I call being both a dick and a loser. Gotta avoid those, for sure.
My bigger question is, what's the point of this kind of lifestyle? OK, so learning good chemistry etc.. I'm still not sure it's worth killing yourself over. But in any case, just how much running 5 columns a day for 5 years, rotorvapping and taking NMRs over and over till the sun don't shine is helping in that regard? Good for Baran if he didn't have to do it, I'm sure it would have only helped him become the brilliant chemist he is.
And if we, humans, are in such a rush to synthesize stuff, why don't we try and design a system where labs share all experimental data immediately, instead of racing each other to be #1 at the finish line, wasting time and resources. Did anyone notice we have the Internet now? Things would get done and everyone would be home in time for dinner too. More on that later though...
A certain Major League Baseball starting pitcher for the Atlanta Braves has asked whether organic synthesis still worth the effort.
Also, I wonder what good can be derived from the synthesis of vinigrol and palau'amine? Of couse, by asking that question, I am not trivializing Baran's accomplishments, but I wonder simply because the answer is not obvious to me since I am not monomaniacally focused on synthetic organic chemistry. Perhaps, the methods, not new reactions (since I doubt any new reactions were discovered) but the type of creative abstracting thinking invoked by Baran and his group, could be mimicked by lesser chemists, indirectly helping them synthesize other molecules.
Is advice to avoid the lesser professors zero-sum although benefical for grad students receiving the advice (at the detriment of the other grad students who do not know it)? Remember there are only a few "good" professors like Baran out there and a few spots in their lab, and those spots would not accomodate all the grad students. If a grad student uses this advice to get a professor like Baran, it means there would be one less spot for other students.
That too, I agree. It seems to me that a lot of synthesis nowadays is done simply for the sake of synthesis, without worrying too much about utility. It's like a bunch of guys trying to impress one another comparing their
dicksmolecules:--Look how big mine is!
--Yeah, but mine is really complex and strained.
Partly the reason why the total synthesis field is so cut-throat. Gotta be first, mark the territory, claim the glory, go down in history. Wtf? Not that total synthesis is the only field where this happens.
As for students, there's also an option of avoiding grad school altogether. Or just doing a Master's. Or working for a prof who is "lesser" as a consequence of being less of an exploitative asshole, and not less of a genius.
The total synthesis of palau'amine yielded less than 1 mg requiring the use of a recycling prep-HPLC over 6 times in the final step/purification. If you read the write-up of the synthesis, its on the wacko level as Woodward's 200+ step synthesis of B-12. Both are synthetic accomplishments, but dont go overboard with it. If he cant make a gram, it doesnt really matter.
Wow! Baran has a nice house.... that's some good real estate in La Jolla ... it even has a second floor backyard balcony and a pond? How many post-docs or professors live like that? Does Reza have that house too?
One a macroeconomic note, I wonder if he owes more than what it is worth now? ... yeah... I'll always wonder since I am not really interested in his finances nor do I expect anyone to give me the information out of respect for his privacy. Maybe Baran is also an economics genius if rented the house before the crash and is now getting a mortgage on it. He would be like John Paulson or Philip Falcone in that sense although he did not profit enormously from it.
On his page, the photo of him is in a sports bar as one could see first base on television. Interesting picture for a supposed "nerd"... at least he accomplished more than the stereotypical socially inept Magic: the Gathering and D&D nerds.
On an unrelated note:
(I just looked at Paulson's wikipedia article after linking to him in my post about Baran's house. Oh my fucking God!! John Paulson is now wealthier than Soros!! $18 fucking billion dollars? ... I thought Paulson only made at most $4 billion in 2007 on CDS on subprime mortgages and $2 billion in 2008. There is no way $4 billion (in addition to fees) can compound that fast to $17 billion in two years. His net worth is larger than all the combined salaries listed here and here)
Dude, a lot of people saw the housing bubble/economic crash coming. Actually a cool case is Chris Martenson, who had a PhD in neurochemistry (or something like that) and was VP at Pfizer and then SAIC. All this stuff started freaking him out around 2007, he quit his job, shited his investments, and made a free video series about where he thought the economy was going. People say he's peddling nonsense, but 1) he was right, and 2) he doesn't NEED to sell his lecture circuit to make money.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/
What's even cooler is I took issue with one of the things that he presented in his video, he personally responded to me and made a few tweaks.
I knew Reza well in College. All of his secrets then anyway. His undergraduate years at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Mention the name Marc Marion to Reza, and I'm sure he'll shudder. Having come to know several Ph d's, and Ph d candidates, I'm sorry to say I have a rather low regard for the term "Ph d".
http://architecturenews.tripod.com