On choosing my Thesis Lab

Woohoo - the quarter is barely underway, and I am swamped with work - maybe taking 3 classes was not a good idea? ;) The classes are tough, the days are short, and my bins are filling up with crumpled paper - but hey, all in all, its just training to be a professor!

But I would like to state - I have completed one of my goals this quarter - to choose a Thesis Lab! I have decided to join Mark Skylar-Scott's lab in the BASE Initiative at Stanford - pretty cool because I get to work at the confluence of engineering, manufacturing, biology, computer science, and design.

Here is the lab link : http://med.stanford.edu/skylarscottlab/team.html

Mark is a cool guy, young, heavily ambitious, and a great mentor so far. My colleagues are also amazing - for example, I am currently working with a ex-pro footballer from Norway, who is doing his PhD in mechanical engineering. Although the location of the lab could be better - got stuck in the basement like my previous lab at Tech, but we are in the newest building at Stanford!

To be honest, joining Mark's lab is a risky move by a lot of traditional PhD metrics - he just started this academic year, no tenure guarantee, very young contacts in the field, no research articles where he's corresponding author. However, I drew my decision on based on how my experiences were with Saad, who was also starting a new lab in 2017. I remember we went through a lot of growing pains - both as a lab and student, but ultimately, I really liked that fast-paced environment where things are fluid, we are creating precedent, and having that early influential access to the PI. I realised that I need a strong coach to be successful in research, and I think Mark will be a very strong factor in pushing me out of my comfort zone.

I do have a timeline that I want to complete my PhD by 2024, but honestly, at this point its more of a mark on a chalkboard then it is a carved in stone. There's some really cool projects that I am working on, and I hope that I can share them in a year or so when we are ready to publish - but if any recent research experience has taught me, multiply expected timelines by 1.5 years to get a more accurate bound. So it might be a year, might be 6 months - at the end of the day, it doesn't matter - as long we do good science, I'll consider it a success - something that Saad and Mark both personify in their philosophies.