Ten Simple Rules to becoming a principal investigator

Journal Article · Thu Feb 20 00:00:00 EST 2020 · PLoS Computational Biology (Online)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007448· OSTI ID:1605356

Tregoning, John S. ^[1]; McDermott, Jason E. ^[2]

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1. Imperial College, London (United Kingdom)
2. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Oregon Health & Sciences Univ., Portland, OR (United States)

The biggest choke point in an academic career is going from postdoc to principal investigator (PI), moving from doing someone else’s research to getting other people to do yours. It is not an easy transition, draws on few of the skills you learn at the bench and the odds are clearly not ever in your favour. So calling this article ten simple rules is obviously a simplification: it is more accurate to call them ten tricky steps. In this article, we use Principal Investigator to mean anyone who runs their own research group, using funding that they have been awarded to answer their own questions. PI encompasses a number of different job titles depending on where the research is performed – fellow, lecturer, associate professor, senior scientist. The acid test is whether you can describe the people working for you as the X group, where X is your surname. The normal route from undergraduate to lab head involves a PhD, one or most postdoc positions and then PI. Given the diversity of ways to be a PI, the final step up from postdoc takes a number of forms – in the UK this tends to be either an individual fellowship or a lecturer position, in the US it generally starts with an independent position with associated funding – either as a startup package or funded grant. The aim of this article is to identify some of the broader skills (rules 1-4) and behaviours (rules 5-10) that can help with becoming a PI. They are meant as advice, not instruction. As you will see, most of them are soft/ leadership skills, which can as easily be applied to the world outside academia as within it.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1605356
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA--146497
• Journal Information: PLoS Computational Biology (Online), Journal Name: PLoS Computational Biology (Online) Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 16; ISSN 1553-7358
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Guidance
academia
career