Career Connectome

As a graduate student in Janet Smith’s lab at the LSI, Tyler McCullough studies polyketide synthases — enzymes found in bacteria, fungi and plants that can be modified to form the base of antibiotics, anticancer drugs and pesticides.

Although he has been passionate about biochemistry since college, McCullough realized early in his Ph.D. experience that he felt drawn more to the business side of science rather than a career at the bench.

Knowing he did not plan to pursue the academic path, McCullough began his career exploration early, completing a graduate certificate in innovation and entrepreneurship while continuing his Ph.D. studies.

After dabbling in intellectual property and medical science liaison as career options, McCullough became involved with miLEAD as a pro-bono scientific consultant. This nonprofit organization provides U-M graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with practical experience working with the business community.

McCullough’s work with miLEAD exposed him to a variety of companies, but he says one project in particular helped him realize: “You know what? I really love doing this.”

A client came to McCullough with an antiviral and asked him which virus they should prioritize in medical trials. While working with a medical-focused client to evaluate major viruses and existing therapeutics, Tyler says he found his calling in scientific consulting.

Of course, there was still the matter of transforming this passion into a career.

As he approached the end of his Ph.D. program, McCullough turned to the professional network he had developed as a graduate student to help him bridge the gap between “career interest” and “career.” Talking with his vast network of colleagues at miLEAD, as well as members of the LSI’s Leadership Council, helped him prepare for and acquire a position as a consultant at Clarion Life Sciences Consulting in Boston.

Knowing first-hand how exposure to new professional opportunities can shape a career, McCullough has also helped create more of these opportunities within the LSI. He worked with the LSI Development team to organize a new series of career talks for graduate students and postdocs. These events facilitate networking between trainees and the biomedical industry leaders, venture capitalists and government officials who advise and support the LSI as members of the Leadership Council.

“I think the LSI, and the university in general, has a really good ecosystem of programs to help people explore career opportunities,” McCullough says. “I want to help others benefit from these opportunities as much as I have.”

While some LSI trainees, like McCullough, are building their connections to industry, others are capitalizing on U-M resources to bolster their network within academia in preparation for launching their own labs.

Maribel Okiye, a graduate student conducting research in the LSI’s Sherman lab and Natural Products Discovery Core, hopes to become a tenure-track professor with a lab that works at the intersection of genomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics.

In addition to the support and connections she is gaining from her mentors, David Sherman and Ashootosh Tripathi, Okiye also participates in the Research University Alliance (RUA). This National Science Foundation-funded partnership among nine universities offers professional development, mentoring and networking opportunities with the goal of increasing diversity in the future professoriate. After participating in an RUA conference in 2021, Okiye stayed on as the RUA student coordinator at U-M.

“I realized that there aren’t many students who know about the RUA,” she says. “I wanted to help others, specifically at U-M, know about some of the great opportunities that RUA provides.”

One of those opportunities is the Research Exchange program that Okiye recently completed. This program allows graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to visit any of the nine participating universities for several weeks to learn a new technique, find mentors, start a new collaboration or learn about potential postdoctoral opportunities.

While visiting a lab at Harvard University that she was interested in pursuing for a postdoctoral position, Okiye says she gained valuable insight into what she wants from her next career step.

“Prior to that, I really didn’t know what to look for in a postdoc,” she recalls. “But when I left, I felt I knew what I really need not only from my lab but also from the university itself and the people that I interact with. I need someone that will help me set myself up well to apply for academic positions later.”

Like McCullough, Okiye is still fostering more networking opportunities for her peers at the LSI while wrapping up her thesis work. Working with the LSI’s managing director, she is helping to develop a curriculum vitae profile platform for LSI trainees and to facilitate connections between trainees and members of the LSI Scientific Advisory Board, a committee of leading scientists from academia and industry.

In addition to helping students build networks through resources like the Leadership Council and Scientific Advisory Board, the LSI also supports trainees to build connections in their specific scientific fields by participating in scientific conferences and seminars.

Through the donor-funded David and Michelle Kroin Family Scholarship Fund, for example, trainees can receive financial support to cover registration and travel expenses for one conference each year.

Shuvasree SenGupta, a research investigator in Carole Parent’s lab at the LSI, found this networking method highly motivating and productive. She became involved in the Society for Leukocyte Biology (SLB) as a graduate student and then co-chaired the Members in Transition and Training Committee section of the SLB. She was involved in screening abstracts as well as recruiting for and organizing the SLB school at the group’s annual conference. This daylong session offers historical perspectives of the conference theme and training sessions on various scientific techniques.

Through her conference activities, SenGupta gained experience in taking on a leadership role and building her own network to bring professional development opportunities to the next generation of scientists. But she also learned something valuable about herself: that her interests and leadership skills are much more suited to benchwork than event organization. Even so, she says she found value in the experience, gaining new skills and refining her career goals.

“Anything you explore, you will learn something in the process,” she says. “Nothing is a waste of time.”