1. Thoughts on How to Initiate An Academic Career - Researchby
Mark E. Davis
Chemical Engineering, Caltech
As of Oct. 2017: USC Provost Professor
of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
of Chemistry and of Medicine

2. Mark E. Davis, brief bio
Professor of chemical engineering at Caltech since 1991
Member of all US National Academies (Engineering, Sciences, Medicine, Inventors)
Over 450 publications (two textbooks) and 90 US patents
Mentored many PhD, MD-PhD & post-doctoral students
High success rate of former students in both academic and industrial positions (e.g., within the top 10 departments of chem. eng., 9 former students are successful faculty (Caltech is one of the top 10 – so top 9 available for former students)

3. What are the Three Most Important Points to Starting a New Faculty Career?
Learn to say no!
Learn to say no!
Just say no!
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4. Issues for Success Understand your strengths and weaknesses
Establish your work culture and style early
No matter the style you use for mentoring, be in the lab a lot, training the first round of students to your style of research!
Time management
This is one of the most important skills to master
There is not enough time to do it all in the beginning – that is why you need to learn to say NO
Multi-tasking
You must learn to work many problems in parallel (research, teaching, mentoring, etc.)
Try to use what you develop more that once (reviews for proposals in lectures, etc.)
Don’t get caught up in things you can’t control – focus on performing excellent research that leads to publications that have significance – in the end, this is what matters the most

5. Building Your Research Program
Your research team
Be very selective with the first few student you recruit
Need students with good work ethic and are dependable
NO student is better than a bad student at this point – all about time management (you can not spend a lot of time on a student to then achieve nothing from that effort!)
Be careful with post-docs: normally better to invest in graduate students
The best post-docs tend to go to senior people
Will be job hunting from the beginning
Your research focus
Initiate your core research focus, and have at least one project that distinguishes your program
Ok to collaborate with senior investigators (Ok to say NO to these, but one or two can be helpful), but have some independent projects as well

6. Grant Proposals
My opinion is to wait (within reason) until you have a good idea to write a competitive proposal, rather than submit a number of half-baked, low-probability ideas to every call for proposals
Talk with senior people about agency styles for proposal reviews (panel vs individual reviews) – critically important that you understand how your proposal will be reviewed
Ask senior people for examples of successful proposals for you to look over – why were they successful?
OK to not go for large funding amounts in the beginning – better to try for smaller grants and show successes than have a number of failures at larger grants
OK to be involved in “center” type grants as long as you simultaneous are seeking funding as an independent investigator

7. A few More Thoughts Time management – Prioritize Research First
In the initial years, make the commitment to your research program. Your time will become less and less yours as your career advances – increasing requests, both internal (e.g., committees) and external (e.g., reviewing manuscript, proposal panels, etc.)
Don’t hesitate to accept information from senior faculty, e.g., course notes, homework, etc. – it can help you save time when preparing to teach
Find a good mentor and use that person! Experience can be enlightening, and is a good teacher. Hints from a good mentor can be critically important to helping you become successful, and not waste time and effort in doing so!

8. Summary Number one piece of advice --- learn time management
Number two piece of advice --- do high quality stuff
Number three piece of advice --- think big
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