“Carving Your Own Path”: Shaping Your Scientific Identity

Abstract

A PI with over ten years of experience leading her lab called the process of establishing your scientific identity “carving your own path” during our conversation, which is a very colourful, visceral way to express what is usually talked about as “finding your niche”. But finding your niche sounds like finding a hole and sitting in it, whereas establishing your scientific identity is a much more active process. As we will talk about it in this chapter, carving your own path involves finding ideas you are really excited about, developing them into projects, and managing those projects well, including knowing when to continue projects and when to stop them.