Today is the first Father's day I'm spending without wishing my father, Mr. Rabindra Narayan Sarkar, a "Happy Father's Day". I lost him last November. We all knew this was coming; a chronic COPD had been decaying his lungs slowly. But when the call came it felt surreal. In spite of living continents apart, I was lucky enough to be able to be at his bedside, and let him know that I was there. It had always been difficult for him to accept the idea that he might not see me when the time came. At the end of my last several trips to India he reminded me that he might not see us again. But despite his worries, I was able to meet him several times in last few years, talked to him from time to time and wished him happy father’s day once a year. So this morning when Raka, my daughter wished me “happy father’s day”, it dawned on me that I won’t be calling home this morning. Instead this will be my tribute.
My father, Rabindra Narayan Sarkar or Rabi (should be pronounced as Robi – the sun) was quite an ordinary man. Born 1938, in a village in West Bengal, India grew up and spent his whole life in Salkia – a suburb of Calcutta. Having lost his mother at seven, he and my uncle, who was five at that time, were primarily raised by their father in a joint family with their uncle and aunt of very modest means. He was a good student, finished college with a bachelor degree in biological sciences and went to become a homeopath doctor. Although he was not able to finish his degree due to financial hardships, he informally practiced homeopathy among family and neighbors, and was quite popular at that. Following his marriage to my mom at his early thirties, he essentially spent the rest of his life running our family business, attending to the needs of our extended joint family and raising me. Never travelled anywhere outside WB, not really had a lot of hobbies except occasional singing, till we got a TV. He really enjoyed watching TV sitcoms and could not finish the day till he solved the Bengali crossword puzzle in the newspaper. For last several years our family subscribed to two daily newspapers to keep his passion for crossword puzzle going. He was quite sharp and intelligent; I remember my amazement at his remarkable ability to quickly perform arithmetic calculations. He was always a very nice man, never had any misgivings with anybody, always respected for his good manners, and never even had a single fight with my mom. I was reminded of this remarkable nature of him during his funeral where so many people came and told me how he had touched their life at some point.
My greatest debt to my father has been that he had never forced me to do anything. Except for forcing me to study every evening during my primary and middle school days, he never prompted me to go on a particular career path. His words had always been ‘do whatever you think is right’. It was him with support from my uncle and my cousin brother I was able to escape responsibilities of our family business and pursued my interest in science and went away to do PhD. He missed me terribly, but it made him very proud – asked me about my new publications every time I talked to him. It seemed silly at times, but now I know why he kept asking for it. He fought the emptiness of my glairing absence with some news of my accomplishments. So that he did not feel abandoned, I’m doing something big which is worthwhile of his sacrifices. Otherwise he had to conclude that his only son is being selfish, which he could not tolerate from his beloved son.
“Happy Father’s day Bapi, I’ll be eternally grateful to you for the rest of my life.”
-Bapi.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
My Dad
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Evolution and Our Behavioral Bias
1. Striking observation: In a Laysan albatross (Big Birds) colony in Hawaii, which are famously monogamous for life, one third of the couples have been found to be two-female pair. Why didn’t we found this before? Because male and female birds look same and nobody actually used genetic experiments to sex the pairs!!
2. This brings the second point about our behavior: We assumed that the bird-couples are male and female couples. Because, there is moral bias among common people, and in the scientific community, there is no discernable evolutionary advantage of spending efforts in a non-off-spring producing behavior; therefore, genes for these traits will be removed from the population. Any same-sex mating behavior that has been reported has been always considered as an aberration. In fact, the scientist who reported these results was asked many times if she was gay!!
3. Therefore, a fundamental concept of biology that evolutionary process removes any genes are not helpful for survival in the particular environment is being questioned.
4. The other question is why we, humans, are so biased? We cannot tolerate imperfections; we always cringe for order; everything has to fit to our grand-all-explaining theory; why do we have such moral superiority?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Doing Science..
This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately. Ideal is what Varmus - one of my most favorite scientist/thinker of our time, said. But all of us who have come to do Science, do we all believe in that? For example, some of us, life and career has taken certain turns and we have ended up in the profession. Among this large group of people, some have found it to be exciting and fulfilling. More like an arranged marriage, where you have gotten married first, loved your spouse later. Those have at least found love. But for a number of unfortunate ones, it becomes a job to maintain livelihood. This actually is not bad considering the parks, like very flexible working hours, occasional free travel to conferences etc. Of course you have to put up with poor pay scale. But as long as the grant money is flowing, it is not a bad life. But to what end? It is believed that the recession does not affect education or health care industries. But, eventually the revenue shortfall is likely to catch up with the research funding and we may end up in an unsustainable situation.
For the unfortunate ones among us caught in this, it would become very painful. Because, this profession does not let you develop a lot of other marketable skills. The only option left is teaching. I personally think it is a very rewarding profession. But, the trick is to land a reasonably stable job. Let's start with the Universities. Big universities generally do not hire people for teaching only positions. For a tenure-track position in any top to mid-level universities, the candidate has to have some research, which means grant. Even for four year collages, they look for teaching experience, and some research experience, which generally is not very compatible with high powered health-sciences research, because the typical health-science research is not compatible with undergraduate research that they are looking for. More appropriate for them is general basic biology research. So, what does that leave us with? My thoughts are following:
For the ones, who really find doing science is the most exciting thing that you can do with your life, go for it. If you are a post-doc or a Ph.D. student, find your area of research and develop your expertise in that small area. Your initial training should be in a lab where you will have plenty of access of your PI. Find a mentor with whom you can find a connection, your mentor should be able to get you excited. Then move to a big name lab in your field, where your PI's name can take you further. Don't change your field during your post-doc, unless you are willing to spend longer in your training. Have a very focused goal to develop your own grant. Because during the job application/interview, you have to have a very well developed fundable research proposal.
If you are like me, who got into science because that’s where life events took you to and later on grew into it and found exciting, you should follow the above advices as soon as possible or it will take you longer than it is needed, like me!! Two things you need to learn, how to be curious and how to pay attention to the detail.
Certain very useful numbers:
- Starting Salary: $ 80,000 to 90,000/yr for medical schools, for all other departments/divisions/schools, at least $ 10,000 less.
- Startup package: Excluding your salary, $400,000 to $600,000 for 3 yr. again for med schools, for others less.
- Complete Salary Support for 3 yr. afterwards, 30-70% depending on the reputation of the school, exceptional ones 0 % !! Rest, you need to cover from your grant.
- In case of dire financial situation, the university has the right to reduce your salary even if you are tenured, but failed to support yourself completely from your grant.
- For state universities these numbers are substantially lower.
Once again, it is not as hard as people say it is.
If you want to be in science to maintain a decent livelihood one very good option is to work in the industry. If you can manage to develop one set of expertise which is valuable to a pharmaceutical company, you would be a high value candidate. A lot of times these are technology oriented. My experience in this is all theoretical. But you should be ready to be very flexible in terms of your project. Another key issue is to develop very good connections and network. It is not very easy to land a big pharma job. More than 90 % of industry recruitment happens through network not via Nature/Science advertisements.
For the ones who happen to have a Ph.D. and doing post-doc, one under-explored possibility is technical writing/grant review/scientific management. NIH hires a lot of people in grant management field. But you have to remember something which I found here. A number of journals hire scientific writer editors which are worth exploring. Once again networking is the main key in theses options, but the pay scales are better or equal to med school levels mentioned above.
Further Resources:
Nature's guide for mentors
HHMI Lab Management
Breaking All the Rules
Follow career advice at Science Careers