Gaëlle Batot

Gaëlle Batot does project management as a Senior Research Analyst at the Epilepsy Therapy Screening Program – Contract Site at the University of Utah. She earned her PhD in structural biology at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France. Then Gaëlle continued her training as a postdoc at UC Irvine and the University of Utah, while developing her skills in project management and science communication as part of Postdoc Associations. Career exploration and networking helped launch her transition from working at the bench to a variety of new opportunities.

Can you describe your academic and professional background? What path led you to pursue this field?  

I did my studies in France. Originally, I wanted to be a medical doctor, but the entrance exam required a lot of rote memorization and I ended up failing the exam. Then I went to a professional school for lab technicians, did an internship in a biochemistry lab, and fell in love with research. I did a bachelor’s degree in genomics and proteomics, and then a master's degree in proteomics, where I did research internships in structural biology labs in Scotland and New Zealand. Afterwards, I wanted to find a job but found it difficult to find a job in structural biology just with a Master’s, so I applied for and was accepted into a structural biology PhD at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, in the French Alps. It was a great, really international experience, because the funding was coming from Europe and the official language was English, which later gave me the freedom to go anywhere as a postdoc. However, my PhD was a collaboration between three labs and at the end my advisors realized that none of them had really worked on training me. It’s really difficult to grow when you don't have good mentorship so I finished my PhD with very low self confidence.

Next I did a postdoc at UCI. My PI in California helped me rebuild my confidence and encouraged me to explore my strengths and career aspirations. At that time, I thought I wanted to be a lab manager in a structural biology lab. But I also started to volunteer for the Postdoc Association, doing scientific communication, working on the website, and doing social media. Then my supervisor ran out of funding. Since I was on a visa, I had to immediately look for another position, and decided to go to the University of Utah.

At the same time, I started to change my mind about becoming a lab manager. I again joined the Postdoc Association, first as Secretary, doing communication, and then as the Senior Chair. As Senior Chair I had the opportunity to lead a team of 15 volunteers and to organize meetings and the agenda. I realized that I really liked figuring out what issues postdocs are facing at the University of Utah, what questions they have, what resources they need, and organizing events, making connections, creating classes to help postdocs. In the lab, I also started to become more of a project manager: I had several projects, but all of them were done with collaborators and students, so I became the person who was centralizing all the information and managing all the projects---I was still doing experiments, but less than everybody else.

Eventually, I decided I wanted a job which combines science, communication, and leadership. When I wrote that on Twitter, my current boss answered, saying, I’m hiring for a job, let's meet. That’s how I landed in project management at the Epilepsy Therapy Screening Program (ETSP).

Can you tell me more about how you were hired? What is the typical hiring process like for your field?  

Usually the hiring processes are through the universities, like on the University website. You would submit recommendation letters and a resume, and if they contact you then it’s a two or three step interview.

I didn't go through that process; I went straight to meeting with the director and associate director, my direct supervisor. I had developed good visibility on Twitter, and it also helped that the University of Utah is small so all the PIs and departments kind of know each other. When the director saw my tweet, we had previously connected because I was part of the Postdoc Association, so she already knew who I was and trusted me. Networking is important---I have applied to positions that I didn't end up getting, but I always got an interview, because someone there told me about that position and helped me to tailor my resume.

How does working for this organization compare to being in academia or industry? Can you tell us about your current responsibilities?

The ETSP is a contract site for the NINDS at NIH. Basically, if anyone—from academia, companies, nonprofits, anyone—has a potential treatment for epilepsy that they want tested, they can contact the ETSP. Our main job is doing blinded screens using different disease models and deciding if a treatment works or not. Then the developers can try to discover more about that treatment or stop working on it if it doesn’t work. We are part of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Utah and the Board of Directors are PIs with their own labs, so we are still in academia. But things are different from academia, because in academia you’re trying to understand how things work. For ETSP, it's really important for us to keep in mind that we are a screening program—we are here to find good treatments, and it’s not our job to go deeper into why it’s working or not.

Still, in parallel, we have some research going on, because we are always trying to find better models. Currently, epilepsy treatments only work for two out of three patients, and the remaining one third are resistant to any existing treatments. We are trying to make new models which better mimic those patients which are refractory, to find a treatment which will work on them.

My position’s title is Senior Research Analyst, but it's more of a project management position, managing some projects we have with other labs in the US or other countries. I also do some data analysis and a lot of scientific writing, for example writing up Standard Operating Procedures and publications based on previously collected data. I had the opportunity to make the position kind of my own, so since I'm really interested in social media, they gave me freedom to create and run social media for the program. Now I've been in this job for almost two years and I love it.

What do you enjoy about your current job and work environment?  

I really enjoy following the epilepsy community. We have opportunities to talk with patients, so we see what we are doing and why we're doing it. You get excited when things are working. As a personal interest, I've been looking into, for example, how exercising can help patients with epilepsy and discussing with scientists who have found some very interesting findings on this. It gives me ideas on how to help people and feels more applied than what I was doing before.

I also enjoy the challenges of doing what I'm not used to. So many of my tasks require learning something new so I always have questions and feel challenged to do new things.

Do you have any professional plans for the future? What are some future career paths that could open up for someone in your position, 5-10 years down the road? 

I know that I’m not going to stay in this job forever, and I have so many ideas about what I could do next. I'm interested in project management and I've done a project management certificate, so I could see myself doing project management for a drug development company or startup. Lots of companies are looking for Project Managers with scientific understanding. Industries also have a need for scientific writers, which I have experience with. There are policy positions, such as working directly at the NIH.

Something else is working for patient advocacy groups, which have positions in charge of identifying patient needs—advising which research directions should be pushed, deciding which proposals the group should fund, and managing those research groups. People in these positions also help to bridge the conversation between scientists and patients, because sometimes scientists don’t understand the concrete problems patients face in their daily lives. For these positions you need to understand science; effectively communicate with scientists, donors, and patients; and also do a lot of project management.

And I have friends in research development, which is more of an administrative job within academia, They help scientists put together proposals for funding for interdisciplinary science, including gathering different groups from the university, helping to make collaborations, and submitting huge grants. That’s another position where people with PhDs are in high demand. You need to understand the science, be a good science writer, be good at communication, and enjoy building relationships.

What activities, internships, or organizations would you recommend someone get involved with to help them break into this field? 

I did my project management certification very recently; my job actually paid for it. There are Professional Associations that you can join, which can help you learn about project management positions and get basic experience. I highly recommendable volunteering for associations. For me volunteering for the postdoc association was really key. As a student or postdoc, you often feel like you already don't have enough time to do research, but volunteering in this kind of position is important too. From my time in the postdoc association, I showed that I can work on a website, I'm good at taking notes, I know how to prepare an agenda for a meeting, how to take minutes for a meeting, I know how to lead a meeting with 15 people, that I'm good with teams. As researchers, we know how to do project management—we work with others in the lab and have many projects—but it's hard to sell that. It's easier to illustrate leadership skills with concrete examples of where my team from the postdoc association made progress and what we managed to organize.

I also volunteered to do outreach talks. When people ask if I know how to talk about science to someone who is not a scientist, I show that I talked to a middle school as part of Skype a Scientist, and I did guided tours of the synchrotron to retirees and high school students.

Also, by organizing events, I got to interact with people in industry, at the university, a lot of PI's and vice presidents and chairs, so I made a huge network. Then, when I applied to this job, I was able to get recommendation letters from people that my boss knew, from different departments and different positions.

Is it common for people in your field to have a scientific/academic background (i.e. have PhDs)? Can you think of any advantages or disadvantages someone with a PhD might experience while pursuing or working in your field? 

It’s less common for project management; you don't need a PhD but you can have one. For the other positions I’m interested in, like working for patient advocacy groups, very often you do need a PhD. You need to really understand the science to advise which proposals to fund and coordinate their progress. For research development at universities, having applied for grants yourself can help but is not required.

Do you have any final words of advice for those navigating these career questions? Is there anything you would have done differently given what you know now?  

I wish I had been faster to figure out what my strengths are and what makes me happy. It's definitely not easy to figure out what to pursue if you don't want to be a PI. Being curious and talking to many people on social media and in person helped me a lot. You can ask someone working in industry, what jobs exist in your company for PhDs? They can tell you about positions you’ve never heard of.