Motivational Stories

No one prepared me for the worst possible outcome of a dissertation defense: Failure. Yet, after waiting outside in the hallway for over 90 minutes, I was certain of it. My advisor summoned me…

I became curious about what kept researchers motivated on their journey. So I reached out to a few of them, looking for answers…

I was first introduced to coding when I attended an introductory bioinformatics workshop in 2014. Little did I know that this was the beginning of my transition from bench-work in the lab to…

When people asked me about my career goals, I would lie and say “I don’t know.” But that wasn’t my story.  I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I desperately wanted to be a professor at a major…

Your first peer review experience might have been smooth, or it might have been diastrous. Regardless, it is one that has stuck with you as you advance in your academic journey. Here, PhD student…

But then my way of life was disrupted abruptly and terribly — I suffered a stroke while I was at home, eagerly waiting to start my PhD in the US.

In 2000, I earned a perfect score in my course paper on research methodology. This made me suspicious, because my paper could never have been a perfect 10. It may have…

Waking up at 5:30am every day and working sometimes 10 hours at a job I wasn't even passionate about was not working out for me and I wanted a change. My goal at that point? It changed from "…

If you followed me to work every day, you would think that my job is to be a face. Here are the glowing reviews: a NASA Goddard space science consultant, an…

It’s 2008 and there I was, standing on a subway platform, in downtown Manhattan waiting for my train, not to board it… but to jump in front of it. Fresh out of family court, feeling tired and very…