Behavior can be learned
Short post inspired by a big lesson. Recently I was in a conference and me and other scientists were discussing how easy or hard it was to get strong perform...
Behavior can be learned
Short post inspired by a big lesson. Recently I was in a conference and me and other scientists were discussing how easy or hard it was to get strong performers in a scientific team depending on different environments. One of our colleagues, well-intentioned, mentioned that his organization didn’t always get the most committed performers, but every-now-and-then they would find a gem that could move forward quite independently.
At this point, another of our colleagues - who deserves praise for educating us all, so thanks Alex Cooper-Roy - interjected. Paraphrasing, he reminded us that commitment and dedication to a cause or a project are behavioural traits and behaviour can be learned. So instead of selecting contributors according to how they innately behave as we expect, perhaps we should spend more time fostering those behaviors. Communicating clearly what are our expectations, affirmatively supporting behaviors that are aligned with those expectations, providing constructive feedback when they are not aligned. A good lesson for science managers: “behaviour can be learned”. Thanks again Alex!
2025
Words of Wisdom #2
What better way to start the new year than with Words of Wisdom? For the second installment of our blog series featuring interviews with science managers, we...
2024
Pão de Queijo
Through fall season, Harvard hosts a Science & Cooking course, where science topics relevant for cooking such as soft matter, organic chemistry, heat tra...
Charter your scientific team
Basic project management often begins with a charter—a set of agreements that define the rules and expectations for team collaboration. I believe a team char...
Effective team training and who should lead it?
Lazy blogging. I don’t want to reblog a topic someone else just did. So I will just point people to this interesting piece on should students teach? at Conde...
Drive
In my journey to expand my knowledge from physics to effective management practices, I maintain a steady, yet unhurried reading pace. I find the experience e...
Cash Flower
Recently I have written posts on the challenges and subtleties of keeping a healthy funding stream for a scientific team. We have also covered some creative ...
Thoughts on stable science funding
As a research manager, securing stable funding for your group is a critical responsibility. Your team, whether students or professionals, relies on you as th...
Words of Wisdom #1
Starting a new blog series at Set Physics to Stun! While most of my posts are based on my own experience, observations, or creations in science and scientifi...
Assessing PhD Assessments
A (total!) eclipse, travel, and hackathons have slowed down my blogging. That together with, for the first time, being asked to do the technical review of a ...
Philanthropy in the Landscape of Science Funding
A busy week of teaching and preparing for an upcoming trip to Quebec to witness the eclipse left little time for blogging. Nonetheless, I’ve been mulling ove...
Showcasing Emergence in Scientific Collaborations
This post tells a bit of my own professional story as I left life as a pure researcher, and then moves toward introducing my first managerial tool for scient...
Policy sabbaticals, a bit of Dworkin, a bit of Dweck
As I keep trying to create technical content, columns on Nature continue to interrupt me. Seems like these really are good sources of inspiration.
Scientifically Speaking: Trust, Policy, and a Dash of Pre-Prints
While I was working on a much more technical first post, Nature released a News article on a core raison-d’être of this blog: the trust of public in scientis...
We are finally starting!
This is it, I can’t believe I am finally starting this! Welcome to “Set Physics to Stun”, my blog on physics, scientific management, and other topics relevan...