NIDA has been a longstanding participant in the Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award (NRSA) T32 program, which provides exemplary research training and career development opportunities for pre-doctoral and post-doctoral scholars across the U.S. See RePORTER for a full listing of all NRSA grantees. Career development, training, and mentorship are key elements of NRSA programs.
NIDA is thrilled to highlight Dr. Hannah Cooper's T32 program and her continued dedication to mentoring the next generation of scientists. See the interview below to learn more about her take on mentorship.
Please share a little about yourself including your educational background, what sparked your interest in research/led to you becoming a scientist, and a little about your research focus area(s).
My undergraduate degree is in engineering. In my junior year I decided a career in medicine would be more rewarding to me than an engineering career, so I applied to medical schools and ended up going to Yale. Yale has a thesis requirement, so I spent three summers working in a lab on Mount Desert Island, exposing me to a number of academic physicians, most working in the field of ion transport. I found I enjoyed the research process, so after completing my MD, I did two years of postdoctoral research in Paul Greengard’s lab, to better align my and my wife’s careers. (That is, she would be applying for post-docs at the same time I’d be applying for residencies.)
For choice of specialty, I was exposed to a lot of neuroscience in Paul’s lab and I had always enjoyed physiology and pharmacology, so anesthesiology was a natural choice in that it is basically applied neuroscience, physiology, and pharmacology. I ended up doing my anesthesiology residency at the University of Washington (UW). As my residency was drawing to a close, I decided that I wanted to give academic medicine a chance. Since by that time I had been out of the lab for four years, I felt I needed to do another post-doc, specifically to learn to do patch clamp electrophysiology, which I would then apply to an as-yet-undefined research question relevant to anesthesiology. I was fortunate enough that Bertil Hille accepted me into his lab. I had only been in the lab for a month when Bertil showed me Lisa Matsuda’s paper describing the cloning of the CB1 cannabinoid receptor, and showing that it was a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR). Bertil’s lab was very interested in examining the of calcium channels by GPCR’s at the time, and his question to me was “What do you think this does to calcium channels”. I went on to develop a system that could be used to examine CB1 modulation of various types of calcium channels. That launched my 30+ year interest in cannabinoids. My interests in cannabinoids has evolved over time, and has touched on intracellular signaling pathways used by cannabinoids, aspects of the roles of endogenous cannabinoids in neuroplasticity, possible therapeutic applications of cannabinoids, the effects of cannabinoids on the developing nervous system, and the role of cannabinoids in metabolism.
What led you to developing a successful NIDA research training program?
I was fortunate enough to be training faculty on Charley Chavkin’s NIDA’s T32, starting from when I was a assistant professor at UW. This gave me insight to how much stability a T32 provides to training graduate students in SUDs. When I moved to IU, George Rebec headed IU’s T32. When he retired, Andrea Hohmann and I took over as PIs, adding Patrick Quinn in our most renewal. The IU NIDA T32 is specifically designed to be highly interdisciplinary, combining basic science, clinical science, and epidemiology, as we feel the future of SUD research will require scientists skilled in understanding the interactions between these three domains.
What is your mentoring style?
I have a generally “laid back” mentoring style. I feel strongly that trainee motivation needs to be internal, so I don’t feel it’s my role to strongly motivate my trainees. What is more important is providing guidance to help the trainee make the best decision for themselves based on their interests and career goals. Of course, occasionally trainees need more help, for example during scientific (lots of negative results) or personal difficulties, so I stay attuned to those situations and help as able.
What do you see as potential benefits of establishing a mentoring relationship with someone?
I think good mentors are crucial to a trainee’s success. Usually more than one mentor is best, as we’re all better in one domain or another. On the mentor side, mentoring relationships are can be a lot of fun. It’s very rewarding to see your mentees become successful scientists.
Have you been impacted by a mentor(s) and how has that relationship impacted your career trajectory?
My two most influential mentors were at UW. The first was Bertil, my post-doc advisor. He taught me by example the importance of rigor in thinking as a scientist, other aspects of his mentoring was his ability in lab meeting to seamlessly switch from talking to a rotating graduate student to a senior post-doc, tailoring the conversation as appropriate for the trainees level of training. As my lab evolved to doing quite a bit of “cut and paste" molecular biology, we continued collaborating for many years after I finished my post-doc on projects where my lab would do the molecular biology and his lab would do the imaging/electrophysiology. Another skill I learned from Bertil was the importance of being very broad as a scientist (as opposed to being super specialized). This broadness allows pulling together of disparate ideas that can greatly advance a field. My second most influential mentor was Bill Catterall. From Bill I learned how to survive in the world of academic medicine, with the challenges of balancing clinical care and research. He also supported me as I was starting my lab, which is always a very fragile time.
How do you recommend someone who are early on in their careers find the right mentor?
Know yourself and understand what personalities of your mentors that will bring out your best work.