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Mentorship & Student Support
Mentorship & Student Support
Mentorship & Student Support
Mentorship key to developing young neuroscientists
The path to career success isn’t always direct, and helping students find their passion and explore future possibilities is one that BrainsCAN-affiliated researchers take seriously.
“Everybody comes from varying experiences. That’s what makes this job the best job in the world, you get to take people from all walks of life, meet them where they are and be a partner in their journey,” says Jibran Khokhar, Canada Research Chair in Translational Neuropsychopharmacology and anatomy and cell biology associate professor at Western University.
Khokhar, a BrainsCAN-affiliated researcher, has welcomed numerous students into his lab and says one of the keys to success is finding where a trainee’s interest lies and finding a project that fits.
“Science isn’t always easy, there are a lot of bumps along the road, a lot of ebbs and flows. When students are helping co-create a project, they have skin in the game and it makes those bumps along the road a little bit smoother – it makes it easier to pick yourself up and get going again.”
Aline Silva de Miranda knows the importance of mentorship. She was already a professor at Brazil’s Federal University of Minas Gerais when she became a post-doctoral fellow at BrainsCAN and has continued to collaborate after her return.
“For me it was really nice because it gave me the opportunity to try another model and bring it back home,” she says. “When I went back to Brazil, I had the opportunity to set up this model and maintain my collaborations. Without BrainsCAN this would not be possible and not as successful as it was.”
She continues to work with high-profile Western scientists like Marco Prado, Canada Research Chair in the Neurochemistry of Dementia, and says networking opportunities like conferences and events were also key to her ongoing success.
Her time at Western also led to additional grants to help implement some new technological approaches her research and build her team, and she is continuing to expand her research into traumatic brain injury while expanding into Parkinson’s disease.
Marieka DeVuono completed her post-doc through a BrainsCAN grant and is now part of the Addiction Research Group in Western’s Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology.
She says mentorship is crucial to helping aspiring scientists explore the opportunities that are out there and support their ambitions.
“I supervise at least one undergraduate thesis student a year. I love it. I think it’s a lot of fun to help shape how they’re going to do science in the future, I think that’s important, and also giving them the opportunities to do more than just lab work – to write, learn statistics and learn how to present their work.”
And it’s not just about mentorship from those more experienced, but also support from your peers on both the emotional and academic level.
“We’re all neuroscientists, but we do different things so you can get different perspectives. As BrainsCAN post-docs who have gone through the process together, we do practice job talks, or prepare for interviews together.”