A career as a biologist-a lifelong morphogenetic process.

A career as a biologist-a lifelong morphogenetic process - PMC Skip to main content An official website of the United States government Here's how you know Here's how you know Search Log in Primary site navigation Search Log in Search PMC Full-Text Archive Search in PMC Journal List User Guide As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. Learn more: PMC Disclaimer | PMC Copyright Notice Dev Biol . Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2026 Jun 1. Published in final edited form as: Dev Biol. 2025 Mar 5;522:1–3. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2025.03.002 A career as a biologist-a lifelong morphogenetic process David R Sherwood 1 Author information Article notes Copyright and License information 1 Department of Biology, Duke University, 130 Science Drive, Box 90338, Durham, NC 27708, USA ✉ Correspondence: david.sherwood@duke.edu Issue date 2025 Jun. PMC Copyright notice PMCID: PMC11994279  NIHMSID: NIHMS2064503  PMID: 40054516 The publisher's version of this article is available at Dev Biol Abstract How life emerged, how species diversify and interact, how cells work individually and collectively, and how a single cell gives rise to the trillions that constitute us all, are some of life’s most profound questions. For the last 20 years, I’ve been a professor in the Biology Department at Duke University and spent summers teaching at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. I use the small nematode worm C. elegans in my research to understand cell-extracellular matrix interactions, and I’ve taught and mentored hundreds of undergraduate students, graduate students, postdocs and many junior faculty. Young scientists often become discouraged during their training—the modest pay, the long hours, and the herculean task and many setbacks that occur conducting research, writing grants and papers, teaching, and managing a lab. It can seem to be an impossible challenge and leads many young scientists to curtail their training and leave fulfilling scientific careers. A core element to success is that scientific skills and expertise evolve slowly over an entire career through engagement—learning by doing—and requires patience, acceptance of failures, continual exploration, and a flexible growth mindset. Everyone also takes a unique path and there is no simple rulebook. This is difficult to convey through courses and workshops. By sharing some tools and approaches I’ve learned through my own setbacks, observations, and reading, I hope to help junior scientists view challenges in this career more as lifelong opportunities for building new skillsets and growth, much like the emergence of form and function that occurs during developmental morphogenesis. Embracing constant change and evolution can lead to a deeply meaningful and fulfilling career. Work hard, but don’t be hard on yourself, and embrace new experiences and learning. Succeeding in science takes hard work and many skills, and along with it struggles and failures. We learn the most by grappling with something new, such as a new technique, giving a talk on our latest results, writing a paper, writing a grant proposal, mentoring a student, or taking on a leadership position. Often these new experiences don’t go well: the technique fails to generate usable data, the talk doesn’t connect with the audience, the paper or grant is rejected, the student you mentored doesn’t join the lab, or the meeting you organized missed the mark. These hurt and I’ve experienced all of them. I remember giving my first cell biology lecture at Duke. It was a disaster. I forgot the order of the slides, panicked, then lost the points I wanted to make and panicked further, with horribly awkward moments of silence. I ran off to hide in my office afterwards. The senior colleague I taught with came into my office and just laughed, saying, “Well, that couldn’t have gone worse!” It’s important to not let these stumbles harm motivation, optimism, and a sense of well-being. Quite the opposite: struggling is when growth and learning are the most acute, and setbacks should be anticipated as normal and used as opportunities for reflection, change, and growth. I learned from my disastrous teaching attempt that I needed to practice my lectures ahead of time and print a montage of the slides so that I could better memorize the order. Over the years my teaching has improved, and it is now one of my favorite aspects of this career. Scientific training requires continual engagement, flexibility in sampling different things, adjusting, and building skills by practice that unfold over time. This allows you to not only learn new things but also to find what is most interesting and important to you and pair it with activities you are best at doing. This is what David Epstein in his book Range refers to as “Match Quality” 1 . We also learn and change throughout a scientific career, and the fit and job transforms as well—the research area, teaching focus, leadership position. I certainly never imagined as a graduate student that I would have the skillset for and even enjoy running a lab, sitting on grant panels, being a department and university program leader, and running an international course. Being aware of this evolution also allows you to focus on where you are in your training and not agonize about the many potential challenges ahead. One of my greatest regrets from graduate school is that I didn’t appreciate my growth and progress, and worried too often about my future career prospects. When you are more aware of this evolution, you are freed to enjoy and fully engage in a career that grows to match your skills and do what you find most meaningful. In fact, part of the sampling that occurs as a biologist can even lead to moving from a biological position for an enriching non-biological career that is a better fit. Cultivate curiosity and dive into underexplored research areas. Curiosity is crucial to research success as it drives learning, questions dogma, sharpens observation, expands breadth, and ultimately fosters impactful discoveries. I read broadly (from technical science, naturalists, poetry, and many other genres), attend diverse seminars, have side projects, take and teach different courses, and engage in diverse hobbies ( Figure 1 ). I also try and create cooperative classroom, lab, and scientific meeting environments that are open to and encouraging of new ideas 2 . Curiosity and breadth facilitate finding connections, understanding puzzling results, and making more holistic findings. It also cultivates exploration into new scientific areas. Cells have been on Earth for around 4 billion years 3 , and yet we’ve only been looking at cells through microscopes for less than 400 years 4 . We’ve barely scratched the surface of understanding biological processes. With advances in imaging, genomic technology, biochemical and computational approaches and now artificial intelligence tools, there has never been a better time to ask bold and original scientific questions to make important discoveries. This scientists to pioneer unique research areas and bring their insights and experience into different fields to make unexpected connections. Perhaps most importantly, revealing a biological process is exhilarating. Discovering how cells, organisms, ecosystems, and evolutionary processes work taps into our deeply inquisitive nature. Figure 1. Open in a new tab The author Dave Sherwood with the chicken flock that he and his wife Nina tend to in their yard in North Carolina. Be a finisher—balance focus, urgency, and patience. Bringing a scientific project to completion is perhaps the most rewarding part of this career, where you follow your observations, build teams, conduct tailored experiments, and reveal something no one has ever seen before. Yet, I find this is also one of the most difficult challenges of this job with navigating the unexpected results, interruptions from other responsibilities, experiments not working, keeping everyone motivated, the careful annotation of datasets, and many other impediments. Each scientific project is unique, but they share an arc. There is a period of exploration, which is generally fun, but then it’s important to bring a body of work to completion. No project ever feels like it’s finished, but it’s important to accept that more is always possible to bring a body of work to completion, so that others can build on what you have done in the future. Finishing takes perseverance, intensity, and attention to detail. It also necessitates patience and flexibility in conducting experiments that independently support findings, and adapting conclusions when unexpected results are found. I find it helpful to build small teams of two or three people who meet once a week to set goals, keep focused, and work together at navigating findings. Finishing always takes longer than you think it is going to take. I keep a journal of my thoughts while finishing projects that I go back to often to restore faith that the current project will eventually be completed. Writing and publishing—embrace the skill of writing. We are storytellers who convey discoveries through writing and speaking. Our research grants and papers are structured stories. However, experimental results rarely unfold as we expect. Defining boundaries to scientific stories, given the vast complexity of biological processes, is daunting. Further, experimental results almost always lead to more questions. Yet, at some point we must define the margins of a study, write up the work, and convey our research with a logical structure so that it is understood and placed in the framework of a field. I find that writing scientific manuscripts also feeds back to how I conduct science—it helps guide research priorities and experiments to perform to assemble the next paper. It is always tempting to delay writing and do an additional experiment. However, it is crucial to embrace writing and put together the bones of a results section as soon as possible, as this is often the best and sometimes the only way to find experimental holes in a story. Writing is hard, even for experienced writers. The best writing requires many drafts and extensive feedback from others. I was lucky growing up in that my mother was a high school English teacher who stayed up until the wee hours of the night on many occasions helping me learn to write papers. I’ve continued this tradition, working closely with others on scientific writing, and find it helpful to have a writing partner who complements my writing strengths and weaknesses on each paper. I sometimes even write directly with people in my lab, putting the manuscript on a big computer screen, so that we experience together how writing unfolds: with many edits, sometimes sloppy, but also exhilaration and fun as you create something new or find a missing logical flow. A great piece of advice on writing I give my students is from Steven King who said, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things.” 5 I also give my lab members “The Elements of Style,” which outlines concise, effective, and grammatically correct writing. 6 I still use the copy my mother gave me. Build communities, but also be comfortable alone. Mentoring and community are invaluable for career success. Mentors are not limited to PhD advisors or senior colleagues. Support comes from engaging with a diverse community. The impact of unexpected and even simple advice can be profound. To this day I think of what my labmate Cati Logan said to me during graduate school about going back to working in a restaurant if the science career didn’t work out. Knowing that I will always have other career options helps reduce worry. As I was considering accepting the position of co-director of the MBL Embryology Course, I was told by fellow professors that the intense obligation would be a career killer. Blake Billmyre, a graduate student I played pickup basketball with, said it would be an incredible experience and that if I turned it down, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. I accepted the co-directorship the next day and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Being a mentor for students and colleagues to help them along their paths as physicians, entrepreneurs, writers, teachers, research scientists, and professors is also one of the most rewarding parts of this career. In addition, building diverse and non-hierarchical communities facilitates unexpected collaborations. My closest collaborator is Rachel Lennon. She is a pediatric nephrologist from Manchester, England. We found surprising synergy in her work on kidney disease and extracellular matrix and mine on C. elegans extracellular matrix at a chance breakfast at a conference about 10 years ago. Working on joint projects, synthesizing research approaches, and supporting each other professionally and personally, has led to more impactful findings and built an exciting community between our groups. As important as communities are, however, a career as a biologist also requires being comfortable alone. Although innovation and starting new fields is crucial to success, it is lonely. Initially, there is often a lack of interest from students, colleagues, grant panels, and journal editors. Teaching, leading a lab, and directing an organization can also be isolating, as there are necessary boundaries that must be set up between students and colleagues. Thus, it is also important to be grounded in your values and purpose and have friends outside of science for support and mentorship, so that times alone are expected and even relished as marks of originality and of an evolving career. Enjoy a diverse and rich life outside of science. There is no set time to clock out of work in a biologist’s career. There is always a lecture that needs polishing, a paper to read, an experiment to perform. Set aside time to spend with family and friends outside of science and occupy yourself with hobbies that allow you to fully escape the lab and classroom and build a community of support outside of work. This buffers you from career setbacks and nurtures resilience, creativity, and restores energy. My family, friends, nature, gardening, sports, and music are central to my identity. For example, for the last twenty years I have played pickup basketball game at a Baptist church with high school teachers, musicians, janitors, computer scientists, and ministers. This has given me invaluable perspective and friendship from a community where none of them care that I’m a scientist, but rather who I am as a person (and my three point shooting abilities). Cultivating rewarding hobbies also helps make physical and mental well-being a priority. With looming grants, fellowship end dates, and promotion deadlines, it is sometimes hard to prioritize health, but it is crucial for the sustainability and enjoyment of one’s career. Finally, take the time to understand personal finances and what makes you happy as it leads to more choices and control over your career. I like the advice of Ramit Sethi and Ed Diener 7 , but everyone should find their own advisors. Young scientists should consider and weigh the non-monetary value of what a career in academia versus industry can provide in terms of personal growth, career satisfaction, and security. Take time to be reflective and grateful. Difficult personalities, paper rejections, negative teaching evaluations, and balancing life outside of work can wear on patience and lead to a negative mindset. I remember when Mohamed Noor, whom I shared a lab with for my first 15 years at Duke, called me out in a cycle of complaining when I was run down from leading the lab, teaching, and driving all over the state of North Carolina with my two sons in travel soccer. He reminded me how lucky I was to have such a rewarding career and family life and how everyone faces challenges in life. I could not be more grateful for that admonition. What I’ve learned is to step back at these times and appreciate the things that drew me to biology. The fascination of evolutionary processes, the complexity of animal behavior, the beauty of nature, translating findings to better human health, looking at cells under the microscope move and divide, and teaching a topic that fills students with awe and wonder—all these bring me back to what drew me into a career in biology. This mitigates the struggles with the career and helps find positive solutions to problems. These are also times for reflection and growth through adapting and learning new skills and mindsets to being a better teacher, mentor, and scientist. Biological processes are majestic and timeless, and keeping that in mind fosters humility and deep gratitude for having a career exploring and teaching biology. Concluding thoughts Paradoxically, one of the things that makes a career as a biologist so fulfilling is how being uncomfortable, continually changing, and feeling off balance fosters surprise, discovery, new insights, and growth 8 . This career also connects to the deepest things that make us human. Our species has only existed for approximately 300,000 years 9 . We don’t have wings and are not adapted for swimming, and yet we colonized the globe. We are driven to explore the outside world, and what is so satisfying is that we also have the chance to explore ourselves and undertake a lifelong morphogenetic process as emerging innovators, mentors, colleagues, writers, leaders, and teachers. Acknowledgements I’m grateful for comments from Nina Sherwood, Aastha Garde, Kacy Gordon, Rachel Lennon, Jake Leyhr, and Mohamed Noor on this perspective. I’m also indebted the diverse community of faculty, industry scientists, postdocs, and students I’ve interacted with over the last thirty years and to my family. Work in my lab is supported by NIH grants (R35GM118049, R21OD032430), a Wellcome Trust Discovery Award (Ref:227417/Z/23/Z) and Deerfield Management/Four Point Innovation. Footnotes Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. References 1. Epstein DJ (2019). Range: why generalists triumph in a specialized world (Riverhead Books; ). [ Google Scholar ] 2. Yanai I, and Lercher MJ (2024). It takes two to think. Nat Biotechnol 42, 18–19. 10.1038/s41587-023-02074-2. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ] 3. Nisbet EG, and Sleep NH (2001). The habitat and nature of early life. Nature 409, 1083–1091. 10.1038/35059210. [ DOI ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ] 4. Kutschera U (2023). Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723): Master of Fleas and Father of Microbiology. Microorganisms 11. 10.3390/microorganisms11081994. [ DOI ] [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ] 5. King S (2010). On writing: a memoir of the craft (Scribner; ). [ Google Scholar ] 6. Strunk W, White EB, and Kalman M (2005). The elements of style (Penguin Press; ). [ Google Scholar ] 7. Diener E, and Biswas-Diener R (2008). Happiness: unlocking the mysteries of psychological wealth (Blackwell Pub.). [ Google Scholar ] 8. Kula I, and Loewenthal L (2006). Yearnings: embracing the sacred messiness of life, 1st Edition (Hyperion; ). [ Google Scholar ] 9. Callaway E (2017). Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species’ history. Nature. 10.1038/nature.2017.22114. [ DOI ] [ Google Scholar ] ACTIONS View on publisher site PDF (582.2 KB) Cite Collections Permalink RESOURCES Similar articles Cited by other articles Links to NCBI Databases Follow NCBI NCBI on X (formerly known as Twitter) NCBI on Facebook NCBI on LinkedIn NCBI on GitHub NCBI RSS feed Connect with NLM NLM on X (formerly known as Twitter) NLM on Facebook NLM on YouTube National Library of Medicine 8600 Rockville Pike Bethesda, MD 20894 Web Policies FOIA HHS Vulnerability Disclosure Help Accessibility Careers NLM NIH HHS USA.gov Back to Top

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