{"doi":"10.1111/cns.14390","title":"Part II: After you accept that faculty position …","abstract":"The objective of Part II of this CNSNT editorial series is to help you hit the ground running upon arrival at your new position. As far as possible, you will want to sail across the hurdles in your way, not barely clear them and risk failure. Here, we help you construct a fulfilling career path while managing to stay in the race. The most crucial tasks you need to perform as early as possible are, (1) reading the literature, (2) designing your experiments, and (3) writing new grant proposals. Ensure that the scientific questions you intend to answer are fundamentally important. This is the most critical decision you will make. The more people find your ideas significant and exciting, the easier will be your acquisition of funding. In the beginning, you can diversify risk by initiating more than two projects, because your favored hypotheses may not be supported by preliminary data. It is not advisable to start researching an entirely new field as a junior investigator. Rather, focus on what you can do well—with utmost rigor—to succeed as quickly as possible and be correct in your interpretations. In the long run, the citations will not matter as much as the accuracy of your observations. Remember that false positives (Type I statistical errors) are more commonly encountered in biomedical research than false negatives (Type II statistical errors). Plan to start a variety of projects, to be able to publish short-term, low-risk projects well before the tenure and/or promotion application deadlines, and then follow up with more impactful work to show a positive slope in your publication trajectory. If the publication rate follows a negative slope, this can also be justified to the committee, if you were shooting for quality over quantity. In many cases, it is imperative to submit grant proposals in that first year, as reviewers are more forgiving of newly appointed faculty. Keep close track of the “early-stage” investigator status for grant applications. You will need to strategize how much time you spend on research versus teaching at the beginning. Bear in mind that grants, publications, and student/peer evaluations of teaching will be weighed more heavily toward the end of the tenure clock—and that a rising trajectory is more impressive than a falling trajectory. Intelligent use of social media can help you disseminate your research to a wider community and raise the possibility of seminar invitations and research collaborations. However, be careful what you write or endorse. Frequent social media postings may give others the (mis)impression that you are not busy. Committee members can also conduct online searches for anything tied to your name. After you sign the contract and before you arrive on site, you can begin to order items, if your budget overseers agree to put away the packages in your allotted space. Interview and hire at least one member of your crew before arrival. Your laboratory should be busy opening packages and filling cabinets and refrigerators as early as possible—while you are busy reading, writing, and generating new ideas. Learn to delegate activities that require fewer skills. However, be wary of rushing into hiring laboratory members. For example, only agree to mentor students if they seem like a good fit with your expectations for independent scientific thinking and work ethic. Otherwise, it may be worth waiting for the next admissions cycle. It is quite difficult to judge these variables from a Zoom or in-person interview, and it can take months or years of working together before you know the character of a person in the workplace. Before you arrive, you can also request syllabi for courses you will teach. If possible, try to get notes/handouts from prior versions of the course to glean the depth and breadth of lecture content. Try to prepare at least some of the first lectures in advance of your arrival, to have sufficient time to focus on getting the laboratory running when you are on site. 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Kamal","orcid":"0000-0003-4269-3370","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":253439,"name":"Wilson S. Meng","orcid":"0000-0003-2575-2260","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":576084,"name":"Rehana K. Leak","orcid":"0000-0003-2817-7417","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:21:31.144858Z","pmid":"37545431","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}