Staying in Science Past Retirement

by Elio, Linc Sonenshein, and Roberto
 

As their years in the pro­fes­sion pass, prac­tic­ing sci­en­tists might pon­der on a quest­ion re­gard­ing their fu­ture. When I re­tire, how can I re­main in science? In the Uni­ted Sta­tes man­da­to­ry re­ti­re­ment was abol­ish­ed in 1986. In ma­ny oth­er count­ries, man­da­to­ry re­ti­re­ment still pre­vails. Re­gard­less of wheth­er man­dat­ed or vo­lun­ta­ry, re­ti­re­ment is li­ke­ly to be in the minds of ma­ny STC read­ers. There are ma­ny pos­si­bi­li­ties of how to re­main ac­tive in scien­ce in re­ti­re­ment. Here we share our in­di­vi­du­­­al ex­peri­en­ces hop­ing that they might be use­ful for some of our read­ers.
 

Elio

 

When I retired from Tufts University and closed my lab in 2006, I was quite aware that I want­ed to write about mi­cro­bio­lo­gi­cal to­pics. How­ever, I had to face the fact was that there were very few ve­nues to which one could sub­mit ar­ticl­es with some fre­quen­cy. Talk­ing with Chris Con­dayan of the ASM staff, he told me that they were in­ter­est­ed in launch­ing a blog. I asked, what is that and how do you spell it? Once he ex­plain­ed, I de­cid­ed to give it a try. He soon came up with a hap­py title, Small Things Con­si­der­ed. I de­cid­ed that I would em­pha­si­ze sto­ries from the mi­cro­bi­al word that were un­usu­al, not rea­di­ly vi­sible, lar­ge­ly un­known, or ne­glect­ed. Soon, I was joined by a num­ber of ex­cept­ion­al­ly gift­ed col­la­bor­a­tors, who have kept the blog go­ing for the last 15 years.
 

So, I am "still in science," in fact, on a dai­ly basis. I rou­ti­ne­ly scan the table of con­tents of the jour­nals, but in a pe­cu­li­ar way. I, for one, do not look for what is "im­port­ant" but what is "blog­worthy." Leave it to me to de­fine that. But by any rea­son­able cri­te­ri­on, I can think of my­self as a par­ti­ci­pant in that vast and splen­did un­der­tak­ing we call science. Lucky me.
 

Linc

 

I was very lucky to be chos­en by Elio as his first fa­cul­ty ap­point­ment at Tufts in 1972. After many years of teach­ing gradu­ate, me­di­cal and dent­al stu­dents, as well as train­ing PhD stu­dents and post­docs, I re­tired in 2014. The rea­son was that the me­di­cal course in mi­cro­bio­lo­gy that I was di­rect­ing was cut by 50% by a new dean of me­di­cal edu­ca­tion who didn't think that the stu­dents need un­der­stand how bac­te­ria and vi­rus­es grow and cause dis­ease via gene ex­pres­sion, mu­ta­tions or oth­er sci­en­ti­fic as­pects. If I re­fused to di­rect or teach the new form of our course, I felt it was in­ap­pro­pri­ate to con­tinue get­ting paid by the school. But I kept my lab open and con­tin­ued to serve on gra­du­ate stu­dents' ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tees for se­ver­al years. In 2014 our lab had about 8 work­ers and we main­tain­ed an ad­equa­te amount of NIH grant sup­port for 6 more years. In 2020, my last main grant end­ed, one week after the school was closed be­cause of the COVID crisis. Since then, I have been the on­ly per­son work­ing in my lab but we still have some NIH money from a grant shared with my next-door neigh­bor, Carol Ku­ma­mo­to. My lab has work­ed on Clostri­di­oi­des dif­fi­ci­le since 1996. Be­cause of the re­duced amount of grant funds, I do­nat­ed most of the lab to Boris Be­litsky, who had been my post­doc in in the 1990's, and Shu­min Tan, a new fa­cul­ty mem­ber. The ex­ist­ing grant will end in March 2022, and I will stop do­ing re­search in my lab com­ple­te­ly. But I will keep my of­fice open and con­tin­ue to at­tend lab meet­ings and se­mi­nars. Also, I have a se­cond job. Two col­leag­ues and I creat­ed ExArca Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals in 2016 and, with fund­ing from NIH, made no­vel che­mi­cals that block C. diff. in­fect­ion in mice. We used all the mo­ney for re­search (not for our sa­la­ries) and are hop­ing to ob­tain ad­di­tion­al fund­ing in the fu­ture.
 

Roberto

 

There were many reasons that re­sult­ed in my re­tir­ing re­la­ti­ve­ly "early," at least in terms of most of my col­leag­ues. There was the ex­ten­sive tra­vel in­volv­ed in my per­so­nal life. There was the fact I could af­ford to re­tire; my ad­vanc­ed fi­nan­cial plan­ning had been sound. And there was the more "phi­lo­so­phi­cal" rea­son that, as I saw the num­ber of sci­en­tists grow ex­pon­en­tial­ly, the clos­ing of my lab would be my little grain of sand con­tr­ibu­tion to­wards achiev­ing a more sus­tain­able growth rate.
 

My ap­proach was to slow­ly tran­si­tion in­to re­ti­re­ment and learn mi­cro­bio­lo­gy more broad­ly than my years as head of a re­search lab had al­lowed. By the time my re­ti­re­ment went in­to ef­fect at the end of 2017, I was al­rea­dy in­volv­ed in sci­ence in ma­ny ways be­yond the run­ning of the lab. I started the plan­ning in 2013 when I sub­mit­ted (and was award­ed) what I knew would be my last grant pro­pos­al. I down­siz­ed the group slow­ly by ac­cept­ing few­er people. Thus, I knew years in ad­vance when the Kol­ter Lab would close. I had al­ways want­ed to in­crease my par­ti­ci­pa­tion in science com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the pub­lic and was par­ti­cu­lar­ly for­tu­na­te that Scott Chi­mi­les­ki joined the lab in 2015. Be­tween 2015 and 2017, we work­ed to­gether on the book Life at the Edge of Sight and two ex­hi­bi­tions at the Har­vard Mu­seum of Na­tur­al His­tory. And it was in 2016 that I re­ceiv­ed Elio's phone call in­vit­ing me to join STC. Thus, I ne­ver felt a "jolt" when the lab closed. Ex­plor­ing new as­pects of the liv­ing world from the per­spec­tive not of a head of a grant-fund­ed lab but of a "free­lance ob­serv­er," with­out con­straints, has been a mar­vel­ous and eye-open­ing ex­peri­en­ce. When think­ing about new to­pics to ex­plore, it's simp­ly my cur­io­si­ty that leads me. How to com­mu­ni­cate that newly gained know­ledge is a dai­ly chal­lenge. And though at times the chal­lenge is tough, I love it.
 

 
 

Frontispiece photo credit Roberto Kolter