Lin Song 00:06
Hey, welcome to the Postdoc Leadership Fellow Podcast. I'm Lin Song, a third year postdoc in Hellen Diller Cancer Center working on lung cancer.
Rachel Rudlaff 00:14
I'm Rachel Rudlaff. I'm a postdoctoral fellow in Bo Huang's Lab.
April Bell 00:20
I'm April Bell. I am a second year postdoc with the California Preterm Birth Initiative.
Oleta Johnson 00:25
And I am Oleta Johnson. I am a third year postdoc also at the Mission Bay campus at working in Sandler Neurosciences building. And in this series, our goal is to promote community at UCSF by connecting you to resources that are important for being a postdoc.
Oleta Johnson 00:49
In our 10th episode, we're here with Michelle Stevens from research management services. We hope you enjoy.
Lin Song 01:02
Hello, my name is Lin, I'm a Postdoc Leadership Fellow at UCSF and today I'm with my colleague Oleta.
Oleta Johnson 01:10
Hi, I'm a Oleta. I am a postdoc, I guess a third year postdoc and I work at the Mission Bay campus in the Sandler Neurosciences building and I am also a Postdoc Leadership Fellow. And we're really excited to have our guest today Michelle Stevens.
Michelle Stevens 01:29
Hi, my name is Michelle Stevens. I'm the Assistant Director of proposals and grants here at the Office of Sponsored Research. The unit that I belong to is called Research Management Services here at UCSF and we help our researchers and investigators apply for research grants.
Lin Song 01:47
Thank you so much Michelle for joining us today and we have a couple questions for you. The first one is that can you give our listeners a short description of your office and how your office works with postdocs?
Michelle Stevens 02:02
Sure, the Office of Sponsored Research is here to help our researchers here at UCSF apply for externally funded grants and contracts. And so the Office of Sponsored Research has three units primary units. One is Research Services or research management services, and we help our researchers with proposals and awards for government and nonprofit grants. We have government business contracts, that helps with the government contracts from federal, state, city as well as foreign and they also help our schools with any negotiation for training affiliations or professional services. And then the third unit is industry contracts division, which helps with industry sponsored research agreements. So, from the for-profits. And so, research management services, because we deal with federal grants, nonprofit grants, we are the main contact for our researchers and postdocs here at UCSF. We help them apply for research proposals, whether it's with NIH, NSF, whether postdocs need to get their fellowship grants, or the department needs to get a training grant for postdocs or predocs, whether postdocs have like a list of potential sponsors that they get from their investigators/their mentor and they're lining up which fellowships to get. That will be what postdocs work with the Research Services Coordinator, the RCs that's assigned to the postdoc mentor or lab researcher, they're the ones then would be assigned to the postdoc in that lab. And so, we help postdocs kind of maneuver the red tape that is UCSF, and kind of know what policies are in place for which sponsors. And so, that, you know, as we say, with researchers, we want researchers to concentrate on their science. We want postdocs to concentrate on their fellowship, the meat of their fellowship applications, and then we'll kind of deal with all of the policies and procedures and particular forms that you need to fill out. One of the things we always tell postdocs, because a lot of the postdoc applications, fellowship applications require not only a science of, or career path that they may want to take, they also ask for letters of recommendation. And that's always kind of trying because, you know, you're trying to coordinate with your own mentors or you know, other places that's external, it's not, out of your control. Those are things we don't do, but we want you to concentrate on getting the best letters of recommendation that you can get that will really put your application above and beyond other people. And so we want you to concentrate on getting those sections and we'll concentrate on all the other administrative portions of the fellowship application. So, that's what we do.
Oleta Johnson 04:59
Awesome. A lot, and so important as a person who has interacted with RMS especially for like NIH things, man, you guys make it so much more, so much easier for us as postdocs, though. Thank you for that.
Michelle Stevens 05:15
We love hearing that.
Oleta Johnson 05:18
The next question that I will ask is really just wanting to get to know you a little bit more and what drew you to UCSF and more specifically to your role, your current role?
Michelle Stevens 05:30
So, I mean, I'm going to age myself, I guess, when I was in my 20s, I had graduated from Cal and I, you know, it was the, it was a recession. And you know, all my friends who are in like computer science or biomedical they were getting jobs like this. And I was like, a poli sci major saying, like, what do I want to do? So, I did some jobs here and there. And I was just like, I know, nothing's really grabbing me. And, you know, even commuting to like, down the peninsula, I was just like, I need to find something in the city where my commute is easy. And I looked at the employers, and I was just like, Oh, UCSF. I'm going to try UCSF, it's like, only I can walk to work. So, I started off at UCSF as a fellowship coordinator for the Division of infectious disease here at UCSF in the School of Medicine, Department of Medicine. And, man, I got worked, I had, I never worked that hard. And I actually got burned out within less than a year. And, so, I was like, I'm working a lot of crazy hours, this, this can't be it. And, then all my friends are like you need to be in a ".com" know, you'll make so much more money. So, I did that change. I think within two months of my new job, I was just like, money is not everything. I am bored, not learning anything. And so I was talking to my past manager. And then she was just like, UCSF is looking for research administrators, and you have all of the basic knowledge of like how our accounting system works, our faculty, our postdocs, why don't you like apply for it? And so that is what drew me back to UCSF. Although I left UCSF for about two and a half years to go down to UCLA to run a center for AIDS Research and Education Unit. I've been with UCSF and UC for 20, 20 plus years, and I love my job because I love helping postdocs get established, see postdocs becoming faculty, we've seen beginning faculty become like chairs of a department and the initial conversations they've had with me or members of my team, really helping them to kind of get gain clarity of like, what to focus on when they need help, how to ask for it from their departments, from their school, to get that administrative support, so that they can really do what they do best, which is the research. And sometimes if it's opening up a brain and putting in like chips in there, you know, great, but seeing that, that all come together and then seeing friends who might be going through an ailment going to see our physicians or our researchers here and then getting the help that they need to function in their everyday life. I'm really sold on our mission of advancing health worldwide in our community. I derive that enjoyment and purpose.
Lin Song 08:27
A really interesting career and life story. And I particularly like the amazing part you just said. And, the next question we have for you is that what do postdocs most commonly come to you for?
Michelle Stevens 08:43
As I said, postdocs come to us mainly to start their own application process for their own individual funding. If postdocs are lucky, they'll, they'll start at UCSF in maybe a training grant slot or on their mentors R1 as a researcher, you know, postdoctoral researcher helping their mentors with whatever research they're doing. Sometimes some of our postdocs come in with no funding, and they're told you got to get funding right away. If everything works out. We will even start helping a postdoc before they get to UCSF, if we have their offer letter, and we're just waiting, and they're at their current institution before they even get to UCSF, because we have that offer letter and we've confirmed it with a mentor in the department. We can even start helping postdocs before they arrive at UCSF in applying for fellowship grants. But normally when they get here, we'd love we have relationships with the administrative staff of departments to say hey, send them over so that we can go through the process, right? Because we do so many proposals here at UCSF, postdocs really need to give the RSCs is about a 30 day notice before the deadline. And it's not saying that the whole application process takes 30 days, it's because we want to go over the process itself. And then really starting the postdocs to concentrate on particular parts of the application that they need to, which can be time consuming, like gathering all their letters of support. And so if that's going to take a while, especially during summer months, when they're past, you know, mentors in their previous institutions are on summer break, you know, that's going to take time, right, to gather fresh letters of recommendations for whatever application that they're doing. And so we want to be able to help postdocs with those things, and setting it in a timeline so that you see the goal where we're heading toward, and then we're all getting to that point together. And so, the sooner we can see postdocs, and communicate with them and work with them, the better, we're always willing to meet with them face to face before COVID. And now on, via zoom, and then go walk through steps.
Oleta Johnson 11:03
Awesome. And I think it's really important for postdocs to hear this and how RMS can help. And, I actually didn't know that your office could work with postdocs before they actually got to UCSF with just an offer letter. So, I think that's something a lot of people will be, you know, really happy to learn. So, following up on that, I was wondering what misconceptions, or, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that you find postdocs have about using the services at your office?
Michelle Stevens 11:35
I think doing those brown bags and stuff with the postdoc unit and stuff, I think one misconception is that we're not here to help postdocs, that we're only here for faculty or that we might be too bureaucratic, they're on the backburner, while, you know, faculty and their proposals. I think that's where the timeline is really important. Because one RC can, if it's a small department, it might be one RC kind of giving service to that whole unit. If it's a big, big unit, like the Department of Medicine, there's actually two RMS teams that support the Department of Medicine, because it's a large one for the campus side, we call it, and one for the ZSFG side. So, all of the departments have a designation. And, so it's just easier to manage that, you know, faculty, we know who the faculty are. Postdocs come and they go, right? And so it's easier to have the postdocs supported by their mentor's RC. And so, it's sometimes, I guess, mentors forget to tell their postdocs that we're here as a resource available to you guys. But it's really, we're here to help get any extramural funding. Because, you know, when it comes from an outside source, there's usually things that sponsors want in return, like a financial report or a progress report. But there's also, if it's coming from federal sources, there's a lot of things that you guys don't have to worry about. But as an institution, we worry about. Like, audits--we get one every year. And if it's good, it flies and we're all good, if it's bad, that can that can open up the institution for more audits. And so we want to make sure that we're doing everything on behalf of UCSF, doing things correctly. But at the same time, helping our faculty not worry about that, helping our researchers and postdocs not worry about that. And, you know, we're the people who will be like, "Oh, because you're not a US resident or citizen, you can't apply for these types of grants, but these might be available to you," right? And so, if an RC is working with a department or a researcher long enough, they kind of know what sponsors are available for that research, or that that the researcher is doing. And so, we might know things that we can give you an answer really quickly. Versus you're like doing a web search and trying to figure out where, what sponsor will, you know, support me and things like that. We are always willing to look at policies and structures of new foundations that we've never heard about, because we need to enter that into the greater UCOP system, you University of California, Office of the President kind of keeps track of all sponsors that all 10 campuses get funding from and so if we've not done them, maybe UCSD or UCLA has gotten an award. And so we might know, you know if there's any hiccups that we should know about. But yeah, we're here to help. We're here to kind of guide and we're not here to be a bureaucrat, we're not here to set up walls and tell you no, you can't, we might say no, you can't on this, but you can on this. That's what we're here for.
Lin Song 15:03
Awesome. I mean, many postdocs, if they came from a new lab or small lab, sometimes they like, as you said, might've not heard of your, your office before and don't have any person in the lab to ever work with your office. And if you're listening to this podcast, and is unsure if your office can help them or is hesitant to contact you, what would you say to them? I know your office does amazing job important for the grant application.
Michelle Stevens 15:36
Well you know whenever someone reaches out to OSR or RMS, we try to answer questions and not say, we don't love the just punting. I call it punting. We don't love it when like departments like, "Oh, you reached the wrong office, sorry," click, and you're like, well, it would be kind of helpful if you know where I should go next. Right? And so RMS works really hard to help our departments and our researchers by saying, if it's not something that we do, we will try to send you to the correct office, right? To our correct partner. And so, if you set, bring something and we're like, this kind of sounds like a gift, it might be just they're giving it to you, you know? Then we'll send you over to the foundation side of the house. If it sounds like it's, it's more of a contract where you have deliverables and then you'll get paid. Were like, I don't think it's a grant, we might then connect you with somebody in our GVC unit. If you come to us. Oh, it's a L'Oreal USA fellowship for women. We're like, that's awesome. But L'Oreal is a for-profit, and it's industry. So, let us contact, you know, connect you with your industry officer in industry contracts division. And so, that's what we try to do. If you have a question, please do contact us. And if we don't know the answer, we will try to connect you with the person that could help you, again, kind of maneuver through the so many units that are here at UCSF.
Oleta Johnson 17:11
Yeah, thank you for that. And I mean, I think everybody has been in a situation where like, they're constantly like punted to the next place, and they're just like, well, who can help me? So, I think it is really useful to hear that people at RMS even if you know, you guys aren't the right entity to answer a question, that you are very proactive about helping postdocs be connected with the right resource.
Hi, Oleta here. I hope you're enjoying this episode. And if you are, be sure to check out the Postdoc Office website at postdocs.ucsf.edu to keep up with the latest resources, events, and programming, offered to help build community among postdocs, and to help your research and career goals. Also, I encourage you to reach out to any Postdoc Leadership Fellow if you have any questions about what you're hearing in this episode, or if there's something else you'd like to hear that we haven't covered. And now back to the pod.
And I know one of the things that you've mentioned before is kind of the importance of the timeline and contacting RMS for certain things, especially in terms of postdoc fellowship, application, application submissions and things of that sort. So, my question is, when exactly do you recommend postdocs contacting your office? And then, I guess, maybe a two parter is is there any reason that a postdoc might find use in contacting your office, outside of like, I'm submitting an F32, or a K99 or Foundation Fellowship?
Michelle Stevens 18:57
When to contact us? I think that initial when you get to UCSF is always a good starting point. You could say I'm not applying for anything yet, but this is my area. And then, so again, the RC might have a list of sponsors that ALL the postdocs under that mentor in that lab in that department always, you know. So, before I became assistant director of proposals and grants, I was the team manager of RMS Team A and J. So, A has a lot of the basic sciences of anatomy, biochemistry, biophysics, cellular molecular pharmacology, physiology, and we had neurological surgery, one clinical, but knowing those departments, and what research our faculty do, and then all the postdocs under our researchers, we have like a list of places, sponsors that they go to, you know? And so we will give them a list of, "Why don't you check with your mentor, your researcher and see if you should be applying to any of these." And so kind of planning out, you know, your year, maybe? You could say like, I just got here so I don't have anything right now, but maybe in like six months, nine months, I'll be pinging you. And we'll be like, "Great we're here for you just let us know, 30 days before a deadline," right? Preferably a little bit earlier, again, to kind of go over the process and kind of guide you on what you need to concentrate on. Even when a proposal is due, like in two weeks, and you forgot, right? The postdoc forgot to contact us, we might not be able to pull it through. But we might, you know, if you have everything required, and you did all your, your work as a postdoc, and you know what sections of the application is required, and you did all of that work, all we need to really do is get permissions from your department, your chair, your PI, you might be able to pull things through in two weeks. Less than two weeks, what we might do is kind of just get approvals lined up. And so, we will put it in our official proposal software, that is our institutional repository of all proposals going out of the institution so that when the award comes in, there's not a delay in in accepting and setting up your award. Because if we don't have it in the system, we have to do that back end. Because our financial system can't set up an award without a proposal in the system already. And so, we want to do that. Those are the bureaucratic work that we need to do in, in the office of sponsored research, in order for you to accept, get, an award, and then use the award, right? And so, we always want to be pinged. So, don't feel shy is the takeaway, I think. Also, if postdocs forgot, instead of saying, "Ugh," you know, "I have to go through this," you know, sugar is always nicer way to get someone to do something for you, then attitude or like, "Ugh," you know, "I gotta work with you, blah, blah." People are more willing to help you if you're like, I'm so sorry, I forgot but I need your help. And then we'll be there and help you along.
Lin Song 22:15
I have to admit during my first application I did have the last minute crisis because like a week before the deadline, I learned your office and I really wish that I know your office existed when I came to UCSF in the first place. And, I also know your office to be working with all the researcher in the UCSF not only postdocs, also faculty is a lot of work. What is your goal for what you want postdocs to take away are they meet with you or communicate with the office?
Michelle Stevens 22:54
Our goal is that postdocs remember to remember us, and remembers to contact us when they want to get outside funding, even a collaboration. Let's say you're in, the the postdoc is now getting ready to phase out of their postdoc, and then maybe getting into a faculty role or an in between role before they hit faculty. But there might be a great opportunity to collaborate with somebody that's outside UCSF, you know, being a subcontract to a prime award at like, let's say Stanford, right? Those all go through, still, our office because it's outside money coming into the institution to cover your expenses or salaries or whatnot. And so even in those cases, contact OSR. If if that prime funding over at Stanford is from a for profit, we'll let you know who your industry officer is or we'll connect you with our subcontract or whomever needs to help you. If you have a proposal, sometimes our clinical postdocs might do research and then they're like, oh, I have a partner in like Africa, like South Africa, and they're gonna look at certain patient populations we don't have here, right? Then we'll help them through like what the subcontracting process is and then once the award is in, we'll connect them and do all the paperwork with our subcontracting office within OSR. It's a sub-unit. And then, so, that we can set those things up quickly, or during the proposal stage, make sure that whoever they decided to partner with, they have all of the paperwork lined up to be on like a federal grant and to be a recipient of federal funding, because there's certain steps that they need to do to be in the federal system, right? And so those are things that we help with, or a postdoc might say I have this research, it's international, but I'm trying to figure out who might be doing work, we might connect him to the global health office. And then they'll have a list of researchers who might be in India, who might be in other countries doing something similar so that it's not that you would partner with them for the research, but you might contact them to say, "Hey, how have you gotten your research started? What offices in that country do I need to kind of work with to establish my research project?" You know, instead of doing all the legwork from ground up, you know, seeing what's already been done by our UCSF researchers, and what relationships we've already forged. So that, you know, you can just go and become partners. We're always here, again, to help. And so, just to contact us, if you are thinking about any outside funding coming into UCSF to help with your research, and your career path.
Oleta Johnson 25:59
Amazing. I want to ask if there's anything that your office has done, or does do for postdocs that surprised that was surprising to you, maybe when you started in this role? Or might be surprising to postdocs at UCSF?
Michelle Stevens 26:16
That's a great question. I mean, the fact that I started as a fellowship coordinator, which was like, postdocs, or for MD, like, if they're going into a specialty, they'll go into fellowship years. So, always worked with postdocs and fellows, so it wasn't like, but I think it always does surprise me when, you know, I attend a brown bag and some people didn't know that we were available. And so that's that's the main point that we're always trying to message out. And to do these, you know, brown bags or these podcasts is to just to get the word out. We're here to help you. You're part of the UCSF community, UCSF family, and we are here to support you.
Lin Song 26:59
What you just said is really beautiful. And thank you so much for being here to support us. And the last question today for you is that, what's the favorite thing about your job?
Michelle Stevens 27:10
Favorite thing about my job again, it's well, when COVID happened, and then the world shut down, and then all of a sudden, all this funding came out of Congress to tackle COVID. And then we had all of our researchers dropping what they were doing to kind of focus, refocus, pivot from their research to see how they can help conquer, tackle, whatever you want to use to get the world back to a place of normal, I guess. I love that our our units also did a push to, for all hands on deck. So, some of our teams didn't have researchers who were doing COVID. But we had, the two teams that supported medicine got slammed because almost all of the faculty were doing all this, were starting to create partnerships to tackle COVID in different areas, whether it's molecular, whether it's bio, whether it's physiology, whether it's actual, like pulmonary specialists, or infectious disease specialists, you know, seeing patients, all coming together to look at COVID holistically and putting together funding on these really tight deadlines, less than 30 days sometimes. So, all the teams that did it and have have COVID proposals also stepped in, took over proposals, and then helped our researchers get those proposals out the door. And so I think it was 700+, and we've got a third of the funding for about 250 million has come in to UCSF for COVID research. And so, knowing that our faculty can be that nimble and our bureaucracy can be that nimble to support our faculty, tackle these questions. Fortunately, the vaccine came out, unfortunately, not everyone got the vaccine. So, you know, we're kind of in this weird state of limbo with all the variants, but I know our faculty are working hard. I know postdocs in our researchers' labs are working hard, and we want to be there to support whatever they need to do next. Whatever funding they need to get to do that research to help the US population, which I'm a part of, is awesome. And so, those are the day to day things that always encourages. It is exhausting at times, but it is an encouragement that's beyond words when I see something tangible coming out from our labs, from our schools, helping the world.
Oleta Johnson 29:58
What an incredible answer, first of all, and like how timely and like really showing the importance of like, what we all do and contribute to the UCSF community. So, yeah, thank you for that. And if y'all don't mind, I would like to do one last thing to close this out, just because I was actually very inspired, Michelle, earlier when you talked about kind of your, your early job experience and kind of getting burnt out up front. And I think a lot of postdocs are going to be able to relate to that, and that this pressure to produce like, quickly and immediately, but you know, one of the beautiful things about being in the Bay Area's there's so much to do. So, I was thinking maybe we could go around and say like one thing that we think, you know, somebody absolutely should, you know, do or see or someplace that they might want to eat as they arrived freshly to the Bay Area, or are rediscovering it in kind of a new position. And I'm happy to start because I recently went to this for the first time and it's been on my like, for like, it's been in my crosshairs for a while. But, SoFar Sounds. So I'm a big music fan. And SoFar Sounds is like this, like very intimate concert series. And they sell tickets that are typically very inexpensive, somewhere between like 10 to 30ish dollars. And, and they never announce the lineup, it's usually three performers, and they don't announce the location, the exact location until 24 hours before, they just give you like a neighborhood. But you go and it's a great way to see up and coming artists and to connect with them in a very intimate way. So, I went to one in Berkeley pretty recently, and it was incredible. So highly, highly, highly recommended. They have it at all these cool venues across the city. So that is mine, check it out if you get a chance, and if you love music.
Michelle Stevens 31:48
That sounds amazing. I've never heard of that. So, that's what I love about talking with young'uns, always hear about the new and upcoming and, you know, that's the beauty of the Bay Area, I think. There's so many communities and what I love about the Bay Area, whenever I go away, you know, when you're living here, it's like, it can be draining because everything is so expensive. When you go away, you know, you get fresh experiences, things are cheaper, you're like, wow. But when I come home to the Bay Area, I love our diversity. I love walking and seeing all sorts of different people, different foods and experiences that we have, whether it's if you're if you're into music, there's all levels of music, you know, not just the symphony, but you've got concert venues, and you've got places you can sign up and see up and coming artists. I love the nature that is here in the Bay Area. I love the fog when it rolls in. I love Lands End if you've never done that trail and walk, there's that special point where you stop and you see the Golden Gate and you see the bay where you know, the ocean meets the bay. It's just breathtaking. And so, whether you get it from the Lands End side or on the other side, and you could do that there's biking trails on the Marin Headlands side, as well as just walking trails. It's one of those places like I love to like just get fresh air, open your heart, open your mind. Let your stress away and then just center yourself. It's a great place.
Lin Song 33:30
Yeah, I totally agree. And, I think the nature is, the landscape of US is something really unique. I mean, before I came here, I did my PhD in Germany for four years, Europe, before that I grew up in China. And I think the thing that surprised me a lot in the US is that all the amazing, beautiful national parks, the Joshua Tree national park to the Redwood is just so beautiful. I think I would strongly recommend all the new postdocs check out all the national parks in US, it's really a treasure of the nation.
Michelle Stevens 34:13
We've also got some great asian food.
Lin Song 34:16
I agree. Especailly the Bay Area.
Oleta Johnson 34:20
Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to even speak with us and to really help provide resources for new postdocs and to give all postdocs, really, at UCSF an opportunity to get to know you and your department better and your office better. So, we're really grateful for that.
Michelle Stevens 34:37
I'm just very thankful for, well, inviting me to your podcast and allowing me to participate and getting the word out about our office and what we do. Again, we're always here to help. And so, there's a Find your OSR Support in our website where you can look it up via the directory and, like, if you don't know you can ask your mentor who their RC is, and then you can start by contacting them, and then they can either help you or direct you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.
Lin Song 35:11
Yeah, we really appreciate it. And thank you very much.
Michelle Stevens 35:14
It was my pleasure. Thank you.
April Bell 35:21
Thank you for listening to the Postdoc Leadership Fellows podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. But more than that, we hope that it was helpful to you.
Oleta Johnson 35:28
And if it was helpful to you, we encourage you to share this with any postdoc that you think might find this information useful.
Rachel Rudlaff 35:38
As a reminder, you can contact us at any time you can find our information on the Office of postdoctoral scholars website, and you can also reach out to the postdoc office.
Lin Song 35:49
Thank you so much to listen to this episode.