## Advisor Style & Mentorship She is the worst supervisor (and unfortunately the worst person) I have ever met in my life. In my opinion, she would like to only control what and how people are performing experiments instead of trusting them and giving them a chance to learn and contribute. I believe, she does not like to share information about the projects before they are published and she is very secretive about it as she is afraid of getting scooped. She is actually the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I have never met such a self-centered and mean person in my life. In only about 2 years, 3 people from her lab quit including 1 technician and 2 PostDocs who joined the lab from Europe. Some of those people who quit reported her to HR for bullying and harrasment, but I do not know what the result was eventually. She fails to attract people from UCLA into her lab (based on my conversations with PhD students from the neighboring labs) as a PostDoc due to lack of communication, lack of ethical behaviour, and chaotic lab organization and environment. ## Expectations for PhD Students If you, as a PhD student, would like your every day to be planned from A to Z, protocols to be printed out and given in your hand so that you don't have to worry about anything, then this lab is perfect for you. However, if you would like to learn and grow both as a person and as a scientist, I would advise you to not even think about applying to this lab. Some positive feedback about her: She is so hard-working that it is almost an obsession for her to be in lab rather than a passion. She will make sure you have progress. She is always available via email or phone. She is smart and very experienced in her field. One could have learned a lot from her, but I strongly believe that she does not like to teach, she just wants things to get done. ## Funding & Support She must have good fundings otherwise it is unbelievable that she is still not fired from UCLA after so many people quitting in such short time and reports sent to HR about her. It is a scandal... She is a shame for JSEI and actually pulling the level of the institute down with her very bad reputation. ## Research To my knowledge, she does not yet have any last authorship papers (?) although it has been about 3 years since she opened her lab. She keeps feeding herself from her old postdoc lab and still not independent in terms of publishing and generating ideas. Unfortunately, she is not very creative in thinking and is still relying on collaborations in many projects. I do not see very high profile papers coming from her in the next 3-4 years as a last author. Her only advantage was to have a very good experience in single cell sequencing, but the era of this platform is dying as so many people from all around the world can nowadays do scSeq and get the results analysed very easily. And it is not success anymore to just collect animal retinas around the US and sequence them and trying to make a story out of the data. One very importing thing that is missing in her way of thinking is that she does not generate hypothesis or ask questions and then figure out experiments to do to answer those questions, but she collects tissues and sequences them and then try to find the hypothesis and ask questions. You also cannot give her any feedback, she will get very defensive and she will take it personal. A Postdoc, who quit later, was asked to not join the lab meetings anymore since she gave her some feedback and told her that she would like to leave the lab... It is just unbelievable how horrobly she handles any comminication. ## Lab Culture I strongly felt that she has been very toxic to almost anyone from her lab. She does not generate a warm and welcoming environment, but she is always very bossy and passive aggressive. It is a pity that such a smart and hard-working person does not have a valid reason to be in academia other than not having any idea of what else to do and being so mean to anyone she works with. The only positive thing about her was that her leaving for the maternity leave since everyone could work in peace. And maybe the coffee machine she bought for the lab... In my opinion, she is more suited to industrial positions rather than academia due to her way of thinking, her management style and understanding of life and science. I hope she quits science asap so that more people will not quit science because of her in the future as it happened in the past...
She is the worst supervisor (and unfortunately the worst person) I have ever met in my life. In my opinion, she would like to only control what and how people are performing experiments instead of trusting them and giving them a chance to learn and contribute. I believe, she does not like to share information about the projects before they are published and she is very secretive about it as she is afraid of getting scooped.
She is actually the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I have never met such a self-centered and mean person in my life. In only about 2 years, 3 people from her lab quit including 1 technician and 2 PostDocs who joined the lab from Europe. Some of those people who quit reported her to HR for bullying and harrasment, but I do not know what the result was eventually. She fails to attract people from UCLA into her lab (based on my conversations with PhD students from the neighboring labs) as a PostDoc due to lack of communication, lack of ethical behaviour, and chaotic lab organization and environment.
## Expectations for PhD Students
If you, as a PhD student, would like your every day to be planned from A to Z, protocols to be printed out and given in your hand so that you don't have to worry about anything, then this lab is perfect for you. However, if you would like to learn and grow both as a person and as a scientist, I would advise you to not even think about applying to this lab.
Some positive feedback about her: She is so hard-working that it is almost an obsession for her to be in lab rather than a passion. She will make sure you have progress. She is always available via email or phone. She is smart and very experienced in her field. One could have learned a lot from her, but I strongly believe that she does not like to teach, she just wants things to get done.
## Funding & Support
She must have good fundings otherwise it is unbelievable that she is still not fired from UCLA after so many people quitting in such short time and reports sent to HR about her. It is a scandal... She is a shame for JSEI and actually pulling the level of the institute down with her very bad reputation.
## Research
To my knowledge, she does not yet have any last authorship papers (?) although it has been about 3 years since she opened her lab. She keeps feeding herself from her old postdoc lab and still not independent in terms of publishing and generating ideas. Unfortunately, she is not very creative in thinking and is still relying on collaborations in many projects. I do not see very high profile papers coming from her in the next 3-4 years as a last author. Her only advantage was to have a very good experience in single cell sequencing, but the era of this platform is dying as so many people from all around the world can nowadays do scSeq and get the results analysed very easily. And it is not success anymore to just collect animal retinas around the US and sequence them and trying to make a story out of the data. One very importing thing that is missing in her way of thinking is that she does not generate hypothesis or ask questions and then figure out experiments to do to answer those questions, but she collects tissues and sequences them and then try to find the hypothesis and ask questions.
You also cannot give her any feedback, she will get very defensive and she will take it personal. A Postdoc, who quit later, was asked to not join the lab meetings anymore since she gave her some feedback and told her that she would like to leave the lab... It is just unbelievable how horrobly she handles any comminication.
## Lab Culture
I strongly felt that she has been very toxic to almost anyone from her lab. She does not generate a warm and welcoming environment, but she is always very bossy and passive aggressive. It is a pity that such a smart and hard-working person does not have a valid reason to be in academia other than not having any idea of what else to do and being so mean to anyone she works with. The only positive thing about her was that her leaving for the maternity leave since everyone could work in peace. And maybe the coffee machine she bought for the lab...
In my opinion, she is more suited to industrial positions rather than academia due to her way of thinking, her management style and understanding of life and science. I hope she quits science asap so that more people will not quit science because of her in the future as it happened in the past...
No, I don't recommend this PI.