Women in Science: Hints for Success

For those who don’t know us, let us first introduce ourselves. Both of us are basic scientists who have devoted our research careers to GI topics. We are beyond retirement age as defined by Social Security (and not giving more details), but still fully engaged in our careers. Both of us have raised families and one of us has managed twins. We are not diverse racially or ethnically (more the pity) but are diverse in other ways. One of us was raised in an educated family in the US; the other was raised in an uneducated farming family in Australia. One of us (MKE) has spent her entire career in basic science departments and has worked on topics that have direct application to clinical gastroenterology; in contrast, SJH has spent most of her career in clinical departments doing research that may ultimately have such applications but is inherently more basic. We have both had continuous funding from the NIH for more than 40 years. Both of us have received various awards for our life work and one of us (MKE) is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Combined we have trained: 39 graduate students, 20 MD fellows, 49 PhD fellows, 5 medical students, and 12 junior faculty. Most importantly, we both think a career in science is exciting and rewarding and remain passionate about our continued involvement. In the remainder of this article, we have tried to distill our combined experiences into a list of hints for success and to illustrate 10 of these with vignettes from our careers. Additional hints are summarized Table 1. We also encourage you to read a commentary with recommendations to overcome barriers experienced by women in academia.1 Table 1 Additional Hints for Success