Today’s guest post was contributed by Caitlan Rossi, a scientific and medical writer. Her work can be found at caitlanrossi.com.

“That you can somehow help people figure out the way to their own success—it’s just really rewarding,” said Brandon Gaut, Distinguished Professor of the University of California (UC) Irvine Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences. Having advised 24 postdoctoral scholars, 13 PhD students, and 10 visiting scientists, he has helped a remarkable many find a way to their own success, leading to STEM careers across academic, industry, and government sectors. As a mentor, Gaut emphasizes maintaining a work-life balance to reset the scientific brain, keeping science a “big tent” that welcomes professionals from all backgrounds at all stages of life, and navigating the pivotal moments of uncertainty that mark good research in genomics and beyond.

Welcome to the Gaut Lab

“I vividly remember the first time I met Brandon,” recalled Tiffany Batarseh, a postdoctoral fellow in the Koskella Lab at UC Berkeley. As a graduate student at UC Irvine in 2016, she attended her first Evolution Journal Club meeting, where she didn’t know any other scientists. Gaut immediately introduced himself and expressed an interest in her research, encouraging her to reach out if she ever needed anything. During Batarseh’s second year of graduate school, her thesis advisor left unexpectedly and she was faced with starting over in a new lab. The memory of meeting the outgoing Gaut stood out to her and she pursued joining his team. Despite the interruption, her assimilation into the Gaut Lab was seamless. “He didn’t treat me any differently because I joined his lab late. He made sure I was still on track, as if nothing unusual had happened,” said Batarseh.  

Twenty-two years after leaving Gaut’s lab, Aoife McLysaght, a professor in the Molecular Evolution Laboratory of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics at Trinity College of Dublin, keeps in touch with Gaut and her fellow trainees. “Brandon is a very naturally spontaneously friendly person; he doesn’t need to try hard at that, it doesn’t seem!” she laughed. The supportive ecosystem Gaut fostered in the lab helped shape her own approach to genomics research. “It was an environment that really suited me because it was one where you were given a lot of trust to have ideas and to be independent, which is a really important thing when you’re building a scientific career,” she shared.

A groundbreaking policy

Gaut’s mentorship philosophy is influenced by his own experience as a young geneticist. “I had my children my first year of grad school. I’ve always felt that science was not very welcoming to people with families at that early stage,” he remembered. So, as President of the Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution (SMBE), Gaut helped implement a groundbreaking childcare policy to support early-career researchers in balancing work and family life. Parental responsibilities can present a major challenge to attending scientific meetings and ultimately prevent career advancement. In response, the SMBE conference now offers onsite childcare and SMBE members who are parents or caregivers can also apply for additional funding through a travel award. “There’s a clear trend that women tend to leave the scientific pipeline when they become postdocs or when they have children. That spoke to me in many ways,” said Gaut. His commitment to keeping talented scientists in the pipeline as they transition into parenthood also informs how he runs his own lab on a day-to-day basis. “Something that’s been very important to me is that the people in my lab can be embraced at any life stage,” he emphasized. 

Being comfortable with being uncomfortable

Gaut is strategic in his mentorship: he honors an open-door policy and limits the number of students he works with so he can offer uncompromised, personalized attention. He also fervently encourages creative outlets to give the left brain a break—for much of Gaut’s career, his outlet was bicycle racing, and more recently, learning jazz. But there is also an element of the intangible in his methodology, particularly when it comes to the elusive task of motivating his mentees. “One of the hardest things in science is that often when you’re doing good research, there’s this absolute sense of uncertainty. It’s about trying to become comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Gaut described. “By no means have I mastered that myself. We all have either imposter syndrome, or moments of doubt, and just to let people know that’s okay can be a real relief,” he said.

This advice aligns with former mentee McLysaght’s point of view, now running her own renowned Molecular Evolution Lab at Trinity College of Dublin. “We all experience moments of doubt—doubt in ourselves, doubt in a specific project. You go through periods where things look like they’re not working, but you persist with them, and you actually do get through. That’s something you learn from experience. But earlier in your career, you don’t have that experience, so what you get is the experience of your mentor, who tells you, it’s not time to give up on this one,” she explained.

A mentor’s distinguished career

Gaut is no doubt an excellent mentor because he is also an outstanding scientist who has made impactful contributions to the field of plant evolution. It was as a graduate student that he proved genomic mutations occur at a regular interval over time in plants, with these changes set to a “molecular clock.” After considering the great genetic variability in domesticated maize, Gaut was curious about the evolutionary processes underlying this variation. This drove him to study population genetics in agricultural species for the next 20 years. Together with John Doebley, he conducted the first study using gene-sequence differences within a genome to date the duplication events of maize (11 million years ago). He was also the first geneticist to use DNA sequence data to study population history in maize and expand the use of bottleneck models, now widely applied in humans and other organisms. With Jesse Hollister, he pursued his interest in epigenetic modification—now a major focus of his lab—to show that this phenomenon is central to the evolution of transposable elements in plants. Finally, Gaut and his colleagues demonstrated that E. coli adapts to hot environments via two survival pathways… and a nearly unlimited number of mutations. Today, he and his ever-growing index of mentees in the Gaut Lab continue to focus on the evolutionary genetics of plant systems.

A legacy of geneticists

Gaut’s trainees have gone on to launch eminent careers of their own, earning accolades that span Royal Society Fellowships and Presidential Early Career Awards, with department chairs, academic society presidents, journal editors, and government science advisors among them. But his legacy transcends the field of genetics and genomics; his personal leadership style has inspired a ripple effect of trusted advisership, without which scientific discovery cannot thrive. “Mentorship is one of those things that has a beginning but doesn’t seem to have an end,” said McLysaght. “My focus in my team is always to try and build people up and help them be what I know they’re capable of. No matter what happens, we end up being the kind of mentor we experienced,” she added. 

Please join us in congratulating Brandon Gaut on his unwavering commitment to guiding the next generation of geneticists and being awarded the very first GSA Mentorship Award. 

, ,

Guest posts are contributed by members of our community. The views expressed in guest posts are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily endorsed by the Genetics Society of America. If you'd like to write a guest post, e-mail communications@genetics-gsa.org.

View all posts by Guest Author »

Read more in