James Schnable, professor in agronomy and horticulture, was awarded the Outstanding Postdoc Mentor Award at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s Office of Graduate Studies Awards & Fellowship Luncheon May 1 at the Nebraska Alumni Association’s ARKS Champions Club.
This award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated a sustained commitment and exceptional ability in mentoring postdoctoral scholars and significant contributions to their postdoctoral scholars’ professional and career development.
Schnable has graduated 13 master’s and Ph.D. students, and mentored eight postdoctoral associates. His postdocs have achieved faculty positions worldwide.
According to former postdocs Vladimir Torres-Rodríguez and Seema Sahay, Schnable’s leadership style is excellent preparation for academic and private sector leadership roles. He allows postdocs to make decisions and shape goals and outcomes while committing to support, brainstorm and advise as needed.
“Although my background was related to wet lab with minor expertise in computational biology, Professor Schnable gave me the opportunity to join his lab to learn skills that are allowing me to pursue my next professional goal,” said Torres-Rodríguez, a research assistant professor in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture.
“He works hard to ensure all the trainees he mentors at both the doctoral and postdoctoral level have the experience of working in disciplinary diverse teams, typically collaborative projects with engineers, statisticians and/or computer scientists,” said Sahay, a research assistant professor in biochemistry.
Torres-Rodríguez, Sahay and other lab members say his mentoring strategy emphasizes giving trainees the environment, support and feedback to develop logistics and planning abilities and interpersonal soft skills.
“Professor Schnable has a key characteristic which distinguishes the best leaders in the field: a willingness to do anything himself that he asks of the postdocs and others in his lab,” Sahay said.
Recently, Schnable received a $650,000 grant from the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to scale up a study his laboratory, including Torres, published earlier this summer.
More details at: https://go.unl.edu/pi45