My experiences as an early career faculty and how do I handle challenges.

As a faculty member who started my independent career three months before Covid-19 hit the globe, I found starting my own laboratory a no easy job. This has been intertwined with the arrival of my daughter in late 2020, prolonged equipment and lab-renovation lead-times, as well as lessened interactions with my colleagues. While each new assistant professor would likely face their own unique challenges, here I would like to take this opportunity to share with you about my personal experiences. I will discuss how I prepared my teaching, how I build my characterization and synthesis lab from scratch, how I write my first dozens of grant proposals, and how I work with my first few graduate students, among various other tasks I fulfilled as I navigate my first four years at Yale. It is my hope that these experiences will help some of you to transition through the first few years of your faculty career and meet your professional development goals more effectively.