Scientist sought to help solve the reproducibility crisis

Science Exchange is seeking someone to join the Science Solutions team. Must be passionate about research…and puppies.

This is a Job Portrait—a story about a job opening produced by off-duty journalists. Learn more here. This portrait was crafted by Jackson Solway and Peter Prato and commissioned by Palo Alto-based Science Exchange. The interview below was conducted in person with Dan Knox, a Science Exchange co-founder, and Fraser Tan, who is Science Exchange’s first Science Solutions Manager. Learn more about Science Exchange: Homepage; AngelList profile.

Apply to this position, or email questions to dan@scienceexchange.com

JOB PORTRAITS: Fraser and Dan, put yourselves in the position of a marketer for a moment. How would you describe the role of the Science Solutions Manager in grand terms?

DAN: You’ll be improving the lives of scientists around the world by helping to address the growing ‘reproducibility’ crisis.

Fraser is Science Exchange’s first Science Solutions Manager, a role and title she and Dan invented to guide projects within the Reproducibility Initiative. Fraser is one of four team members with a standing desk.

Ok, let’s give it some teeth. Details?

FRASER: The majority of the Science Solutions Manager position is to be a team member for the Reproducibility Initiative. The Reproducibility Initiative was started by Elizabeth, our CEO, and takes advantage of Science Exchange’s network of laboratories to replicate experiments. We have a global network of labs with pretty much every research capability in existence at our disposal. They’re run by experts who are all completely unbiased. They’re very happy to say, “You give us money, we give you data.” Elizabeth started the Reproducibility Initiative to leverage our network to address the reproducibility crisis. Right now, we have two major projects that fall under the rubric of the initiative: We have a reagent validation project and a cancer biology validation project.

What’s a reagent?

FRASER: A reagent is anything used in experimental research. It could be an antibody, a piece of plastic, it could be a pipet tip. But all of these reagents, there are lots of different kinds out there, some of them work, and some are complete crap. Currently, we’ve partnered with antibodies-online to validate 10,000 antibodies this year. These antibody validations take about 40 to 50 percent of my time. The other major chunk of my time, maybe 40 percent, goes to the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology. This project is a partnership between the Reproducibility Initiative and the Center for Open Science, to replicate the top 50 papers published in the field of cancer biology since 2010. All of this work is being done in the public eye. The new Science Solutions Manager will have a hand in all of these various projects.

An intro to the Science Solutions Manager position by Fraser Tan. Fraser essentially invented the position, and will work alongside whomever gets hired.

Dan Knox is a co-founder of Science Exchange and worked with Fraser to create the Science Solutions Manager position.

Fraser, since you’re the first Science Solutions Manager, can you describe what a typical day might look like?

FRASER: I spend most of my time each day on the antibody validation and cancer biology projects. I actively manage which labs are performing which antibody validations, match new validations to appropriate labs, and write up reports when the data is returned to me. I also work closely with Elizabeth and our partners from the Center for Open Science and Mendeley to review the RP:CB papers and structure the replication experiments for Science Exchange labs. Lastly, I help with product design and development and customer support by offering a researcher’s perspective to anyone who needs it. Each day has a mix of all these things in it.

Can you give a few more details? Besides managing the process, are you ever really flexing your science muscles?

FRASER: Yes, I’m totally flexing my science muscles every day. What I did, and what the new Science Solutions Manager will be doing, is reading our chosen scientific papers very, very carefully. We have to identify the key points in each paper and which experiments support those key points. Those are the ones we’re going to replicate. Then we get down into the nitty gritty. We need to write up each experiment’s protocol in excruciating detail to give to a Science Exchange lab to perform the replication. We examine the methods section and other papers that are referenced, and in almost all cases we have to ask the authors for more information. Eventually, we will take these 50 papers and examine, from a meta perspective, how replicable is this data paper to paper? This is the first attempt to quantify the extent of the reproducibility crisis that everyone is talking about.

DAN: One of the reasons why we’re hiring more Science Solutions Managers is that there’s an enormous amount of work. Based on the press and industry support, there are new reproducibility projects that are likely to be launched very soon in other scientific fields. Neurodegeneration will probably be the next one we launch, where we’ll take the top 50 papers of the last three years in that area of neuroscience and do the same thing.

At 10am each morning, the team holds a standing meeting. Each person says what they did the day before, and then briefly outlines their upcoming goals. Elizabeth (far right, with dog) and Dan, the company’s married co-founders, participate alongside everyone else.

The company operates out of an office in Palo Alto, which consists of the main room here, plus a conference room and a small loft.

Just to get a better sense, what percentage of the day would be spent working alone versus directly with people?

FRASER: Besides my work for the Reproducibility Initiative, I bring a science perspective to customer experience and to product design. Anytime someone has a question that’s science related, they ask me. So even if I’m technically the only person working on a project, I never feel alone.

Why is this position empty? Is it new, or did someone quit or get fired?

DAN: The position is new. We’re hiring for it because the company is growing. As the company grows, I can see us needing a new Science Solutions Manager every two or three months.

In this photo from late 2013, Yogesh (center), then a candidate for a data science position, gave a presentation at the end of an on-site interview. Dan and Elizabeth had given him two “challenge problems” to work on during his visit, a process the team has found incredibly valuable in choosing candidates who will fit in culturally. In this case, Yogesh was offered the job and joined the team soon after.

How closely do you see them collaborating with one another? Does it become a team?

FRASER: I would like to collaborate closely with my fellow Science Solutions Managers. I like that I work on so many different things, so I would not want to partition the SSM role into certain projects. That’d be boring, and nobody would learn about all the projects. I envision that whomever comes on board will be involved in the antibodies-online project, in the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology, in future reproducibility projects and in product development.

Who else would this person be collaborating with on a regular basis? What are their titles and roles?

DAN: They’ll be working a lot with Elizabeth, who is the CEO of Science Exchange and the founder of the Reproducibility Initiative. She is very actively involved. At a high level, she generates the partnerships that lead to things like the grant that funds the cancer biology project. She’s also involved at a very detailed level doing the work alongside Fraser and the other people working on this. Other than that, there’ll be external people.

In her role as the Science Solutions Manager, Fraser (left) works closely with Bilal (center) and Conria (far right), who manage customer experience. “Bilal and Conria are the ones who talk to every single person. They monitor every single project on Science Exchange,” she said. When questions arise with the laboratories, Fraser turns to Brianne (not pictured), Science Exchange’s Laboratory Experience Manager.

When Fraser requested a set of new features for scienceexchange.com, she worked with Mike (left) and other members of the development team.

Do you foresee this position ever having direct reports underneath it?

DAN: To be honest, we don’t really operate that way. We don’t have a hierarchy. We don’t have managerial levels. It’s my hope that we can avoid that for as long as possible. I see there being different types of Science Solutions Managers who work alongside each other, and I see leadership within that team growing organically through performance rather than titles.

This is probably for you, Dan. What are the company’s key metrics, and what does this role have to do with meeting your measurable goals?

DAN: The thing we care about most is the number of projects that are being posted on Science Exchange, and the main financial metric is our gross transactional volume, which is the dollar value of projects that are going through the platform. Those two numbers are obviously very related and tightly coupled to the two existing reproducibility projects. When we get additional reproducibility projects, this will become more and more important for driving transactions through Science Exchange.

The company’s office is a couple blocks off of University Ave in downtown Palo Alto. The neighborhood vibe might be best described as “busy suburbia,” and it’s common to run into the same people at coffee shops. Here, Dan takes a walk in late 2013 with DJ Patel, one of Science Exchange’s early investors.

Fraser, what is most satisfying about this job?

FRASER: I am a scientist at heart, and here I’m at the forefront of changing science. That’s one of the reasons I considered the company in the first place. I derive a lot of satisfaction from knowing that what we do is really, really important, and from knowing that no one has ever done this before. We’re really charting new territory. That’s what brings me into work every day. The other part is the awesome people I work with! My teammates are fun and supportive, and we all believe very strongly in the mission of Science Exchange.

Fraser, what kind of milestones do you celebrate now, and what will you celebrate with the person who comes on?

FRASER: Each of the steps for the Reproducibility Project: Cancer Biology has been outlined, so each time we hit a major step it feels really, really great. These are the kinds of things I’d be really happy to celebrate with someone. Not only would they see what I’m doing, but I’ll see what they’ve done, and it’ll really be a collaborative effort together to get all of this done.

DAN: As a company we like to celebrate success. We’re pretty transparent about metrics. The whole team knows when we’re having a great month. At an individual level, we very much like to celebrate people who are contributing. Fraser is actually the current holder of the Science Exchange FORCE award, which is our way of recognizing people internally.

That’s the tiny Yoda, right?

DAN: Yea! So Fraser has Yoda on her desk. She was awarded the FORCE award in January for fearlessly doing the job of two people.

Also from late 2013, here the team gathered for its weekly all-hands meeting. After Elizabeth and Dan updated everyone on a few high level issues, the tone turned light. Over popcorn and beans, Dan awarded Michael a statue of Yoda, the team’s decidedly cooler alternative to an “employee of the month” award.

What are the things you’ve found to be dissatisfying here, and what kind of a personality do you think wouldn’t succeed?

FRASER: I feel like scientists, like myself, tend to be very detail oriented people. The parts of the job that are the most challenging for me are the relationships with external people. Negotiating conflicts around different priorities is new to me. What’s most helpful, though, are my teammates. Elizabeth has a very high-level view, and can help me place the details within the larger context of the projects. Going back and forth between our partners, the dev team, the labs and Elizabeth — I’m getting better and better at it. For someone who isn’t extremely organized and detail oriented, this will be a tough challenge.

DAN: We really try to make sure we understand what people are working on, what parts of their jobs they like, what parts they don’t. If there are opportunities for us to flex the positions slightly, we can adjust the roles. One of the things I was very mindful of was Fraser wondering how well she was doing when this role was brand new. I spent some time supervising her, and I gave her feedback that she was doing a great job. If she wasn’t doing well, or if it was stressful, I knew it was something we could have asked another team member to take on. We’re always open and flexible; we want to hire people with a baseline ability to be organized, but with other attributes too. The challenge is to find really talented people who are passionate about what we’re doing. If they’re missing something on our job description, that doesn’t mean they’ll be blacklisted.

How much agency will this person have to define their role? How well are the processes defined? From the candidates perspective, what is the path to changing and evolving as an employee?

DAN: The role as it exists today was defined by Fraser. [To Fraser:] You found projects of interest to you, and you found ways you could contribute, and we eventually had to invent a title to describe what you were doing. Someone coming in new would be able to make suggestions about how to improve our processes.

Around the corner from the office is Philz Coffee, the purveyor of the team’s go-to fuel.

What portion of this role is customer support?

FRASER: One percent of the role is customer support. It’s a bit funny, because in many ways I am a customer of the platform. I’m posting on the platform for the Reproducibility Initiative projects, and the customer support team supports me!

How much writing do you do?

FRASER: Technical writing? Very little. Most of the writing I do is communicative writing — diplomatic emails, writing to the labs about projects, answering questions that the labs have.

What kind of influence will this person have on product decisions?

FRASER: A great deal. There’s a portion of the Science Exchange website that’s devoted to validations, and just recently I was able to initiate a complete redesign of that part of the site.

Mike and Michael, both software engineers, worked with Fraser to redesign a toolset related to the Reproducibility Initiative.

Where will this person need to exercise personal judgment? Sounds like everywhere?

FRASER: Yes, everywhere.

DAN: One of our values is that everyone is a leader; that everyone needs to think like a founder. That’s consistent with our philosophy to hire smart people who we trust, so when they exercise their judgment, we trust them, and that helps us out with the speed we can move. Everyone should trust themselves to make the right the decision, while also knowing that they can get a gut-check from a teammate any time.

Do you have a process in place to deal with conflict, and were you satisfied with the result the last time you had to use that process?

DAN: The best way to avoid conflict is to have the right work environment. I think we’ve done a lot to focus on the culture of Science Exchange. We have clear sets of values that we use rigorously when we hire people. That minimizes the conflicts we have. To proactively minimize conflict I have regular one-on-ones with the whole team. It came up in one of our one-on-ones that Fraser had a lot on her plate and was stressed, which led to us hiring for this position.

In the upstairs loft, Tess Mayall, who runs community, and Bilal Mahmood, who oversees customer experience, find some relative peace and quiet from the occasional bustle of the main room.

What’s the company’s relationship with money? You have revenue—not all startups can say that. What is your runway, and why is it what it is?

DAN: Our runway is about 12 months, and while we are revenue-generating, we’re still in that stage where we’re growing and are not that concerned about getting to profitability because that would stunt our growth. We have great investors who have given us their financial support, and we know that their motivation is aligned with ours, which is to grow Science Exchange.

Let’s talk about compensation. What are the components of the package? And can you tell me what kind of industry positions you’re benchmarking off of?

DAN: Everyone gets a package of salary and equity. The salary range for this position is $50,000-$70,000, however we give everyone the option of taking more or less salary in place of more or less equity. We know people have different risk profiles, so we give them options.

That’s the next question. What kind of people have turned you down, and what’s the most common reason?

DAN: We haven’t had that many people turn us down. There have been two candidates in particular who turned us down though. Both had existing jobs, and both were very proactively re-recruited by their employers. I think that means we’re trying to attract really great people, and great people have options. We still have strong relationships with them, actually.

Why did you headquarter here in Palo Alto, and do you foresee that changing in the future?

DAN: There are only a couple of places in the world I could see having this company. The whole Bay Area offers so many advantages to a startup, from access to capital and mentors, to the serendipity of bumping into people at cafes. A lot of the core members of Science Exchange are a bit older than at the typical startup. We have people in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties. We have a lot of diversity here.

Here, a handful of team members who work with the science community chat with tenants of a San Francisco science incubator. Dan: “There’s a rich history of biotech entrepreneurship in San Francisco. I think we’re seeing a new golden age, and this is the center of it. You’re seeing a lot of incubator spaces, and academics, some of whose work is facilitated by the Science Exchange service.”

How should people apply? Any advice?

DAN: We have an application form on our website. There are some specific questions on there that are actually incredibly important for us. We care about more than just your resume. And it’s not just about what an applicant wants to do, but how they’d go about integrating with the company. How would they go about achieving the role in the way we’ve described it?

FRASER: With this position, I’ve found there are a lot of people who are coming straight out of research. The one thing I always want to know is: Why do you want to leave the bench? My advice is that, if you’re coming from industrial research or from the bench, know why you want to change your career course.

Apply to this position, or email questions to dan@scienceexchange.com

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