When I was a graduate student, we would gather in a lecture hall most Friday afternoons for the department colloquium. The speaker, typically someone eminent in the field who had been invited to campus, would share their research, usually the accumulation of many projects their lab had done over many years. I was often mesmerized by what these scientists had accomplished, and I imagined what my colloquium might sound like someday. If I had my own lab, what research would we go on to do? How would it all fit together? And what contribution to science would it make?
The ONE Question
I often received the advice to find the ONE question I was most passionate about answering. Academia rewards that dogged pursuit of a single area. Becoming known as a leading expert on a particular topic attracts funding and renown, which in turn supports promotion and tenure. It also shapes scientific legacy, since researchers are often remembered for a specific theory they advanced.
The problem for me was that I could never find that question. I was interested in too many things. In high school, I loved nearly every math and science course I took, but I also loved English and French. In university I chose biology and took language classes along the way. Most of my coursework ended up in botany, with an honors thesis in plant agriculture, but an elective in psycholinguistics showed me that biology and language could be combined. I ended up in a neuroscience graduate program because I had applied late and it didn’t require the GRE. There I learned the tools of cognitive neuroscience for studying the brain during tasks like listening to speech and reading, which led to two postdocs on the brain networks that support reading in school-aged children. From there I went on to run my own lab as a faculty member, and eventually moved into cardiovascular AI.
A Different Kind of Throughline
Although it was often hard to explain to others exactly what I worked on, there have been benefits to having such a broad set of interests. My postdoc training in brain imaging, for example, gave me skills in medical imaging that I now use in cardiovascular research, which made moving into a new sector much easier than it might have been. Shifting between areas has also helped me keep my scientific curiosity alive, even as the questions I work on have changed entirely from where I started. Looking back, the thread running through my career wasn’t a single topic but a way of working as a scientist: bridging different areas, and using data to help improve outcomes for individual people, whether children learning to read or patients with heart disease.
From Legacy to Generativity
With that said, now that I’m mid-career and have made several large pivots, I struggle with what my scientific legacy will be. I’ve made contributions to a few different fields, but nothing so large that I’ll likely be remembered for any one of them.
However, perhaps there are other ways of thinking about impact. In Tiny Experiments, Anne-Laure Le Cunff draws on Erik Erikson’s idea of generativity, which he described as a concern for guiding and nurturing the next generation. For a nonlinear life shaped by curiosity-driven choices rather than a single narrow goal, Le Cunff suggests generativity may be a more fitting aim than legacy. Rather than focusing on how you’ll be remembered, generativity is about what you contribute now to the people around you.
By letting go of my preoccupation with a future legacy as a scientist, I’ve been able to pursue ways of making an impact that I didn’t initially consider. This blog, for example, has readers my research never would have reached, and it’s something I wouldn’t have prioritized in academia given the pressure to publish and get grants.
I’ve also changed what I count as an important contribution. When I left my academic job, one of my students told me that I was modeling for her what it’s like to make a difficult choice that affirms what you need for your life, and that it was a lesson she would carry forward. I didn’t have the word for it then, but that’s generativity, and that kind of impact may matter as much as (or more than) any scientific idea I’ve put out into the world.
The Colloquium, Revisited
If you’re a graduate student or postdoc sitting in those colloquia now, wondering what you’ll go on to do, or if you’ve left an academic position and are grieving the loss of that imagined future, I’d suggest a different exercise. Instead of asking which topic you want to be known for, look back across your projects and notice what you keep doing regardless of the topic, like the kinds of problems you’re drawn to or the way you like to work with others. That pattern may be a more durable throughline than any single research area. And generativity may already be happening, even if you can’t see it yet. They may never show up on your CV, but the little things count, like the lab protocol you documented so the next person wouldn’t have to struggle the way you did, or the time you spent with a student who stopped by your desk with a question and left a little less lost.
As for the colloquium talk I imagined giving someday, if I were to give it now, it would no longer be the story of one question pursued over a career. Instead, it would be about following curiosity across fields, connecting with people, and using creativity to make an impact along the way.