Outstanding mentor of junior faculty: Maneesh Jain, Ph.D.

Maneesh Jain, Ph.D., of the UNMC Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, will receive the Outstanding Mentor of Junior Faculty Award at the annual faculty meeting, which this year will be held virtually through Zoom at 3 p.m. on April 14.

• Name: Maneesh Jain, Ph.D.
• Title: Associate professor, UNMC Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
• Joined UNMC: December 2001
• Hometown: Tundla/Delhi, India

What are the greatest rewards of mentoring?

I owe my academic success to several outstanding teachers and mentors who guided and inspired me throughout my career (and continue to do so). The opportunity to mentor allows me to pass on their values, teachings, and work ethics to the next generation, and is possibly the best way to express my gratitude to my gurus. The greatest reward of mentoring is the fulfillment that one gets in seeing someone else’s goals and dreams become a reality. Also, as a mentor one needs to lead by example; this keeps you motivated to be on the top of your game, which can be rewarding too.

Describe a moment in your career when you realized you had picked the right occupation.

As a graduate student in India, I got an opportunity to mentor a summer student and I realized that academic research was not just about discovering and learning new things, but also about teaching others. That’s when I discovered that I am equally passionate for both research and teaching.

What are the biggest challenges you face as a mentor?

“The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.”- Steven Spielberg

Finding that delicate balance can sometimes be challenging. Ensuring that your mentees emulate your values and not necessarily your style is essential for their success.

The constant fear is that my passion while discussing science not be misinterpreted as arrogance or intimidation (it happens very often).

How do you know when you’ve been successful as a mentor?

When you see that your guidance helped your mentees in achieving their goals. It could be their first successful grant, their first lecture in the classroom, their first publication as a senior author or an award recognizing their contribution. However, a more important criteria that I gauge my mentoring is to see how my mentee handles failures- an unscored grant, a rejected paper. If my mentee bounces back from the failures and comes back with a positive intent to move forward with patience and diligence, I feel that I have succeeded as a mentor.