Scripps Florida Mentorship Award Honors Laura Niedernhofer and Christoph Rader

By Cindy Brauer

Laura Niedernhofer, associate professor in the Department of Metabolism and Aging, and Christoph Rader, associate professor in the Department of Cancer Biology, at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have been named co-recipients of the second annual Scripps Florida Society of Research Fellows 2013 Mentorship Awards.

The award was established last year to recognize principal investigators for accessibility, supportiveness, propensity for providing constructive criticism and concern for mentees’ future career interests. Winners are selected based on an anonymous survey of Scripps Florida postdoctoral fellows. Last year’s winner was John Cleveland, chair of the Department of Cancer Biology.

Niedernhofer, who joined the Scripps Florida faculty in 2012 from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine and Cancer Institute, has mentored more than 85 individuals. She places great importance on her role as mentor because she is aware of her influence on trainees’ careers and mindset about science.

Witnessing trainees advance in their careers, “you finally know you did the right thing,” Niedernhofer says. Among the many individuals she has guided, Niedernhofer recalls the high school student who went from couch potato during the summer to a physics major at Duke; a student, drifting after graduation, who won a Centers for Disease Control fellowship to study malaria in Africa; a technician who became the first PhD in her family; and a clinical fellow who won an NIH award enabling him to start his own lab.

Like Niedernhofer, Rader values the responsibilities and rewards of helping mentees launch and develop their careers. While providing mentees experimental freedom to pursue their own strategies and probe their creativity in a supportive and collaborative environment, Rader believes in small-group structure that enables him to talk to each member of his lab daily about his or her project.

“I am proud that all of those who have moved on to industry careers were hired specifically due to the expertise they obtained in my lab, namely in the areas of antibody engineering and conjugation technologies,” says Rader, who has mentored some 40 individuals.

Surprised and “very grateful” for the Mentorship Award, Rader says, “To see them being happy at work is priceless.”

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