Dr Benjamin Schumann MRSC

Growing up in Germany, I learnt most subjects at school all the way until the final exams. My interest in chemistry was relatively modest until the last two years when I was fortunate to have great teachers in both chemistry and biology teaching organic chemistry and metabolism. That was when I decided to study biochemistry at a place that also featured a thorough chemistry education. The combination was perfect for me because I learnt to "speak both languages".

A lot of people have supported me throughout my career and are still doing so now. The beautiful thing about the UK chemical biology and glycan communities is that everybody is so supportive. I would not dare to write a full list, on the risk of forgetting someone. They know who they are, though, and they know that I will be eternally grateful!

The people I worked with and who introduced me to the glycosciences (Peter, Carolyn, Ten) have probably had the biggest impact on shaping me as a scientist and a group leader. From them, I have learnt that being committed to good science and being kind are not mutually exclusive – in fact, these attributes go together very well!

I want to make a point about having supportive colleagues and line managers at your institution to guide you through the process. There are people that I can turn to for pretty much any question I have. I was also fortunate to start my job at the same time as colleagues who are great friends and collaborators – Louise Walport (Crick/Imperial) and Stacy Malaker (Yale), to name two of them. This meant that none of us was alone in the new roles, and we could help each other out.

There is a particular type of project that I like. I want to do new things, either making compounds that nobody has made before or using them in ways that we could not until now. But that doesn't mean that innovation has to be complicated. Sometimes, small discoveries can open up an entirely new field, which is as gratifying for me as for my lab members!

The best driving force for me is enthusiasm to do cool, new things. Without a healthy dose of enthusiasm, I would not be able to do my job well, and I am trying to convey this mindset to students.

I would also advise young people to always want to know more. Whether for exams, grant applications or conference talks, I have always tried to know as much as I could about the subject. Being a student is a period when you might have time to read an entire textbook about, say, immunology or frontier molecular orbital theory. You might not have that time later, so do it now!

Collectively, the field is getting to a point where we will be able to study complicated biological processes in situ (as they happen) – not one technology alone is going to get us there, but whatever we do, chemical tools are certainly going to play a central role.

Chemistry is everything and everywhere. The ability to form a hypothesis in theory, test that hypothesis through experiments and translate the outcomes to processes that are important to humanity is beautiful.

There are so many. Personally, certainly our wedding day and the days our kids were born. But really, every day I get to spend with my family.

Career-wise, every time a lab member is successful in something – whatever it is – is a highlight that trumps everything else. It is my job to help with the troubleshooting to make sure that they get there.

The time between the end of my postdoc and starting my lab. My very pregnant wife flew to Germany with my daughter to stay with my in-laws while I worked at Stanford for a few more weeks to wrap up projects. I wanted to finish my work, so I was staying late and basically living out of the vending machine. This was probably scientifically the most intense time of my life, but it was absolutely worth it and brilliant colleagues made it easier.

When I started in London, the family was still in Berlin, and I travelled there every weekend. After a few months, when all of us were very sleep-deprived, they finally came to London. These time periods taught me that a career is not always straightforward, however well things may work. But getting to the other side is worth the effort.

When you start a lab, you have a vague idea what kind of lab culture you want to establish but no idea how to implement it. Leadership courses help a lot, such as, in my case, the EMBO course. I defined the core values that are most important to me and without which I wouldn't see a point of running a lab. These instances brought some clarity in the initial confusion and helped me clarify what kind of lab I wanted to have.

I decided early on to invest a lot of time in making sure that the lab atmosphere is supportive and cohesive – ideally, people with different personalities complement each other so that everybody brings something to the table. When I look at the lab, I am proud of how well they get along with each other.

A good research culture also means helping people excel at what they do. For instance, it is my responsibility to guide students into having a PhD-worthy thesis at the end, which means that there are challenges to be overcome, which can be fun if it's done as a team.

To me, working in a multidisciplinary environment is fun because I not only constantly learn about new developments but I also get to think about how our tools can make a difference. A question that I like to ask is, "What would you like to be able to do?" The answers I get tell me where the field is going and what the hot topics will be in the next years.

Being part of a team means contributing meaningfully to a common goal. As long as everybody takes part, we can progress much faster and have much more fun while doing it.

Not an element, but a formula for glyco-people: C₈H₁₅NO₆!