Finally "official" and settling in at the NIH

I’ve been at my new job at the National Institutes of Heath (NIH) for 7 weeks now. I finally feel “official” because I got my NIH ID badge last week. I am no longer considered a visitor. Yay! I now get to go straight through the gates and no longer have to endure 20 minutes of security checks each morning before work.


Working on campus is great. It really has the look and feel of a college campus and all the brick buildings remind me of Whitman. You can sense the change, energy, and progress in the air and I LOVE that feeling. In addition, there are so many cute, nerdy, guys here in their 30’s… just my type, ha ha ha.  But for every cute scientist there are 4-5 not so cute ones ;0)

What I also love is the diversity of the campus population. People come from all over the world to work there and it’s so neat to see a good mixture of a lot of cultures. When I walk through the halls and in the cafeteria, you can hear all the different languages. It's so refreshing.  Of course, since Asians are naturally smart, there are lots of Asians here. I am no longer in the minority!

I work in the largest building on campus, which is the Clinical Center. It’s huge! Not only is it a full scale hospital, tons of research labs are located there, and it houses a lot of the admin staff for NIH. I work in a cubicle, which is definitely an adjustment. This is my first job where I don’t have my own office. It’s kind of fun though because there’s always people around me to talk to if I get bored and you can hear everyone’s conversations. ;0) I just can't pick my nose or goof around as easily anymore!

Even though I’ve been there for almost 2 months, I still have so much to learn. I will be honest; the first few weeks were rough. It’s a very tough, fast paced, and high profile position, so it was a lot to take in at first. I truly wondered if it was the right fit for me. Well, I’ve gotten the hang of it and am actually starting to enjoy myself at work! I’m not going to say that I love my job (yet), but it’s growing on me. The more things I learn to do, the better it gets.

I’ve also finally figured out what I actually do! My official title is Committee Manager for the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the Division of Intramural Research (DIR). It’s a mouthful and definitely hard to explain exactly what I do.

NIAID Website: http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/

Basically, if any type of recruitment or promotion for NIAID DIR requires a scientific peer review, I manage that case. NIAID is one of the largest institutes at NIH so we get tons of cases. In addition I also manage all the cases at our satellite NIAID office in Montana. (The Montana labs are cool because that’s where they have the bio level safety level 4 labs with all the scary, super contagious, world threatening, type diseases… I’m so glad it’s in Montana and not here in DC!)

What I do is kind of like Human Resources, but not really. I manage Title 42 candidate searches, new appointments, higher level GS scientist promotions, promotion to tenure track, and promotion from tenure track to tenure. The cases I work with are obviously all scientists, which is cool, and they come from all over the world. A lot of them are world-renowned and famous researchers.

The new candidate searches up to a year to complete and promotions take about 4-6 months. It’s highly competitive and ruthless and makes me realize why I didn’t get into science or research. My first big task is a new candidate recruitment for the Program in Systems Immunology and Infectious Disease Modeling (PSIIM) Lab.

This job is just a different type of “case management,” so it wasn’t too far of a stretch for me. The cases take much longer and I am working with a different population, but it’s not too different from what I’ve been doing for the past 9 years. I admit that I really miss working with children and families and I especially miss working with military families. Working with scientists is definitely very different, but they are just the same as any population… you have the good ones, and the bad ones!

I’m just so happy and grateful to have such a good job considering what’s happening with economy. Even though I’m not doing any ground breaking scientific research, I feel like I’m part of something really revolutionary, groundbreaking, and important and that’s a wonderful feeling.