The most successful early-career researchers often rely on a network of mentors who each have different roles ' from advising on research and grants to making professional introductions and providing emotional support, finds a study of nearly 900 scientists just starting out1. The findings are consistent with what mentorship scholars and practitioners have long argued: no single mentor can meet all of a trainee's scientific, professional and psychosocial needs, says Keivan Stassun, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. 'It is encouraging to see these patterns emerge so clearly in a large data set of successful early-career investigators,' says Stassun, who has won awards for his mentorship. For the study, which was posted on the bioRxiv preprint server and hasn't been peer-reviewed, researchers analysed responses from recipients of K awards, issued by the US National Institutes of Health for career development. These prestigious grants support...
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