Key takeaways:

• Having a mentoring committee and research community can help early-career investigators refine their scientific direction.
• Building a research career requires sustained scholarly discipline.

NEW YORK — Mentorship, sponsorship, and community can play an important role in helping early career investigators develop their scientific identity and research career, according to a 2026 Women in Nephrology Leadership Conference speaker.

When Connie M. Rhee, MD, MSc, chief of nephrology at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, started conducting research on the interaction between endocrine and metabolic disorders in kidney disease, including how thyroid disorders impact kidney health, her research mentors and sponsors helped her recognize how this area could develop into a broader and potentially impactful scientific theme. They encouraged her to remain focused, pursue important unanswered questions and immerse herself deeply in the field to develop expertise. Just as importantly, being part of a supportive research community provided opportunities for collaboration, exchange of ideas and continued scientific growth.

Source: Rhee C. Building a career in research. Presented at: Women in Nephrology Leadership Conference; Sept. 25-26, 2026; New York.

“Having a mentoring committee or research community is important because they provide a sounding board for your ideas,” Rhee told Healio. “Is your research impactful? Is it sustainable? Mentors can offer valuable perspectives in helping you identify a scientific focus that can evolve and grow with you over the course of your career.”

Reflecting on her own career trajectory, Rhee outlined five key themes for trainees and early-career faculty to develop a career in research: building your scientific theme, research community, research skill set, resilience and impact.

First, building a scientific theme requires identifying an area of interest, Rhee said. Early-career professionals may feel pressured to pick a topic considered high-impact, but important research gaps often emerge from caring for patients at the bedside and from day-to-day clinical practice.

Second, building a research community within and outside your institution can create opportunities for scientific growth, collaboration and mentorship, Rhee said. Attending both large scientific conferences and smaller, more focused meetings can help investigators develop meaningful connections with experts in their field and identify potential mentors and collaborators, she said.

Importantly, different mentors can provide complementary expertise and guidance across different areas of need, including scientific and methodological development, clinical expertise, career development, and sponsorship. These needs also evolve over the course of a career, making mentorship and sponsorship valuable not only for trainees and early-career investigators, but also for established faculty, according to Rhee.

“Mentorship and sponsorship remain important throughout the course of an academic career,” Rhee said.

Third, building a strong research skill set requires a strong methodological foundation, Rhee said. Aligning projects with frameworks you are actively learning about can help to solidify your understanding of methodological approaches, she said.

“When my mentees are taking a formal methods course, I recommend: ‘Why don’t you conduct a project that aligns with the methods that you’re learning?’” Rhee said in her presentation, “[Whether it’s a] survival analysis, longitudinal analysis, let’s come up with a project you can pursue as you’re learning these principles.”

Building a strong research skill set also requires skills beyond science, including writing papers and grants, presentation skills, project management and collaboration, among others, Rhee said.

Fourth, building resilience helps to navigate inevitable setbacks of a research career, such as rejected papers or grants, while also remaining open to critiques, Rhee said. She emphasized that setbacks are intrinsic to the scientific process and that critique should be approached as an opportunity for scientific refinement rather than simply as a negative outcome.

“Building a research career requires sustained scholarly discipline, approaching critiques as an opportunity for scientific refinement, and strategic persistence,” Rhee told Healio. “Having a scholarly and nonscholarly community is important in sustaining resilience over the course of a career.”

Lastly, building impact takes time and requires collaboration, Rhee said. By crafting a niche and sharing that knowledge with the medical community, one can build impact in the field, she said.

“Impact evolves over the course of a career from generating knowledge to shaping a field to enabling others to succeed,” Rhee said in her presentation. “Invest in people as deliberately as you invest in science.”

For more information:

Connie M. Rhee, MD, MSc, chief of nephrology at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System and professor of medicine and epidemiology at UCLA, can be reached at nephrology@healio.com.