Janice Hicks's father, who worked for a pharmaceutical company, was a major influence on her choice of career. She paid attention as he described the excitement of chemistry and his reverence for scientific research. By the time she was a first-year student at Bryn Mawr College, she knew that she wanted to be an academic researcher. Today, Dr. Hicks is a tenured professor and respected researcher at Georgetown University—recipient of a Presidential Young Investigator Award. She has pioneered the use of ultrafast lasers to study surface phenomena relevant to atmospheric chemistry and biophysical chemistry. A long-term goal is to understand the three-dimensional shape of proteins absorbed at interfaces, such as the cell membrane. "Graduate school was a natural step for me," Dr. Hicks recalls. "From my father I'd absorbed the belief that research was the 'ultimate' occupation. When I got to college I felt confident about my love for chemistry, I received excellent preparation, and the professors were people I wanted to be like. I remember how impressed I was when I saw my first academic processionI thought that was the right place to be." After graduating as a chemistry major, she took a year off from school and learned two important lessons. A summer in an industrial laboratory taught her that she did not want to work in industry. And a stint in a biophysics laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania taught her that she preferred the precision and molecular scale of physical chemistry to larger-scale biologic work. When the time came to choose a graduate school, she was not particularly methodical. She selected Columbia University because she had enjoyed a visit to a friend at Barnard and because she wanted to live in New York. But it turned out to be a good match; she verified her passion for chemistry and built expertise in using ultrafast lasers to study chemical processes in liquids. And whenever the laser broke down, she and her friends could take the subway downtown to the Metropolitan Opera. But it was not until she went back to Penn for postdoctoral work that she really knew that she could be a professor. "I had heard you have to be the best to go into academe, and I was still questioning my ability. Then I had a mentor who changed all that. He gave me the push I needed, and once it came, my confidence grew. "This is an issue for many women, in particular. Women don't apply for academe positions in the proportion to the number graduating, and I think confidence is the issue. They tend to hold back, to wait for a signal from mentors. Many mentors don't think to give this signal, without realizing how important it is. "A lot of young women have heard that you've got to be the best to go into academe, and when you do, you have to go to a top-10 university. If they only realized how many hundreds of universities there are out there that need good professors!" Her desire to help students with such issues is an important feature of her life at Georgetown, where about 50% of her time is spent in teaching. "I went to a small college where undergraduates got a lot of attention. I wanted to be at a place where the undergrads are very good, which they are here, and where I could give some of that attention back." Her advice to students applying to graduate school: "Be very good writers and speakers. That's key to getting a job and getting grants. And as you begin, get a good mentor, or preferably more than one, who are younger profs who have just gone through this process. There's a lot of 'oral tradition' about getting through graduate school—things that you need to know but won't find written down." Two issues that present challenges to new assistant professors are tenure and research funding. "The tenure process at Georgetown was not too bad," said Hicks. The initial job interviews are conducted with much rigor, and the faculty claims to 'make the tenure decision,' at that point. There are no quotas here for number of publications or grants." In the area of research funding, the federal, academic and industrial sources are undergoing a major shift. "Everyone is having trouble getting grants, not just new faculty. Promotion decision will have to take today's funding climate into account."