Eric S. Lander

If you want to be at the epicenter of genomics, this is the place, but don’t expect much 1-on-1 time with the PI. He’s basically an academic celebrity and is constantly traveling for policy work or board meetings, so you’ll mostly be mentored by senior postdocs. It’s the ultimate hands-off experience where you’re expected to navigate the Broad Institute ecosystem on your own, but the resources and networking are unmatched.

The funding and infrastructure here are insane—you’ll never worry about the cost of sequencing or high-end compute. However, it’s easy to feel like a small cog in a very large, complex machine given how many projects are running simultaneously. If you aren't assertive and able to advocate for your own research direction, you might get lost in the shuffle of the larger Human Genome legacy projects.

The lab feels more like a fast-paced startup or a government agency than a traditional academic group. There’s a huge emphasis on the "big picture" and paper output that actually changes the field, which can be exhilarating but also incredibly high-pressure. You’ll get used to seeing your PI on the news or advising the White House, which is cool, but it means the internal meetings are rare and you better have your data perfectly polished when they actually happen.