Janine Cossy: ‘Negative results are more important’

I’m originally from a small village next to Reims in the Champagne area of France. When I was in high school the two subjects I hated the most were English and chemistry. My parents were in the champagne business and I wanted to take over the business, but my father forced me to go to university. Thus, I got my PhD from the University of Reims Champagne–Ardenne and then decided to go to the US for a postdoc [with Barry Trost]. When I came back from the US, I said to my parents ‘now I know what I’m going to do – I’m going to do chemistry’. As I did not want to take the business over, my parents were fantastic with me, they said ‘do what you want, but try to do your best’.

I give my group a lot of freedom. Every 8–15 days, we have what I call ‘confessions’, where each student and postdoc tells me what they have been up to. I’m not so interested in the positive results – negative results are more important because they are about solving problems. You can ping-pong ideas back and forth during the discussion. Sometimes the students and postdocs have unexpected results and this is really exciting, more exciting than expected results. If a PhD student only has positive results that is not good training as in their career they will be in front of problems and they have to know how to deal with them. I want them to be well-trained and do things correctly.